Transformation of the Social Space of an Ethnos in Historical Retrospect: Bulgarian Communities in Russia

The social space is constantly changing, which creates difficulties in interpreting this category. There are no ethnic groups that have lived in one place for the entire period of their history. The colonists from the Balkans had a single status, but they were not a single entity at all. A. Skalkovsky (1848) and Nikolai Derzhavin (1914) wrote about Bulgarian settlements. The formation of independent Bulgaria was promoted by the activity of national enlightenment figures in Bulgaria (V.E. Aprilov, M. Drinov, T. Minkov) and the role of the Bulgarian diaspora in Russia. Military conflicts led to the fact that the Bulgarian settlements were on different sides of the borders. After the defeat in the Crimean War, Russia temporarily (until 1878) lost a small part of southern Bessarabia. This territory was ceded to the Principality of Moldavia, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. The upheavals of the 20th century had a heavy impact on Bulgarians. Most of the Russian Bulgarians who lived in the province of Bessarabia were under the rule of the Romanian invaders for 22 years, until 1940. Historical and comparative methods of material analysis were used. In the course of the study, the position of the Bulgarians in the internal Russian conflicts was analyzed. The results of the research published in the article will be useful for specialists in the field of ethnology, ethnography and world history.