Why was Bulgaria not included in Yugoslavia?

armageddon87 · Mar 23, 2019

Ben Foster said:
The question should not be "Why Bulgaria did not become a part of Yugoslavia" BUT why Yugoslavia did not become a part of Bulgaria. Historically, or at least until the Turks came - there were 2 major powers and rivals on the Balkans - The Byzantine Empire and Bulgaria.

That's just a wishful thinking.
It's true that until some time Bulgaria and Byzantine had been the two major powers on the Balkans (and at times the Bulgarian Khanate had the upper hand over Byzantine), but only until the invasion of the Rus which occurred somewhere right before AD 1000 . From there on it all started downhill for the Bulgarian Empire. Meanwhile the Serbian state has started to form seperately and quickly gained momentum.
So by the time the Turks came (14 cent) Bulgaria was already much segragated and fragmented to many small kingdoms and Serbia had already been established as the more dominant Slavic power on the Balkans.

Peaceful · Mar 24, 2019

Futurist said:
Why was Bulgaria not included in Yugoslavia? Yugoslavia means land of the Southern Slavs and all of the Southern Slavic groups were included in Yugoslavia other than the Bulgarians. What exactly is the reason for this?

I mean, Yes, Bulgaria was already independent before WWI, but so was Montenegro and yet it was incorporated into Yugoslavia whereas Bulgaria was not. Also, Montenegro was incorporated into Yugoslavia in spite of it being on the winning side of WWI. Since Bulgaria was on the losing side of WWI, it would have been even easier to incorporate it into Yugoslavia had the Serbs actually wanted to do this.

Incorporating Bulgaria into Yugoslavia would have given Yugoslavia several million additional people as well as access to the Black Sea. Plus, it could have logically been viewed as the completion of the unification of the Southern Slavs into one state. Thus, does anyone here know why Bulgaria was never incorporated into Yugoslavia?

My understanding of that region is pretty limited, so someone from that part of the world may be able to correct me. I think that while Bulgaria was considered to be part of the Balkans, they held nationalist ideals built upon their own culture and traditions, which were distinct from say Serbia. Similar with Romania.

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Why was Bulgaria not included in Yugoslavia?

armageddon87

Peaceful

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