Ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria () are one of the ethnic communities in Bulgaria. The issue surrounding this community is highly controversial as Bulgarian authorities traditionally claim that there is no actual ethnic difference between Macedonians and Bulgarians.Stefanos Katsikas, Negotiating Diplomacy in the New Europe: Foreign Policy in Post-Communist Bulgaria, I.B.Tauris, 2012, , p. 163.
At the 1934 census, no Macedonians were recorded in Bulgaria. During World War II, most parts of Yugoslav and Greek Macedonia were annexed by Bulgaria, and the local Slavic-speakers were regarded by the authorities as Bulgarians. After WWII the Macedonian Slavs were recognized as a distinct nationality in Yugoslavia, and between 1946 and 1958 they were recognized in Bulgaria as a separate minority too. During this period there was a surge of Macedonistic policies, the government went as far as to declare the newly codified Macedonian an official language of the Pirin region.Zang, Theodor (1991). "Selective Persecution of Macedonians in Bulgaria," News from Helsinki Watch, No.2, 1991. The Bulgarian Communist Party was compelled by Joseph Stalin to accept the formation of a distinct Macedonian nation, in order to create with the Yugoslav and Greek communists a United Macedonian state, as part of a scheduled Balkan Communist Federation (see also the 1947 Bled Agreement). In the 1946 census the results indicated their number of almost 170,000. There are clear indications that the vast majority of the population from Blagoevgrad Province then was listed as ethnic Macedonians ex officio by order of the authorities.Ulrich Büchsenschütz - "Minority Policy in Bulgaria. BKP policy to Jews, Gypsies, Turks and Pomaks (1944-1989), p. 5 Even today, it is not clear whether Bulgaria has a significant number of people who feel themselves "Macedonians", although the results of Census 1956 indicate the number of almost 200,000 (see Table. 5). These results, however, are grossly falsified - at that time on the population of Pirin Mountain exercised massive pressure to identify itself as "Macedonian".
However, differences soon emerged with regard to the Macedonian question. Whereas Bulgarians envisaged a state where Yugoslavia and Bulgaria would be placed on an equal footing, the Yugoslavs saw Bulgaria as a seventh republic in an enlarged Yugoslavia.H.R. Wilkinson Maps and Politics. A Review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia, Liverpool, 1951. pp. 311–312. Their differences also extended to the national character of the Macedonians – whereas Bulgaria considered them to be a national offshoot of the Bulgarians,Yugoslavia: A History of Its Demise, Viktor Meier, Routledge, 2013, , p. 183. the Yugoslavs regarded them as people who had nothing to do with the Bulgarians.Hugh Poulton Who are the Macedonians?, C. Hurst & Co, 2000, . pp. 107–108. As result, gradual change of that policy came in Bulgaria after the Tito–Stalin split in 1948. After Stalin's death in 1953 Bulgaria started changing the policies towards the ethnic Macedonians. In 1956 census, despite some presence of pressure by the regime to declare as Bulgarians, 187,789 people of Bulgaria declared themselves to be ethnic Macedonians. After 1958 the Bulgarian authorities has openly denied the presence of Macedonian minority in the country, claiming there is no ethnic difference between both communities.Christina Klamer, Bulgarian-Macedonian in Hans Goebl, Kontaktlinguistik: ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung, Volume 2, , p. 1502. At a Plenum of the Central Committee of the BCP in March 1963 Todor Zhivkov finally denounces any notion of “a separate Macedonian nation” in Bulgaria. Zhivkov asserted there was no separate, historically traceable Macedonian nation prior to World War II. He accused historians in the People's Republic of Macedonia of falsifying Bulgarian history and claimed the modern Macedonian national identity was a political project, created on an anti-Bulgarian basis under the influence of Yugoslav Communists.Eirini Karamouzi et al., The Balkans in the Cold War, 2017, Palgrave Macmillan, , p. 311. At the 1965 census 9,632 citizens were listed as Macedonian.
According to the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee in 1998, their number ranged from 15,000 to 25,000. In 2006, per the personal evaluation of a leading local ethnic Macedonian activist Stojko Stojkov, they counted already between 5,000 and 10,000 people. The 1992 census indicated 10,830 Macedonians, but in the 2001 census this figure had decreased to 5,071. However, in the 2011 Bulgarian census 1,654 people declared themselves to be ethnic Macedonians, while in the latest 2021 Bulgarian census, only 1,143 citizens declared themselves as ethnic Macedonians.
Background Until 1913 the majority of the Slavic-speaking population of all three parts of the region of Macedonia identified as Bulgarian.Center for Documentation and Information on Minorities in Europe - Southeast Europe (CEDIME-SE) - Macedonians of Bulgaria; Greekhelsinki.gr However, clear national consciousness existed among intelligentsia, revolutionaries and clergy on the other hand the peasantry was not involved in national debates, they were meaningless to their concern. Thus, as seen by observers, the affiliation of Macedonian Slavs to different national camps was not indeed belonging to an ethnic group, but rather political and flexible option. In October 1925 the Slavic population in the Bulgarian part of Macedonia repulsed a brief invasion by Greece, fighting alongside the Bulgarian army. In 1922, a referendum was held in Bulgaria to try those responsible for the Second Balkan and First World Wars, which were lost by Bulgaria and which led to the full accession of Macedonia. Macedonians in Bulgaria voted "no" en masse because of the pro-Yugoslav line of the ruling Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS) and because of the accusation that its leaders assisted the defeat of Bulgaria in the last war due to their leadership military mutiny. The rest of Bulgaria voted mostly 'yes' because (outside several cities) they were strongly opposed to the ruling Agrarianist government and with weaker communist opposition.Убийство на премиер. Превратът на 9 юни, когато насилието замени закона During World War II, most parts of Yugoslav and Greek Macedonia were annexed by Bulgaria, and the local Slavic-speakers were regarded and self-identified as Macedonian Bulgarians.The struggle for Greece, 1941-1949, Christopher Montague Woodhouse, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2002, , p. 67. Not until much later did the process of Macedonian national identity formation gain momentum. After 1944, the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia a connecting link for the establishment of new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating there a development of distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness. The Communist Party of Greece and its fraternal parties in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia had already been influenced by the Resolution of the Comintern on the Macedonian Question, and it was the only political party in Greece to recognize Macedonian national identity.Incompatible Allies: Greek Communism and Macedonian Nationalism in the Civil War in Greece, 1943-1949, Andrew Rossos - The Journal of Modern History 69 (March 1997): 42 The region of Vardar Macedonia received the status of a constituent republic within Yugoslavia as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. The local Slavic population was proclaimed to be ethnically Macedonian – a new nationality meant to be different from the Bulgarians or Serbs.
History Recognition of the minority For a period of some years after the war, the Yugoslav and Bulgarian leaders Josip Broz Tito and Georgi Dimitrov worked on a project to merge their two countries into a Balkan Federative Republic according to the projects of Balkan Communist Federation. At that time, Stalinist regime was gradually imposed in Bulgaria. It covered the period from 1944 to 1956. Mass repressions, political murders, forced collectivization and industrialization began. Tens of thousands were imprisoned without trial in labor camps or interned.Jordan B. Stalinist terror in Bulgaria, 1944–1956. In: McDermott K, Stibbe M, eds. Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe: Elite Purges and Mass Repression. Manchester University Press; pp, 180-197. As a concession to the Yugoslavian side, Bulgarian authorities agreed to the recognition of a distinct Macedonian ethnicity and language as part of their own population in the Bulgarian part of geographical Macedonia. This was one of the conditions of the Bled agreement, signed between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria on 1 August 1947. In November 1947, pressured by the Yugoslavs, Bulgaria also signed a treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia, and teachers were sent from the Socialist Republic of Macedonia to Blagoevgrad Province to teach the newly codified Macedonian language. The Bulgarian president Georgi Dimitrov was sympathetic to the Macedonian Question. The Bulgarian communist government was compelled once again to adapt its stand to Soviet interests in the Balkans.
At the same time, the organisation of the old Bulgarian nationalist movement the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) was suppressed by the Bulgarian communist authorities.Ангелов, Веселин. Хроника на едно национално предателство: Опитите за насилствено денационализиране на Пиринска Македония 1944-1949 г. – София: Гергана, 2004. – 495 с. (ВИБ 21461) Former IMRO functionaries, local leaders and wealthier citizens were arrested. On the night of October 4–5, 1944, 39 of them were shot and laid in a mass grave in the area above Dobrinishte. Similar mass executions were also carried out in the village of Aydarovo and in the Tserovsko dere area above Gorna Dzhumaya. Apart from this figure, the Nevrokop court issued 27 death sentences and 23 life sentences. Another 11 people were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Similar extraordinary courts were also established in the other district centers - G. Dzhumaya, Razlog and Sveti Vrach. The People's Court in the district center issued 40 death sentences, 23 - life sentences and another 25 - to various terms of imprisonment. The largest number of convicts is in Razlog – 89. Of these, 37 people were sentenced to death, 35 to life imprisonment and another 14 received lesser sentences. In Sv. Vrach, 10 life sentences were issued and another 28 – to various terms of imprisonment. This statistics does not exhaust the circle of those repressed in the period immediately after the September 9th Coup. The families of all the convicts were interned in various places in Northern Bulgaria.Михаил Груев, Насилие и идентичност: пиринска Македония в етнонационалните политики на комунистическия режим в България – Част 1, 17 януари 2012 г. Либерален преглед.