site.btaBulgaria Marks 130th Anniversary of Unification of Bulgarian Principality and Eastern Rumelia

Bulgaria Marks 130th Anniversary of Unification of Bulgarian Principality  and Eastern Rumelia

Sofia, September 6 (BTA) - National celebrations of the 130th anniversary of the Unification of the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia are held throughout Bulgaria on Sunday.

Eastern Rumelia was established on May 19, 1879 by the Berlin Treaty as an Ottoman autonomous province (vilayet) on 35,208 sq km of Bulgarian lands south of the Balkan Range, with Plovdiv as its administrative centre. In a bloodless military coup, local irredentists ousted the provincial government and reunited the territory with the Bulgarian Principality on September 6, 1885 in defiance of the Great Powers' settlement of the Eastern Question. The Union was eventually recognized by Turkey, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Great Britain, Italy and Russia by the April 5, 1886 Convention of Top-Khane.

"After years ago our people managed to keep its unity and overcame the artificial divisions, I do believe that today, too, we Bulgarians are wise enough to attach greater value to what brings us together than to what sets up apart," Prime Minister Boyko Borissov wrote in a message greeting all fellow Bulgarians on the anniversary. "Remembering and cherishing our forefathers' behest, we can work confidently and with united efforts to make our country stable and prosperous," the PM pointed out, quoted by the Government Information Service.

"If we want to be candid to ourselves and to the rest of the people, we must admit that, as a people and a society, we often let ourselves be guided by the spirit of disunity, which is abhorrent to God, rather than by the behest of the Unification," Bulgarian Patriarch Neophyte said in a speech on the occasion of the holiday on Sunday. "Therefore, on this solemn and festive day we are called upon to pay filial homage to those who achieved the cause of the Unification but also to do some soul searching and find what guides our contemporary society: the spirit of unity and Unification or the spirit of disintegration and scattering," the Head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church observed.

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev and Defence Minister Nikolai Nenchev will attend a solemn tattoo and roll call on the occasion of the Unification in Plovdiv (South Central Bulgaria) on Sunday evening.