When the American statesman Daniel Webster addressed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1824 about the Greek Revolution, he did something remarkably effective. He essentially asked Americans to look around them. The republic they were sitting in, the culture of public debate, the idea of citizenship and even much of the political architecture surrounding them carried echoes of ancient Greece. When the Greeks rose against the Ottoman Empire in 1821, Webster argued that this was not merely a distant revolt somewhere in the Balkans. It touched the very foundations of the Western political idea of freedom.
Almost the same historical mirror can be held up to Bulgaria. But while Greece could look back to Athens and antiquity as part of Europe’s own civilizational story, Bulgaria first had to recover the very idea of being a state. Bulgarian lands came under Ottoman rule at the end of the fourteenth century. Only after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 was a Bulgarian political entity re-established, while full formal independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared in 1908.
That means that several centuries of Bulgarian history unfolded without an independent Bulgarian state. Such a period does not disappear from a society’s collective consciousness simply because borders are redrawn and a flag is raised. It can continue to live in language, monuments, schoolbooks, politics and, above all, in the story a people tells about itself.
A Country That Had to Be Reborn
It says a great deal that one of the most important periods in modern Bulgarian history is known as Vazrazhdane — the National Revival. The Bulgarian national awakening of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not only about political resistance. It was about language, education, church, history and the basic question of who Bulgarians actually were.
Modern Bulgarian historiography therefore developed in close connection with nation-building itself. Priests, teachers, intellectuals and writers helped construct a historical narrative that could awaken national consciousness and legitimize the struggle for cultural and political independence.
This is understandable. When a people has lived for generations without its own state, history becomes more than history. It becomes proof of existence.
That is why names such as Vasil Levski, Hristo Botev and Georgi Rakovski, together with the April Uprising and the battles of Shipka, do not live only in textbooks. They are present in streets, squares, schools, monuments and the national calendar. They are part of Bulgaria’s mental landscape.
The problem begins when the story of how the nation was reborn becomes stronger than the story of what the nation now wants to become.
Liberation Became Both a Beginning and an Identity
In 1878, an autonomous Bulgarian principality was created after the Russo-Turkish War. The Treaty of San Stefano had initially proposed a much larger Bulgarian state, but the Treaty of Berlin later that same year radically changed the arrangement. Full independence was proclaimed in 1908.
From this grew something that still matters.
The founding narrative of modern Bulgaria is heavily structured around loss — survival — awakening — struggle — liberation.
It is an immensely powerful story. But it also creates a psychological structure in which the nation is defined in relation to something that was done to it.
We were conquered.
We survived.
We preserved the language.
We preserved the faith.
We resisted.
We were liberated.
None of this is wrong. It is history. But if the same narrative remains the dominant reference point generation after generation, it can influence how a society sees both itself and the outside world.
The question then becomes not only: Who are we?
It also becomes: Who did this to us?
That is a very different foundation on which to build a future.
The Ottoman Empire Does Not Explain Modern Bulgaria
At the same time, one must be extremely careful. It would be historically absurd to claim that Bulgaria’s problems in 2026 are simply the result of the Ottoman Empire.
Since 1878, the country has experienced wars, territorial disasters, monarchy, authoritarian periods, two world wars, Soviet domination, communist dictatorship between 1944 and 1989 and then a turbulent transition from a planned economy to a market economy and democratic institutions.
Each period left its own institutional and cultural layer.
If we want to understand the modern relationship between citizens and the state, bureaucracy, informal networks, corruption, property, political power or distrust of institutions, it is not enough to say: “five hundred years under the Turks.”
That becomes an easy explanation because it places responsibility far back in history and outside the society itself.
Communism is far more recent. It shaped several generations’ relationship with the state, private initiative, ownership, career advancement, information and power. The transition after 1989 then produced both winners and losers, new economic elites and deep mistrust toward politicians and public institutions.
Modern Bulgaria is therefore not the result of one historical trauma, but of multiple historical layers built on top of one another.
Yet beneath them all, the Ottoman period remains.
When History Becomes Politically Useful
The most dangerous part of historical trauma is not always the trauma itself. It is how later generations choose to use it.
One striking example can be found during Bulgaria’s communist period. During the so-called Revival Process — Vazroditelen protses — between 1984 and 1989, the communist regime carried out a policy of forced assimilation against parts of the country’s Muslim population, particularly Bulgarian Turks. Turkish, Arabic and Persian names were replaced with Slavic or Bulgarian names, while cultural, religious and linguistic expressions were restricted.
The historical paradox is obvious.
A country whose national identity had largely been built around resistance to assimilation and foreign rule later attempted, under another regime, to assimilate one of its own minorities.
History had not disappeared.
It had become a political instrument.
This is precisely why a society must be able to discuss its history without turning it into a permanent moral map in which people living centuries later are classified according to what their ancestors supposedly were.
Turkey Is Not the Ottoman Empire
There is another important distinction that is often lost in the Balkans.
Modern Turkey is not the Ottoman Empire.
Just as today’s Bulgarians are not the people of 1876, today’s Turks are not the people of the fifteenth century.
Historical understanding requires the ability to hold two ideas at the same time. Ottoman expansion and political domination had enormous consequences for the Balkans, but centuries of shared history also created cultural, economic, linguistic, architectural and culinary intersections that remain visible throughout the region.
The Balkans are full of countries proudly describing certain foods, rhythms, words or customs as uniquely their own while their neighbours serve nearly the same dish, play almost the same melody or use almost the same expression.
Empires do not leave only battlefields behind.
They leave kitchens, music, trade routes, cities, words, families and habits.
That is why the story of “us” and “them” usually becomes less clear the closer we look.
Bulgaria Is Already Somewhere Else
Perhaps the most striking contrast is between Bulgaria’s historical self-image and the country’s actual position in today’s world.
Bulgaria joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007. Since 1 January 2026, the country has also been a member of the euro area.
Consider what that actually means.
A country that for centuries existed on the periphery of an empire centred in Constantinople now sits alongside Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and other European states within the same political and economic structures.
Bulgarian citizens can study, work, invest and build companies across much of Europe. Bulgarian businesses operate inside the European single market. The country’s security is integrated into NATO, and its currency is now the euro.
On paper, the geopolitical transformation is almost complete.
But institutional transformation and mental transformation do not always happen at the same speed.
A border can change overnight.
A law can change in a few months.
A country can join an international organisation through a treaty.
But a collective way of seeing the world can survive for generations.
From Survival to Confidence
This may be Bulgaria’s most important future question.
The country’s historical narrative has been extremely good at answering one question:
How did we survive?
But a modern Bulgaria increasingly needs to answer another:
What do we want to create?
The difference sounds small. In reality, it is enormous.
A survival culture looks backwards to identify the threats from which it must protect itself. A creative culture looks forward and asks what possibilities do not yet exist.
The first needs heroes who saved the nation.
The second needs entrepreneurs, engineers, teachers, scientists, artists, urban planners and people capable of building institutions that work.
Both stories matter.
But the balance has to change.
Vasil Levski does not become less important because a Bulgarian programmer, scientist or entrepreneur becomes more important in the story of present-day Bulgaria.
Shipka does not need to be forgotten because people begin talking just as seriously about what Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas or Bansko could become by 2040.
Historical pride and future ambition are not opposites.
The problem begins when history becomes a substitute for the future.
Webster Was Really Asking a Question About the Future
That is why Daniel Webster’s speech about Greece more than two hundred years ago still matters.
He was not looking only at the Greek past. He used history to argue for the Greeks’ right to a future.
We can do the same with Bulgaria.
Look around.
Here is an alphabet and a literary tradition that influenced much of the Slavic world. Here are cities older than many European nation-states. Here are mountains, agriculture, industry, nuclear energy, technology, music, film, culture and people working across the globe. Here is Sofia, only a few hours by air from Europe’s largest economic centres. Here is a country now fully embedded within the European Union, NATO and the euro area.
And yet the national conversation still so often returns to who ruled this land centuries ago.
Perhaps it is time to reverse the perspective.
The Ottoman Empire is history.
Communism is history.
The transition years after 1989 are gradually becoming history.
They must be understood, discussed and remembered. But they do not have to be the blueprint for what comes next.
Bulgaria does not need to forget its liberation.
It may simply need to finally move beyond it.
Because the real question in 2026 is no longer who liberated Bulgaria, who conquered Bulgaria or who controlled Bulgaria.
The real question is much more demanding:
What does Bulgaria intend to do with its freedom?
After centuries of empires, wars, dictatorship and transition, there is no longer a foreign power capable of writing the entire answer for the country.
That is both the great opportunity and the great responsibility.
The old national story was:
We survived.
The new one could be:
Now we build.
By Chris...