On November 27 Bulgaria marked the 95^th anniversary since the signing of the Neuilly-sur-Seine Peace Treaty which put an end to Bulgaria’s participation in WW1. The country which was in the camp of the defeated, exited the military conflict with great damages - it lost a huge part of its lands and population and was obliged to pay big reparations. Moreover, its armed forces suffered big restrictions as well. The anniversary of the Neuilly Peace Treaty became an occasion of a memorable evening in the Sofia City Library under the motto We Are Not Divided. The heading was taken from the Borderline poem of renowned Bulgarian intellectual and public figure Emanuil Popdimitrov who was a passionate defender of the unification cause. The evening went under the auspices of Bulgaria’s Vice President Margarita Popova.

“Emanuil Popdimitrov was the person who did something incredible at one of the conferences in Geneva where, being President of the Refugee Committee, he showed up without invitation at the conference dedicated to the minorities”, Margarita Popova pointed out. “Thanks to his brilliant speech in French, the Bulgarian minority was officially recognized in former Yugoslavia. He made Western Europe remember that the Neuilly Treaty and the other treaties of the Paris Conference brought unprecedented evil to mankind from a historical and psychological point of view. Emanuil Popdimitrov proved as a real defender of the Western Outlands with his speech at this high tribune. Today we are happy to be in the company of our fellow-citizens from the towns of Tsaribrod and Bosilegrad who know and love their hero Emanuil Popdimitrov.”

Margarita Popova also noted that all Bulgarians from the Western Outlands deserve the respect of the Bulgarian nation, because they are still fighting for their rights of Bulgarian minority.

“We have the fortune to live together in the European family. We also want our neighbors to join this family, so Europe may become stronger and we may give a new meaning to the terms good neighborly relations, friendliness and mutual cooperation. We must support our neighbors in their EU accession bid when they fully fulfill their duties, so they can give our fellow citizens the rights we have been dreaming of for a very long time. They deserve that, because they are part of our neighbors’ potential in terms of economy, politics and culture.”

Here is what Bulgarian literary man and Chairman of the Bulgarian Cultural and Information Center in Bosilegrad Ivan Nikolov told Radio Bulgaria:

“I must admit that our contacts have subsided over the recent years. This awakening fills me with the hope that we would continue with our reviving activity at the Western Outlands with the idea to disseminate and crate Bulgarian culture and look for new contacts, in order to preserve our national identity and create a new European perspective through the Serbian candidature for EU membership. Bulgaria is an EU member state which will anyway have to conduct a pro-European policy, a modern policy directed towards the Bulgarians who live abroad. So, I suppose this is the only hope for the Bulgarian population in Bosilegrad which suffered the horrible consequences of the assimilatory policy, which has managed to melt the Bulgarian population down from 120 000 to 18 500 people in nine decades only.”

English version: Kostadin Atanasov