Документи за броя на населението от 1922 до 1948 г. и за положението на българите в Царибродско и Босилеградско към 1950 г.
Documents about the Size of the Population from 1922 to 1948 and the Position of the Bulgarians in the Tsaribrod and Bossilegrad Areas circa 1950

Summary/Abstract: From data on the number of Bulgarians in Yugoslavia and particularly in the Bulgarian Western Outlying Parts, according to the censuses of 1953, 1961, 1971, 1981 and 1991 it is seen that a steady trend of decrease reaching catastrophic dimensions was a fact. Particularly alarming was this tendency in the 1971-1981 period when the number of Bulgarians dropped by more than 22,000 persons and in the 1981-1091 period when they decreased by some 11,000 people. Three little known diplornatic documents from the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria contain interesting facts about the emergence of the postwar assimilation wave of Serbization and Yugoslavization in the Bulgarian Western Outlying Parts in the early 50ies. Above all these are data on the position of the Bulgarian minority in the districts of Bossilegrad and Tsaribrod, collected by the Bulgarian Embassy in Belgrade in 1950. The first document is a confidential ‘Report on the Position of the Population in the Tsaribrod and Bossilegrad Areas” from the Bulgarian Embassy in Belgrade to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Sofia Mincho Neichev. It mostly contains interesting data on the number of Bulgarians in Yugoslavia during the 1921-1948 period, the attitude towards the Bulgarian teachers and schools, the terror, assassinations included, to which the population was subjected by Tito’s communist regime circa November 24, 1950. The second document is a confidantial “Special Report on the Position of the Bulgarian Population in the Bossilegrad Area” about August 12, 1950. It is interesting for the facts about the regime of terror and persecution of the Bulgarians in this district in 1949-1950, about some of the victims of this terror and the treatment of the detained and imprisoned Bulgarians. The third document is a confidential piece of information about the size of the population in the Western Outlying Parts according to the census of May 31 , 1943, sent by the Chief Department of Statistics to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The published documents are an important contribution to elucidating the question of the fete of the Bulgarians in the Bulgarian Western Outlying Parts from 1921 to 1950.

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