Background

According to the 1975 Bulgarian census, the last taken before the start of the "Revival Process" which recorded ethnicity, "Turks" made up around 8.4% of the Bulgarian population of 8.7 Million. This was down from the final census taken before the start of the Communist era in 1946 where "Turks" comprised 9.6% of the population. The Muslim population was concentrated primarily in the country's northeast and southeast (particularly Kardzhali Province).^[1]

Though the People's Republic of Bulgaria officially practiced State Atheism, in line with Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and that since the 1940s and religious expression had been tightly controlled, the state viewed domestic Muslims, whether practicing or not, as the Bulgarian victims of Ottoman religious and cultural assimilation - wayward Bulgarians. Though the regime had long encouraged assimilationism to some degree, as the Eastern Bloc wavered in the 1980s, the Zhivkov regime leaned more heavily into Bulgarian ethno-nationalism to prop itself up and stepped up repression of the Muslim population in particular.

Initial Campaigns

The policy of the Bulgarian Communist Party towards ethnic and religious minorities evolved during the forty year course of one-party rule. The draconian policies that characterized the Revival Process were not the first such efforts on the part of the Bulgarian People's Republic.

Until Zhivkov's removal from power, the Bulgarian regime denied the existence of any Muslims of non-Bulgarian origin and insisted that the Muslim population were descended from Bulgarians who had been forcibly converted to Islam under Ottoman Rule.^[2] In line with this view, education policy was also gradually made more assimilationist. In 1962, Pomaks were banned from attending Turkish-language schools, and in 1972, Turkish-language schools were banned altogether.^[3]

Following on from the ban on the Turkish language in schools, the government forced many Slavophone Muslims to Bulgarianize their names in the early 1970s. By 1974, 150,000 "Pomaks" and 200,000 "Turks" had been forced to Bulgarianize their names.^[4][5][6]

In 1978, the regime attempted to phase out traditional and religious holidays and observances in favor of approved socialist observances and rites. Officials were sent to Islamic funerals to ensure that the proper Socialist rites were carried out and prayers said in the Bulgarian language.^[7]

Just before the start of the Revival Process proper, the regime initiated a new round of limited forced Bulgarianization. Between 1981 and 1983, around 100,000 people, mainly Muslim Roma were forcibly Bulgarianized. The measure was extended to a number of Crimean Tatars and Alians (a Shia group, also referred to as Alevi or Kizilbash)^[8] mere months before the "Revival Process" began in earnest in 1984.^[9]

Start of the "Revival Process"

While many Muslims had thus already been forced to Bulgarianize their names, in 1984 the regime in Sofia decided to take the name-changing process to its conclusion. All ethnic Turks were to assimilate by changing their Turkish names.^[10] Turks were made to choose from a pre-approved list of "'real'" Bulgarian names in lieu of their original "Islamo-Arabic" names.^[11] Initially, only Turks living or born in the Rhodopes region in the country's southeast were required to change their names, but the requirement was ordered expanded to "all districts where there is such [a Turkish] population" in December of 1984,^[12] which was carried out a month later in January of 1985.^[13] By March 1985 the Bulgarian Government announced that "Bulgarisation" had been completed, and the Bulgarian Turks were provided with several newly issued documents for identification.^[10]

The creation of an ideologically coherent list of approved "Bulgarian" names proved to be a challenge for the authorities. While many had been made to change their names previously, the regime sought to develop a comprehensive "'Classifier of Bulgarian Names'" only in 1984.^[14] In the face of difficulties regarding the acceptability of foreign names (given names and surnames of Turkish, Arabic, Armenian, or some other non-Bulgarian origin) and the association between both foreign and "Bulgarian" and religion, the decision was eventually made to draft a list of 5,000 purely "Bulgarian" names, including those with a relationship to the Orthodox Christian calendar.^[15] Acceptable "Bulgarian" names were not just those of Slavic or Christian origin however, non-Islamic foreign names were also sometimes deemed acceptable. While this list was not completed prior to the start of the "Revival Process", some name indexes were available by that time.^[12]

The methods employed by the state to coerce Turkish villages to agree to "Bulgarisation" were particularly violent. According to one eyewitness account by an ethnic Bulgarian: "The [Turkish] village was surrounded by militia and/or special internal troops or regular army trucks or even light tanks. The village thus isolated, the mayor, the Communist Party secretary, and a few officials were then summoned and asked to sign a declaration that the village(rs) be given Bulgarian names... They were handed lists of Bulgarian names and then usually allowed twenty-four hours to consider. Most of these men agreed to cooperate and were thus held up as models for the rest of the village... Those who refused to comply, however, were taken by the militia from their homes... Eventually they signed. Those who still refused were held in a cellar for several days, abused, threatened, and beaten. If they still persisted, then imprisonment ensued."^[16]

Beyond the Bulgarianization of the names of living Muslims, Bulgarian authorities began to enforce other assimilation measures during the "Revival Process". During that time, Muslims were not allowed to bury their dead in Islamic cemeteries and were made to deface the Islamic or Arabic inscriptions and symbols on their ancestors graves. Store and restaurant owners were also prohibited from serving women in traditional Islamic dress.^[17] The pre-existing ban on Islamic circumcision was strictly enforced, and Muslim parents were required to sign documents promising not to circumcise their child. Officials regularly inspected Muslim boys to ensure they remained uncircumsized, and if a couple were found to have violated the ban, both the parents and the individual who had performed the circumcision faced punishment.^[17] These restrictions on Muslims remained in effect for the rest of the 1980s, with the Bulgarian government only promising to restore the rights of its Muslim population in December of 1989.

Reaction and Resistance

Similar to the system of government-controlled religious organizations which exists in the People's Republic of China today, Bulgaria tightly regulated the practice of Islam in the country. The People's Republic of Bulgaria formally employed a loyal Chief (Grand) Mufti along with regional Muftis throughout its reign.^[17] Unsurprisingly, the state-employed Chief Mufti expressed his support for the "Revival Process", declaring that "...There have been no cases of preventing or in any way restricting Muslims from performing religious rites and services."^[17]

Resistance to the "Revival Process" among the Turkish population itself, however, was strong. Given that even among the states of the Eastern Bloc, governmental opposition to the Communist regime was particularly weak in Bulgaria, Turks opposed to the "Revival Process" were forced to construct new organizations from scratch, and acts of resistance were thus often merely individual. For example, in spite of regulations, many continued to secretly practice their faith and instruct their children in the Turkish language and Islamic religion.^[18] Once the necessary structures had been established and organized opposition began in earnest (after the nominal conclusion of the campaign), opposition became increasingly visible. Turks and Muslims organized large-scale protests demanding the restoration of their rights and original names.

Rather than fight, however, many Turks initially attempted to escape the renaming process.^[19] While the international borders of the People's Republic of Bulgaria were generally closed, Turks sought refuge within the country. Many fled into the forests and other inaccessible areas to hide from the state while others attempted to flee for the big cities (where the re-naming process was slower and more cumbersome).^[19] Regardless, such escape attempts generally failed.^[20]

Muslims who refused to assimilate faced imprisonment, expulsion, or internment in the reactivated Belene labor camp, situated on an island in the Danube river.^[21][22] Some who were sent to Belene died, and many protesters were even directly killed in clashes with authorities. While the number of civilian casualties is not definitely known, according to Turkish sources, anywhere from 800 to 2,500 died between November 1984 and February 1985.^[23] Other observers, meanwhile, estimate the number of casualties at more than 1,000, though that number is likely to rise considerably when including the number of people who died of neglect or suicide in Belene.^[23]

In spite of the high number of fatalities among the Muslim community, organized armed resistance to the "Revival Process" never arose.^[24] Explanations for why resistance remained non-violent are varied (in contrast to contemporaneous armed movements in places like Northern Ireland). Rumen Avramov, who was an economic advisor to Bulgaria's first non-communist president, Zhelyu Zhelev, claims that the extreme level of repression carried out by the People's Republic of Bulgaria prevented the development of armed opposition.^[24]

Over 600 unorganized acts of "terror" were officially recorded by Sofia during the 1980s, with the regime blaming Turks and Muslims for the acts, as well as their opposition groups (such as the Turkish National Liberation Movement in Bulgaria which formally eschewed violence).^[24] Of those alleged 600 attacks, the vast majority cannot be explained conclusively.^[24] Of the 600, the only attack in which people undoubtedly lost their lives occurred in the village of Bunovo on March 9, 1985 wherein 6 people died.^[25]

It is possible that some of the attacks were carried out or entirely fabricated by the Bulgarian regime in order to drum up support from the non-Muslim population. For example, upon the opening of secret police archives after the fall of the Communist regime, it was discovered that the perpetrators of two high-profile attacks allegedly committed by Turks in 1984, one at the Varna airport and another at the Plovidv rail station, were agents of the secret police.^[26]

As a result of Muslim resistance to Bulgarianization and the "Revival Process", the government concluded that a subset of the Muslim population was intractable and could not be assimilated. The emigration of this subset was thus to be encouraged actively.^[10]

Muslim Protests

Emboldened by instability in the communist Eastern Bloc, in early 1989, Turks and Muslims took to the streets of Bulgaria in a wave of protests that ultimately totaled around 60,000 participants.^[27] The regime responded by arresting many, ultimately deporting more than 1,000 "'ringleaders'" to Austria and Yugoslavia.^[27]

The "Big Excursion"

In response to the protests of early 1989, Chairman of the Bulgarian state council, Todor Zhivkov, addressed the people of Bulgaria. In his address, he encouraged Bulgarian Turks to resettle in Turkey.^[10] Shortly thereafter, on 29 May 1989, the border with Turkey was opened exclusively for the country's Turks and Muslims. Over 300,000 left Communist Bulgaria for Turkey between 30 May 1989 and 22 August 1989 in a process referred to by the communist Bulgarian government as the “Big Excursion” (Bulgarian: Голямата екскурзия, romanized: Goliamata Ekskurziya).^[28][29]

While the government of Bulgaria maintained that the migration of Muslims to Turkey was voluntary (thousands from the Eastern Bloc had risked their lives to seek refuge abroad, particularly in the late 1980s), many Bulgarian Turks had been coerced into leaving the country.^[30] By the time the border with Turkey was opened, state security services had already identified and earmarked individuals for expulsion.^[27]

Turkey eventually closed the border with Bulgaria to prevent the further immigration of Bulgarian Turks,^[10] and faced with difficulties settling in Turkey, within the first three months of their arrival in Turkey, 40,000 émigrés returned to Bulgaria. This process of return continued, and by the end of 1990, about 150,000 people had gone back to Bulgaria, which some allege suggests voluntary migration rather than ethnic cleansing.^[31]

Domestic

On 10 November 1989, Todor Zhivkov was forced to resign,^[10] and the new Bulgarian government restored the right of Bulgarian citizens to have Turkish names.^[32] Not all who had been forced to change their names, however, restored their original names. Today, many Bulgarians of legacy (non-immigrant background) Muslim origin born during or after the "Revival Process" bear Bulgarian names, and as part of the collective trauma from the event, some are left to wonder what their name would have otherwise been.^[33]

On 11 January 2012, the Bulgarian Parliament officially recognized the 1989 expulsion as ethnic cleansing,^[34] and while some Bulgarian mainstream parties have been rebuked for their continued neglect and disregard for the events of 1989,^[35] the events of that year are widely condemned. While the same declaration also condemned the wider campaign of forced assimilation, the domestic legacy of those campaigns and the "Revival Process" are more contentious.

In November 2002, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church declared all victims, including non-Christian victims, of the Bulgarian communist regime to be martyrs.^[36]

International

The international response to the revival process was minimal at the time. While some nations weakly protested the 1989 ethnic cleansing in particular, the broader "Revival Process" was soon largely forgotten. At a 2000 speech at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for example, keynote speaker and head of the National Security Agency Michael V. Hayden, made only non-specific reference to the "Revival Process" that he observed while stationed in Sofia during the Cold War because the audience would not have understood the "facts and context necessary to follow his talk."^[37]

When it was remembered, the Revival Process is usually associated with the government of Todor Zhivkov and the Bulgarian People's Republic.

In Turkey, memory of the "Revival Process" is limited and testimony by victims is limited.^[38]

Throughout the "Revival Process", many Bulgarian Turks also refuge abroad, not only in Turkey, but also in Western Europe, especially in Austria, Germany, and Sweden.^[39] Many also found refuge in Australia,^[39] Canada, England, and the United States.^[40] Today, diaspora communities originating from these Bulgarian Muslim asylees remain.