Aleksandŭr Stamboliĭski: Bulgaria

Makers of the Modern World Series
By RJ Crampton

Aleksandŭr Stamboliĭski (1879-1923) was one of the most original politicians of the 20th century. His tragedy was that he came to power at the end of the First World War in which Bulgaria had been defeated. It fell to him, therefore, to accept and apply the terms of the Treaty of Neuilly, which were among the strictest imposed upon a former member of the Central Powers at the Paris Peace Conference, and it was this that would cost him his life at the age of only 44.

It had been Bulgaria's nationalist ambitions, thwarted by the Treaty of Berlin 1878 and again by defeat in the Second Balkan War of 1913, that had lead it to side with Germany in the First World War. But Stamboliĭski, a larger-than-life character who always remained close to his peasant roots, fulminated more at internal than external injustices. He lead a movement of extraordinary interests and originality, which was cherished by small farmers who formed the majority of Bulgaria's population, but the unresolved issues of the Balkan wars, especially Bulgarian claims to Macedonia, brought the agrarian experiment to a premature end.

His successors moved closer to the Axis powers as they sought to revise the impositions of Paris, and Bulgaria suffered defeat once more in the Second World War.

The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 was a pivotal moment for Bulgaria, on of the leading Balkan states, and its consequences were equally important for agrarianism, a movement that had great potential, and some actual power, in Eastern Europe until the Communists' imposition of collectivisation spelled the end for the small peasant proprietor.

R J Crampton is a former Professor of East European History and currently Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. An authority on the history of Eastern Europe, his works include Bulgaria for The Oxford History of Modern Europe series (2007), A Concise History of Bulgaria (2005), Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century and After, The Balkans and The Second World War (2002), and Atlas of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (with Ben Crampton).