By Krzysztof Popek, Ph.D
Land was of crucial importance to the Bulgarian society, which until the mid-20th century primarily inhabited rural areas, and was mainly occupied with livestock rearing and farming. When the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) broke out, which led to the establishment of the modern Bulgarian state, as much as 70 per cent of agricultural land was owned by Muslims, who made up ca. 50 per cent of the population of these areas. They included both beys – owners of large farms (so-called chiftliks and gospodarluks) – and medium and small peasants. The turn of the 19th and 20th c. brought about deep changes in the Bulgarian ownership structure: what the Russians labelled the Agrarian Revolution, related to all processes of land changing hands from Muslim to Bulgarian ones. During the period of the Provisional Russian Administration in Bulgaria (March 1878 – June 1879) this was one of the most important tasks that the Tsar’s representatives addressed in Bulgaria. Bulgarian control over land was to be the foundation of Christian domination in the state, which the Russians also saw as a guarantee of their continued influence in the Eastern Balkans. This involved both dispossessions and lotting out chiftliks among the agrarian workers who cultivated the land, as well as taking control over properties abandoned by war refugees (so-called muhajirs). The article is focused on the Muslim medium and small peasants, the cases of owners of chiftliks will not be considered, according to a large range of the topic.
The article’s goal is to present that after the creation of the Bulgarian state not only the situation of the Muslim beys deteriorated markedly, the Muslim medium and small peasants were victims of the transformation as well. Contrary to Bulgarian claims, popular especially during the communist regime, that only “Turkish feudalists” lost out as a result of the Agrarian Revolution and that it was not aimed against the ordinary Muslim population, a whole host of Islamic small farmers suffered, and entire settlements were sometimes bought out as a result. The process was not exclusively anti-feudalist (if it is even possible to talk about feudalism in the case of the Ottoman Empire), but also ethnicity-related.To read the original version, please click on this link