The country of
Bulgaria officially the
Republic of Bulgaria lies in the
Balkans in south-eastern
Europe. It borders five other countries:
Romania to the north (mostly along the
River Danube),
Serbia and the
Republic of Macedonia to the west, and
Greece and
Turkey to the south. The
Black Sea defines the extent of the country to the east.
Bulgaria includes parts of the Roman provinces of
Moesia,
Thrace and
Macedonia.
Old European culture within the territory of present-day
[update] Bulgaria started to produce
golden artifacts by the fifth millennium BC.
The first Bulgarian kingdoms on European soil date back to the early
Middle Ages (
7th century). All Bulgarian political entities that subsequently emerged preserved the traditions (in ethnic name, language and alphabet) of the
First Bulgarian Empire (632/681 – 1018), which at times covered most of the
Balkans and spread its alphabet, literature and culture among the
Slavic and other peoples of
Eastern Europe. Centuries later, with the decline of the
Second Bulgarian Empire (1185 – 1396/1422), Bulgarian kingdoms came under
Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries. The
Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 led to the re-establishment of a Bulgarian state as a
constitutional monarchy in 1878, with the
Treaty of San Stefano marking the birth of the
Third Bulgarian State. In 1908, with social strife brewing at the core of the Ottoman Empire, the Alexander Malinov government and Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria formally proclaimed the full sovereignty of the Bulgarian state at the ancient capital of Veliko Turnovo.
After
World War II, in 1945 Bulgaria became a
communist state and part of the
Eastern Bloc.
Todor Zhivkov dominated Bulgaria politically for 33 years (from 1956 to 1989). In 1990, after the
Revolutions of 1989, the
Communist Party gave up its monopoly on power and Bulgaria transitioned to
democracy and
free-market capitalism.
Currently
[update] Bulgaria functions as a
parliamentary democracy under a
unitary constitutional republic. A member of the
European Union since 2007 and of
NATO since 2004, it has a population of approximately 7.6 million. Bulgaria has a high
HDI.