Bulgaria versus Poland is a series of articles created to compare these nations. They are created from the Polish point of view. The author who created this article is on a two-month exchange in Bulgaria under the European Solidarity Corps program.

In today's article, Bulgaria and Poland will be briefly and generally described. In the following articles, I will make more detailed articles based on specific topics. Today, however, I would simply like to present them in general.

Slavic Similarity

Bulgaria and Poland are Slavic nations. What does it mean? This means that they belong to the largest (300-360 million) ethnic group in Europe. The first one has 7 million, the second 38 million citizens. However, they belong to two different groups of Slavs: Poles to the west and Bulgarians to the south.

This division is visible on the map above. The Slavs are not united. It means that there are 3 basic groups of Slavs.

The first one is colored in the picture in light green, these are the Western Slavs, that is, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Sorbo-Lusatians (they living now in East Germany). The unique thing for them is that they do not use Cyrillic like the rest of the Slavic countries and have accepted the Catholic branch of Christianity. Additionally, a Pole, a Czech, and a Slovak would communicate with each other easily, if they met together because many words are identical and understanding of sentences often takes place by understanding the context of the whole sentence.

The second ones are the Eastern Slavs, that is Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. They use a very similar language and Slavic alphabet - Cyrillic. They also share a common history with each other (as well as with Poles and Lithuanians -> The Commonwealth) and many people who live there are Orthodox (the vast majority of Slavs are Orthodox).

There is also the third group of Slavs, the southern ones. This southern part is the most diverse, separated from the rest of the Slavs from the north by the Hungarians who came to the Slav lands at the end of the 9th century. They use Latin in the lands of northern-west Yugoslavia and Cyrillic in the rest of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. They are also very different in terms of religion. Slovenia and Croatia are Catholic, Bucovina and Herzegovina are divided and so there are Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox, while in Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Macedonia only Orthodox predominate (with small minorities of Islam followers). The citizens of Kosovo, in which the majority are Muslims, are emerging from the Slavic Christianity pattern.

Some people distinguish two parts of the Slavs as northern and southern. From a linguistic point of view, this does not make any sense, as Western and Eastern Slavs speak a language they do not understand. From a historical point of view, however, such a combination makes sense, as Poland and Russia in particular fought for dominance in this part of Europe (Eastern Europe) in the Middle Ages. Poland maintained the territories of Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine for 400 years (1386-1795). After the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, 1795 the area was taken over by Russia, then by the USSR, and today the area belongs to the ethnic inhabitants creating their independent states.

(CrazyPhunk - self-made - based upon: Image:Slavic europe.png,/CC BY-SA 3.0/File:Slavic europe.svg/Created: 16 maja 2007/link to the graphic in page footer)

The map shows religions in Europe (Blue - Catholic, Purple - Protestant, Red - Orthodox, Green - Islam, and others)

Communication problems

Although all of us, like brothers, belong to the same ethnic group, unfortunately, we cannot easily communicate to each other. Slavic languages are very different, and this is clearly shown on the maps below. As I mentioned earlier, Western Slavs can understand each other thanks to very similar vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. Just like a Pole, they will get along with Czech (of course, both sides will burst with laughter, because bad luck wanted neutral words in one language to be in other vulgar or have very funny connotations) but it will be difficult for a Pole to communicate with a Bulgarian. I experienced it myself. Although there seem to be many words that are very similar in these two languages, the pronunciation of these words makes them incomprehensible. When I had the pleasure of talking to a Bulgarian woman, we got along with our not-so-excellent English and added words in our native languages. We could understand each other, but it worked by speaking words very slowly and repeating them several times.

(Autor: Fobos92/Public Domainview/Dialectos de las lenguas eslavas meridionales.PNG/Created: 10 June 2011, link to the graphic in page footer)

On the Balkan Peninsula, we distinguish 25 different languages, including Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian. Despite the proximity of these countries, these languages are very different. However, it seems to me that a Bulgarian would be able to communicate with a Serb faster than with a Slovak (it's just a theory).

(Autor: Fobos92/CC BY-SA 4.0/Lenguas eslavas occidentales.PNG/Created: 15 June 2011, link to the graphic in page footer)

However, there are only a few western Slavic languages and they are very different from each other. Even in the Polish lands, where the Kashubian language is spoken, Poles have problems with understanding it. On the other hand, I can speak Kociewski, which is not very different from Polish and is therefore treated as a dialect (similar to Silesian, the most popular dialect in Poland). As you can see on the map above, people using Polish also live in Lithuania and Belarus. This is related to the complicated history of Poland (read The Commonwealth [Republic of Both Nation])

Religions

Now it’s time to focus on the Polish and Bulgarian diversity in religion. Poland is a very uniform country in terms of culture and religion where Catholics and Poles are the majority. Bulgaria is not that homogenous, because the Turkish population predominates in some regions, and in some regions the most widespread faith is Islam. However, looking at the nation (as a whole), Bulgaria is mostly Orthodox.

Bulgarians are religiously divided, as shown in the diagram on the right with the dominant group being Orthodox, then atheists and Muslims. Also many did not answer this question during the census in Bulgaria (perhaps this is because the Orthodox do not want to be too much of a bunch with their faith and prefer to leave it for themselves in their personal zone). The situation in Poland is completely different. Catholicism is the dominant and only revelation in Poland. Other religions are practically non-existent. This division is visible because in Bulgaria it is easier to meet a mosque, an Orthodox church, a Catholic church, and a Synagogue placed next to each other, for example, in Sofia. Whereas in Poland there are no other churches than the Catholic ones in the country, Orthodox churches and mosques are only possible to meet in the eastern part of Poland, where the Lemko and Tatar communities live.

Also, Bulgarians are not as religious as Polish This is shown in the chart, in which 79% of Poles in Poland believe in God, 14% in the existence of a kind of spirit of life force about 5% of Poles do not believe in any deity and 2% do not know. Bulgarians are completely different because only 36% of people believe in God, 43% in the “spirit of life“, 15% do not believe in any transcendention and 6% of people don’t know. I didn't think it would be that different. Perhaps the communist governments have been so effective in counteracting religious practices that more people don't believe in God, or we simply differ in this respect for no good reason.

On the left, the diagram represents the Polish religiousness, on the right Bulgarian one.

Minorities

As far as the communist era is concerned, after the Second World War, the idea of “nation-states“ was introduced, which consisted mainly of citizens of one nationality and culture. For obvious reasons, this could not be done in Yugoslavia, which was made up of many nationalities, but this operation was carried out in Poland. This can be seen exactly in the graph above, that Poland is not only a country that is religiously uniform, but also ethnically uniform. This uniformity is a result of the change of Polish borders after the Second World War, where the eastern of Poland “Kresy wschodnie” goes to the Soviet Union, and thus a large number of Ukrainians and Byelorussians from Poland were now the citizens of the USSR. In addition, during the German occupation, many Poles and Jews were murdered in concentration camps, as well as many other nationalities, including Romans and Tatars. Before WW2 in Poland there was a big Jew community that had 3.4 million people (9% of the whole population). During the war, 3 million Jews of Polish descent were murdered. After the war, as a result of the displacement of the population and the moving front and communism in Poland, there remained 220 000 Jews. Later actions of the communists in 1968-1970 forced the Jews to leave Poland. After this anti-Zionist procedure, 5-10 thousand Jews remained in Poland. Today, more than 96% of Poles live in Poland, and the largest national group are Germans, of which 140,000 are. If we were to take the unofficial data on the Jews, they would be the second minority group in Poland. Then there is a group of Ukrainians, who are certainly more than in the chart. According to again unofficial data, there are 1.2 million of them in Poland, and unofficial they would be the first national group.

There was no such dramatic story with war casualties in Bulgaria. During the war, 0.33% of the Bulgarian population died (22,000 people). For comparison, 17% of citizens died in Poland, which was 6 million war victims. And that is why Bulgaria is more nationally diverse, with many Turks living there. Such a large number of Turks (500,000) is also not without reason. This is historically determined because 5 centuries ago they did not have their own state and were conquered and administered by the Ottoman Empire. After Bulgaria's independence between 1880 and 1926, 450 000 Turks left Bulgaria, between 1924 and 1945 - about 123 000, between 1946 and 1955 – 156 000, followed by a break in emigration. In the period 1966-1977, 53 000 Turks left Bulgaria, in 1978 – 61 000, and in 1989 to 22 August 210 000 thousand left the country permanently, so in total over one million Muslims moved to Turkey. Among them were also Gypsies and Pomace. Despite official declarations and agreements, Turkey did not accept all willing emigrants mainly for economic reasons. Officially, there were 747 thousand (11.7%) of non-Bugars in 1965. In 1974 there were about 172 thousand Gypsies in Bulgaria. After the exodus in 1989, the number of Turks was estimated at 639,000, Pomaks at about 160,000-200,000, and shrunken Gypsies at about 200,000. In Bulgaria, the Jews lived well. During the Second World War, they were protected by Boris III's policy of delaying their transportation to concentration camps. All Jews survived the war, but after the creation of the State of Israel after the war and the deportations forced by the Bulgarian communist government, the number of Bulgarian Jews decreased from 50 thousand to 6 thousand. Since 2010 in Bulgaria there are only 2000 Jews, where about 100 000 Jews live in Poland according to unofficial data (12 000 – official data). Today, 83% of Bulgarians, about 8% of Turks, 3.3% of Romans, 1% of Gypsies and others 4% live in Bulgaria. Compared to Poland, 96% of Bulgarians are more diverse. The first national group, apart from the above mentioned, are the Russians, who live about 10,000,000 people. Armenians and Vlachs are also a large group.

The articles "Bulgaria versus Poland" are created by Kacper Dorszewski as part of his personal project. He is a participant of the ESCAPE: European Solidarity Corps Active Participation and Education project co-funded by the Bulgarian National Agency of Erasmus+ Program Human Resource Development Center.

Sources:

https://plus.gazetakrakowska.pl/dzieje-polski-w-liczbach-jak-rosla-i-malala-polska/ar/11543144 (autor: Włodzimierz Knap, Gazeta Krakowska)

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_%C5%BByd%C3%B3w_w_Polsce (Mniejszość żydowska w II Rzeczypospolitej)
https://businessinsider.com.pl/twoje-pieniadze/praca/imigracja-zarobkowa-z-ukrainy-w-2020-roku-liczba-pracownikow-zza-wschodniej-granicy/dpbmhlt (unofficial data about the number of Ukrainian minority in Poland)
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bu%C5%82garia (Ludność - minorities in Bulgaria)
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religia_w_Bu%C5%82garii (information on religiousness in Bulgaria)
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko%C5%9Bcio%C5%82y_i_inne_zwi%C4%85zki_wyznaniowe_w_Polsce (information about religiousness in Poland)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs#/media/File:Lenguas_eslavas_occidentales.PNG (photo about the East Slavic languages)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs#/media/File:Dialectos_de_las_lenguas_eslavas_meridionales.PNG (photo about the East Slavic languages)
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%82owianie (information about the Slav population)
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%82owianie#/media/Plik:Slavic_europe.svg (CrazyPhunk - self-made - based upon: Image:Slavic europe.png/CC BY-SA 3.0/Created: 16 maja 2007)
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mniejszo%C5%9Bci_narodowe_i_etniczne_w_Polsce (Narodowy Spis Powszechny 2002, Narodowy Spis Powszechny 2011 - minorities in Poland)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Official_Visit_of_the_President_of_the_Republic_of_Poland_Andrzej_Duda_to_the_Republic_of_Bulgaria_06.jpg (This file comes from the website of the Administration of the President of the Republic of Bulgaria and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license)

Other diagrams have been created by the author of this article, based on the above-mentioned articles, to which appropriate annotations and links have been included.

I, as the author, make my work available under a CC-PD license.

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