The Revival Process () was a forced assimilation campaign in communist Bulgaria including forced name changes, primarily targeting ethnic Turks. Authorities concentrated renaming efforts in late 1984 and early 1985, but restrictions continued until December 1989. Officials presented it as a "restoration" of Bulgarian origins.
The state banned public use of the Turkish language and restricted religious and cultural practices. Authorities imposed fines, detention, and internal exile on those who resisted. People resisted through everyday noncompliance and public protests. The state repressed resistance, including by detaining people at the Belene labor camp. Estimates of the death toll differ.
Turkey, Western governments, and international organizations condemned the campaign. In 1989, the state shifted toward the forced migration of the Turkish minority, leading to the departure of over 300,000. After party leaders removed Todor Zhivkov from power, the new government restored the right to hold Turkish names and eased religious and cultural restrictions.
Terminology
The Revival Process
Scholars describe the term "Revival Process" as a euphemism. Scholars typically refer to the policy as forced assimilation. The term was first used at a meeting of the Bulgarian Communist Party's
Politburo on January 18, 1985.
Bulgarian Turks
Authorities often treated language use and religious practice as markers of group identity, even though individual affiliation could be ambiguous. Muslim communities lived in overlapping settings, and some Slavophones and
Muslim Roma identified as Turks, the latter sometimes to avoid stigma. This reduced the state's ability to distinguish between these groups. Enforcement relied on contested distinctions and sometimes swept up ambiguous cases.
Forced assimilation
Background
By the time of the Revival Process, communist Bulgaria was party to international organizations and treaties protecting the rights of minority groups, but it did not comply with these obligations in pursuit of assimilation policies.
According to the 1975 census, Turks made up about 8.4% of Bulgaria's population. Turks lived mainly in parts of northeastern and southern Bulgaria, notably Kardzhali Province. Authorities enforced the Revival Process most intensely in these areas.
Although scholarship generally dates Turkish settlement in Bulgaria to the 14th century under Ottoman Empire rule, the Bulgarian communist regime claimed that any of the Turkish minority who felt connected with Turkey emigrated to Turkey during the existence of a limited migration treaty between Bulgaria and Turkey in effect from 1969 to 1979. It further claimed that domestic Turks who remained in Bulgaria were descendants of Bulgarians who had been Turkification in language and religion. Reference was made to the documented existence of small remnant populations of Turkic Christians, who were possibly descendants of much older waves of Turkic settlement in Bulgaria. Changes in the Soviet Union in the 1980s gave the Zhivkov government more room to pursue assimilation policies. According to academic İbrahim Karahasan-Çınar, key theorists of the policy included:
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Todor Zhivkov
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Milko Balev
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Georgi Atanasov
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Pencho Kubadinski
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Stoyan Mihaylov
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Aleksandar Lilov
[Lilov was removed from power in September 1983, though he later returned to power and even delivered the Mladenov government's official denunciation of the Revival Process in December 1989.]
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Dimitar Stoyanov
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Petar Mladenov
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Georgi Tanev
Shortly before the onset of the Revival Process, the regime began to introduce a new unified identity system known at the time as (). A similar system still exists in Bulgaria, the unified civil number. The creation of this system provided an impetus for new identity documents to be issued to citizens, which added a degree of convenience to carrying out the Revival Process before issuance, and the regime committed to issuing those documents by 1985.
Initial campaigns
Bulgarian policy towards
minorities evolved over the decades of communist rule. The ruling Communist Party implemented various assimilation campaigns and expulsions. From 1950 to 1951, the government expelled a large number of ethnic Turks from the country. Subsequently, the ruling party implemented various assimilation campaigns aimed at non-Turkish Muslim minorities, such as Slavophone Muslims and Muslim Roma, though many of the more numerous Turks were affected as well. For example, from 1962, the government barred
Pomaks from attending
Turkish-language schools. In 1972, it banned Turkish-language schools altogether. The government further forced many Muslims to change their names. By 1974, authorities made about 150,000 Slavophone Muslims and 200,000 Turks Bulgarianize their names.
In 1971, the regime adopted a new constitution, providing a foundation for assimilation policies. This "Zhivkov Constitution" offered much weaker protections to minority groups, though it still guaranteed rights to citizens which were relevant to the Revival Process. Officials replaced the term "national minorities" with "citizens of non-Bulgarian origin," and their discourse increasingly framed minority identity as compatible with eventual assimilation.
In 1978, the regime attempted to phase out traditional and religious holidays and observances in favor of approved socialist ones. It sent officials to to ensure participants carried out proper socialist rites and said prayers in the Bulgarian language.
Shortly before the Revival Process, the state made education policy more assimilationist, it promoted religiously mixed marriages, and it required Turkish-minority teachers to undergo ideological training. Around the same time, the regime also initiated a new round of forced name changes. Between 1981 and 1983, authorities forced around 100,000 people, mainly Muslim Roma, to change their names. It then extended the measure to Crimean Tatars and Alians, a Shia group, mere months before the Revival Process began in 1984. The regime also resolved to issue around 250,000 identity papers bearing new Bulgarian names to Muslim Roma.
Start of the Revival Process
Academic Dimitrov dates the start of the Revival Process to the night of December 24–25, 1984. Although the initiative began before the leadership openly debated it, the party quickly aligned behind the policy. A Central Committee plenum on February 13–14, 1985, endorsed the campaign after Zhivkov already extended it nationwide.
Approved name lists
After disputes over which names should count as Bulgarian, officials compiled a list of about 5,000 approved names, including many linked to the Orthodox Christian calendar. Some modern names without Slavic or Christian association also appeared. While officials did not complete the
Classifier of Bulgarian Names before the start of the Revival Process, the state provided name indexes. Officials required people to choose their new names from these indices.
Officials also accepted some foreign names if people could write them in Bulgarian. These included names of Turkish, Armenian, and Arabic origin, among others. The same body that developed the basis for the Classifier of Bulgarian Names sought to develop an acceptable foreign name classifier at some future point.
Renaming
Unlike earlier campaigns, the regime directed the Revival Process primarily against the Turkish community. Authorities had already forced many Muslims to change their names in earlier campaigns, but in 1984 the government expanded the policy nationwide to ethnic Turks. The renaming sometimes took the form of an administrative procedure that local municipalities conducted. In these instances, local officials summoned individuals in their villages and required them to replace their
Turkish language names with Bulgarian ones chosen from approved lists. In these instances, officials enforced the name changes through intimidation, often bolstered by the presence of security forces and military vehicles. Employers renamed Turks at officials' direction. The Bulgarian government obligated municipalities to force Turks to use their new names both in public and private life. While the Bulgarian government framed the changes as voluntary, observers understood the changes as coerced.
Initially, authorities only required Turks living in or originating from the Rhodopes region in the country's south to change their names. Leadership subsequently ordered officials to expand the requirement to "all districts where there is such a population" in December 1984. Authorities implemented the order in January 1985. In March 1985, the Bulgarian government declared the process completed and issued new identification documents to those affected. Previous documents were seized. It further intended to conduct a census in 1985 using these new identity cards, though the government did not publish a census that year.
The following table summarizes various estimates of the number renamed during the Revival Process.
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| 800,000 | Christmas 1984–February 1985 | |
| 822,588 | Revival Process up to May 1989 | |
| 850,000 | Revival Process | |
| Nearly 1 million | December 1984–January 1985 | |
| 1,306,000 | Uncertain | This estimate might combine totals from the Revival Process with some from before the campaign. |
Other policies
The state banned speaking Turkish in public, despite the inability of up to 70% of Bulgarian Turks to speak Bulgarian. The state even directed a prohibition of Turkic Christian populations speaking their language. Authorities fined people who spoke Turkish in public 5 leva or more,, and sometimes they even imprisoned or exiled them. For example, one Turk was imprisoned for five years for persistent use of Turkish while another was exiled from the country for two years.
The regime already banned some distinctive markers of Muslim identity, such as religious clothing, for decades, and replacements for these articles were in widespread use. For example, dark raincoats became ersatz veils. Officials went further during the Revival Process, however. They prevented Muslims from Islamic funeral in Islamic cemeteries and pressured them to deface Islamic symbols and Arabic inscriptions on graves. In one instance, the Turkish names of 2,000 on gravestones near Pavel were defaced at the behest of local authorities. Similarly, authorities had crescents that adorned minarets removed because the symbol was also associated with the Turkish nation. They also prohibited store and restaurant owners from serving women in Islamic clothing. In some areas, officials restricted the wearing of the Fez, and the wearing of Turkish salvar in others.
Officials strictly enforced the ban on circumcision, and Muslim parents were required to sign documents promising not to circumcise their child. They inspected Muslim boys to ensure they remained uncircumcised. If they found a couple to have violated the ban, both the parents and the individual who had performed the circumcision faced punishment. For example, Amnesty International reported in 1987 that the state gave four women prison sentences of between 6 and 8 months because they circumcised their sons or grandsons. Despite this, however, Muslims continued to practice circumcision.
The state also promoted approved Slavic cultural practices. For example, authorities attempted to promote traditional Slavic gatherings of young people () among the targets of the policy.
Officials inspected the mail of most domestic Turks, and they sometimes demanded that mail written in Turkish be translated for inspection.
Domestic press response
The state controlled most media outlets during the Revival Process, and most who worked within the domestic media were from politically acceptable backgrounds or were themselves members of the ruling party. During the renaming itself, state media largely stayed silent. In subsequent years, the media echoed official narratives of the essential Bulgarian origin of the Turkish minority. The press published the involuntary declarations of thousands of Turks affirming a Bulgarian identity, and it insisted that Bulgarian Turks, referred to as "New Bulgarians," approved of the renaming.
Reaction and resistance
Communist Bulgaria tightly regulated the practice of Islam, and it appointed a chief
mufti and regional muftis. The regime selected these religious officials for loyalty on the basis of loyalty to the regime rather than religious training. The state-appointed chief mufti claimed authorities did not prevent Muslims from performing rites.
Despite the campaign, many victims continued to practice their faith privately and speak Turkish at home. Over time, resistance became more visible, and it included organized opposition and public protests. Some individuals tried to avoid the renaming campaign by hiding in remote areas or moving to larger cities, where implementation could be slower, but most such attempts failed.
Armed resistance
Scholars generally find no evidence of organized
armed resistance to the Revival Process. Rumen Avramov, who was an economic advisor to Bulgaria's first non-communist president,
Zhelyu Zhelev, claims that the extreme level of repression carried out by the People's Republic of Bulgaria prevented the development of armed opposition. In support of this repression, Bulgaria undertook reforms aimed at the modernization of its internal security forces, including rearmament.
Unorganized armed resistance did occur, particularly in 1986. Authorities reported more than 600 incidents they described as "terrorism" and blamed Turks and opposition groups, though the attribution and details of many cases are disputed. For example, an attack killed seven people in Bunovo when a train carriage reserved for mothers on a route between Burgas and Sofia was blown up,[Some sources instead give the number of victims as six.] and a court sentenced those responsible to death. The regime used such attacks to justify tighter security measures.
Post-1989 archival disclosures have led scholars to allege that state security services manipulated some incidents. Some authors link two high-profile attacks, at Varna Airport and Plovdiv Central railway station, that the regime had blamed on Turks to secret-police agents. Complicating matters, however, some Turks also worked for or collaborated with state security, willingly or under pressure, including prominent opposition figures such as Ahmed Dogan.
Belene labor camp
During the Revival Process, the Bulgarian authorities reactivated the Belene labor camp, situated on an island in the
Danube River, to use as a detention location for people whom they arrested for resisting the campaign. The communist party used Belene as a labor camp until 1959. Authorities typically held Turks who resisted in Belene for 2–3 months, though they held some for much longer. In 1985, authorities incarcerated more than 500 Bulgarian Turks there for resistance to the renaming measures. Authorities often held detainees without judicial sentences at Belene. In April 1986, prisoners in Belene began a hunger strike that lasted around 30 days. In May 1986, authorities released most inmates and then exiled them to various regions of the country, though other detainees remained in Belene. Authorities released the remaining detainees in spring 1987 to districts populated by ethnic Bulgarians.
Killing of Türkan Feyzullah
In
Mogilyane, security forces opened fire on demonstrators on December 26, 1984, during protests against the forced replacement of Turkish names with Bulgarian ones, killing three people, including the young child Türkan Feyzullah. Security forces shot Türkan while her mother carried the child on her back. Locals later erected a monument in her memory in Mogilyane.
Casualties
Estimates on the number of people killed, injured, and arrested during the Revival Process vary. The following table contains various estimates.
|
| 800–2,500 | | | November 1984–February 1985 | |
| 1,000+ | | | November 1984–February 1985 | The source notes that the 1,000+ estimate may be higher if deaths from neglect or suicide in Belene are included. |
| 300–1,500 | Several thousand | Several thousand | Late 1984–early 1985 | |
| 300–1,000 | Several thousand | Several thousand | Revival Process | |
| Estimates vary | | | Revival Process | |
International reaction
The President of Turkey,
Kenan Evren, first protested the Revival Process in January 1985. In Turkey and the West, media described the Revival Process as "genocide" and a "state crime." In Turkey, victims who left Bulgaria formed migrants' associations and raised awareness about the ongoing assimilation campaign. Of particular concern to the Turkish public was the status of Bulgarian Turkish children who had been left behind after their parents fled to Turkey. The street outside the Bulgarian embassy in
Ankara was even renamed after one of these children for some time. Bulgaria responded to these denunciations with comparisons to the Kurdish issue in that country, but in line with the
Helsinki Accords, the regime reduced efforts to obstruct the reception of critical Western and Turkish broadcasts to Bulgaria.
In 1987, the Islamic Conference, a predecessor to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, sent a delegation to Bulgaria. On the basis of this visit, the organization published a report critical of Bulgaria. The same body later adopted a resolution expressing misgivings with the Revival Process and reminding the People's Republic of Bulgaria of its obligations towards minorities. Other international organizations echoed this condemnation, including the United Nations, whose Human Rights Committee labelled Bulgaria as one of seven countries preventing the peaceful practice of religion.
1989 forced migration
The government concluded that part of the Muslim population could not be assimilated and shifted toward promoting emigration. In May 1989, after prominent dissidents were removed, authorities enabled mass departures by loosening travel restrictions, intimidating individuals, and later opening the border with Turkey. Authorities framed the departures as temporary "tourist" travel, and propaganda referred to the episode as the "Big Excursion."
From May until August 1989, authorities drove over 300,000 Muslims to Turkey. In August 1989, Turkey temporarily closed the border with Bulgaria, which ended the forced migration.
Aftermath
On November 10, 1989, party leaders forced
Todor Zhivkov to resign, and
Petar Mladenov restored the right of Bulgarian citizens to have Turkish names a little over a month later. In less than two years after the fall of Zhivkov, the new government reopened
madrasa and
Turkish-language schools across Bulgaria, and it adopted a new national constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion.
Restoration of original names
In spite of the restoration of the legal right to hold Turkish names, there remained obstacles to victims of the Revival Process restoring their previous names. In March 1990, Bulgaria adopted legislation enabling that restoration, though early implementation could still be burdensome, requiring a court procedure and two supporting witnesses. The law required people who restored their names to keep Bulgarian suffixes, such as "-ov" and "-ova." The government adopted a reform on November 16, 1990, which shifted name restoration toward a "less cumbersome administrative procedure." By late May 1990, Bulgarian officials indicated that only about one-fifth of eligible people had applied to restore their names, though the number of name restorations continued to grow subsequently. For example, academic Yelis Erolova describes restoring her Turkish name only after 1990. In some areas, older victims more commonly restored their names than younger ones.
Strengthening of Turkish identity
The Revival Process strengthened Turkish self-identification among the targeted minority. In-group solidarity and the tendency of Turks to protect their ethnic identities were highlighted by the regime. The actions of the regime led Bulgarian Turks to "underline" their Turkish identity, and the exact nature of that identity evolved to highlight the Turkishness of the community rather than its Bulgarian nature. People described themselves as "Turks
of Bulgaria," rather than "Bulgarian Turks," and rejected communities other than their own regardless of the actions of members of those communities. Bulgarian Turkish academic Yelis Erolova recalls how she was made to think of Turkey as her "mother nation" by her family.
Impact on the Cold War
No armed conflict between countries broke out over the Revival Process. As Bulgaria was a member of the
Warsaw Pact and Turkey was a member of
NATO, such conflict had the potential to draw in the United States and
Soviet Union, the two principal nuclear-armed
superpowers of the era. It is known that while the Revival Process was addressed in exchanges between the two sides of the Cold War, and for a while, interactions proceeded mostly as they had before the campaign began. Though there was a straining of relations between the blocs due to the Revival Process, usual diplomatic channels nevertheless remained at least partially open. However, because records in both
Russia and the United States remain sealed and the topic has received little scholarly attention, the precise role of the events in the
Cold War remains unclear.
There were considerable breakdowns in relations in 1989. The United States recalled its ambassador to communist Bulgaria in August. The United States Senate officially condemned the Bulgarian events of that year, and international actors organized a fact-finding mission, albeit without participation from any Soviet Bloc nation.
The Soviet Union refused to officially mediate between Bulgaria and Turkey when tensions grew, but it did engage in a sort of shuttle diplomacy via its diplomatic mission in Ankara. The failure of these efforts convinced Soviet leadership that Zhivkov had outlived his usefulness and led them to support an anti-Zhivkov faction within the Bulgarian government led by foreign minister Petar Mladenov.
Amnesty
In 1990, Bulgaria implemented amnesty for those convicted of political crimes. Authorities released 31 of 81 Turks still imprisoned for resistance to the assimilation campaign, but they kept the other 50 imprisoned because courts had convicted them under the criminal code. A similar distinction between "political" and "criminal" offenses has led to condemnation in instances beyond Bulgaria.
Trial
Following the fall of communism, prosecutors opened proceedings against some of the high-level officials who had overseen the Revival Process, including both Zhivkov and Mladenov. Authorities arrested Zhivkov on January 29, 1990. Prosecutors charged the defendants on the basis of abuses associated with the Belene camp, while they never charged some other perpetrators of the Revival Process. Eventually, prosecutors dropped the charges against Mladenov and other prominent government officials associated with the Revival Process. Further, while the proceedings began in 1991, courts did not conclude them by the time Zhivkov died in 1998. In 2022, prosecutors dropped the only remaining charges after the final defendant, Georgi Atanasov died, but the Supreme Administrative Court ordered the prosecutor's office to continue the investigation following the protests of families of victims of the Belene camp.
Legacy
Domestic
Democratic Transition
The reversal of the Revival Process and moderation by both the new government and the Bulgarian Turkish community itself contributed to Bulgaria's transition to democracy. For example, Bulgaria's first democratically elected president,
Zhelyu Zhelev, treated the Turkish political movement as political allies. Zhelev even worked to defend the then-nascent Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) against a legal challenge from nationalists and the post-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party, which could have led to the MRF's dissolution. Similarly, MRF leader
Ahmed Dogan worked to marginalize ultra-nationalist elements within the Turkish community and refrained from calling for autonomy or independence.
The allure and moderating influence of potential European Union (EU) membership contributed to the subsequent reintegration of Turks into Bulgarian society. For instance, in 2000, the EU promulgated the "Race Equality Directive" and later formally requested Bulgaria's compliance with the directive. Bulgaria ultimately did so and acceded to the European Union in 2007.
Condemnation
In November 2002, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church declared
all victims, including non-Christian victims, of the Bulgarian communist regime to be
martyrs. Additionally, on January 11, 2012, the Bulgarian Parliament officially condemned the Revival Process. However, academic Thomas Kamusella writes that scholars largely ignored the parliamentary recognition Kamusella describes continued public commemorations of
Todor Zhivkov in Bulgaria, including statements by national political figures praising him.
Less than a week after the recognition of the event by the Bulgarian Parliament, the far-right ultranationalist political party, Ataka, introduced a new bill officially contesting the declaration. According to the bill's authors, the declaration represented a "boost" for "'separatists'", presumably in reference to the nation's Turks and Muslims. This reasoning is in line with that of Bulgarian nationalists more generally, who often cast the Turkish and Muslim minority in the "role of perennial anti-Bulgarian separatists." Ataka leader Volen Siderov argued that not only did the 2012 declaration allegedly violate the constitution of Bulgaria, but he also argued that it could open Bulgaria up to various legal claims and raised the possibility that Bulgaria would be labelled as a country that conducted policies of genocide and ethnic cleansing. However, the parliament rejected the bill.
Cultural
Today, many Bulgarians of Muslim origin born during or after the Revival Process still bear Bulgarian names. As part of the collective trauma from the event, some are left to wonder what their name would have been otherwise. Scholars discuss the renaming campaign through the intergenerational transmission of family trauma and burdens carried in intimate everyday life rather than only as a closed historical episode.
International
Turkey
In Turkey, public memory of the Revival Process and recorded testimony by victims are limited. The few books that authors have produced primarily regard individual accounts, which have typically been printed in limited runs and focus on the events of 1989. However, Turkish media widely praised the 2012 parliamentary declaration condemning the events by the Bulgarian parliament.
Elsewhere
In a 2000 speech at Duquesne University, American National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, who had been stationed in
Sofia during the campaign, referred to it only generally, later explaining that his audience lacked the background to follow a fuller account.
Throughout the Revival Process, many sought refuge abroad in countries other than Turkey, especially in Austria, Germany, and Sweden. Many also found refuge in Australia, Canada, England, and the United States.
Responsibility
The 2012 parliamentary declaration frames the Revival Process as an abuse by the totalitarian communist regime, and the popular perception is similar. For example, one 2012 study found that Bulgarians generally blame the politicians of the time for the Revival Process. When asked who bore the blame, respondents blamed the Bulgarian Communist Party,
Todor Zhivkov, and the secret police. Some even blamed the Soviet Union and
Leonid Brezhnev (who died in 1982). The same study also found that victims do not generally blame ethnic Bulgarians and are inclined to forgive them, and instead heap blame on fellow Muslims who collaborated with the regime.
In popular culture
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Naim Süleymanoğlu (Bulgarian: Наим Сюлейманоглу) was an ethnically-Turkish Olympic weightlifter born in Bulgaria in 1967 as Naim Suleimanov (Bulgarian: Наим Сюлейманов). During the Revival Process, authorities forced him to change his name, and he became known as "Naum Shalamanov" (Bulgarian: Наум Шаламанов), under which he first became a world champion representing Bulgaria. He later defected to Turkey and began competing for his new country in international weightlifting competitions. Following his defection, he won the gold medal in his weight class at three consecutive Summer Olympic Games (1988, 1992, and 1996) representing Turkey.
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Gülhan Şen (Bulgarian: Гюлхан Шен) was born in Bulgaria in 1978. In 1985, authorities forced her to change her name to "Galina Hristova Mihailova" (Bulgarian: Галина Христова Михайлова), and in 1989 she moved to Turkey.
See also
Groups
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Bulgarian Turks in Turkey
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Muhacir
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Romani people in Bulgaria
People
Notes
Bibliography
