CHAPTER XXIV
KULTUR IN BULGARIA
The tragedy of the second Balkan war had bitten deep into the hearts of most Bulgarians. As I have already related, the terrible disaster which that war brought upon Bulgaria produced a controversy which only died down when the Bulgarian Army was once more mobilized to fight for the Turk against the nation which liberated Bulgaria from Turkish bondage.
In the course of that controversy the argument was elaborated that by the Treaty of Bucarest Bulgaria had liquidated its old debt to Russia, and was free to turn and rend its whilom benefactor upon the first favourable occasion. As Nikoff, one of the foremost controversialists, put it:
“In 1878 Russia liberated 3,000,000 of our population after having shed the blood of 150,000 of her sons. In the year 1913 Bulgaria liberated, at great sacrifices also, 3,000,000 of her population in Macedonia and Thrace, which Russia took and distributed among her new protégés, Rumania, Serbia and Greece. And to-day Bulgaria and Russia are quits. We have paid all our debt to Russia. To-day we can say: We have secured our own liberty by our own arms.”
The argument is an ingenious one, but it quite overlooks the point that the Bulgarian Czar, and not Russia, was the instrument of Bulgaria’s undoing. But the Bulgarians desired to free themselves not only from the obligation for their liberty, but from the claims of kinship with Russia. And here German Kultur came to their aid by an elaborate demonstration that they were not Slavs at all, but a predominant semi-Teutonic and Tartar race which had organized the meek Slavs of 500 years ago into a victorious nation, and had persisted long after the Slav race that lived with them had perished.
For Slav unity this new Bulgarian school therefore proposed to substitute the theory of German Kultur. As Dr. Ghenadieff writes, “Slavism is a fatal barrier to our national power and enthusiasm. It is high time that we emerge from that error and discontinue preaching that falsehood.”
And Dr. Petroff, of the Bulgarian University, writes, “At this moment the culturally degenerated and outcast France has, in her struggle against the powerful German Kultur, barbaric and idiotic Russia for her ally.”
And the most celebrated of Bulgarian poets, the Tartaro-Bulgar Kyril Christoff, sings a song of vengeance against Ferdinand’s France—
When—after our deeds—envy gathered
Five enemies before our doors;