Union of Bulgaria and Romania

Although Alexander had good relations with Romania, he was forced to abdicate in 1886 following a period of political turmoil in Bulgaria caused by Russia, which tried to exert its influence over the country.

The disapproval of several great powers, the differences in the Bulgarians' and the Romanians' national goals and the lack of actual interest or even opposition between these peoples, added to the hostile environment of the region in which they lived, prevented it.

The idea of the federalization of the Balkans, which had great support in its time, diminished across the region after the conflicts at the beginning of the 20th century that occurred throughout Europe and, later, the violent breakup of Yugoslavia.

They played a decisive role during the creation of the new empire, with its first leaders, the brothers Ivan Asen I, Kaloyan and Peter II, described as Vlachs by contemporaneous sources.

[13] One of the earliest proposals came during the 1790s from Rigas Feraios, a Greek with Aromanian origins, who conceived of the establishment of a Greek-ruled united Balkan state that would succeed the Ottoman Empire.

[14] The Balkan peoples saw unification as an opportunity to oppose the imperialist policies of the great powers, particularly those of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, to ensure a more independent and stable development and to resolve the conflicts between the nations of the region.

Notable supporters of this were Nicolae Bălcescu, Dimitrie Brătianu, Mihai Eminescu and Aurel Popovici, who either suggested the integration of Romania into a larger Balkan state or the federalization of the Austrian or Austro-Hungarian empires in order to pass down power to the Transylvanian Romanians.

However, this document was never signed, the project remained unrealized and the Romanian liberals withdrew from the alliance after Carol I, from the German House of Hohenzollern, became prince of Romania in May 1866.

He presented this in the newspaper Nezavisimost as an "Eastern Federation" composed of three cores: Serbia (including Bosnia and Montenegro), Bulgaria (with the regions of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia) and Romania, with an Albanian entity and with Constantinople as a free city.

[17] The Bulgarian journalist and poet Hristo Botev supported a South Slavic or Balkan union, being against the proposals of a dual state with the Turks that existed at the time.

[26] Furthermore, the Balkan countries' conflicting territorial ambitions hampered cooperation between them, which affected the Bulgarians and their national movement, considered as having developed too late in comparison to others.

Carol I had gained prestige as commander-in-chief of the Romanian Army in the war (in which Romania had also participated alongside Russia), ending in the country's full independence as determined by the Treaty of Berlin.

[19] According to Romanian sources, at the end of the war, Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, the Russian ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, "had whispered to Prince Carol I to assume the liberated Bulgarian land under his control", but this never happened supposedly because of the Romanian–Russian dispute over Southern Bessarabia.

In fact, the editors of Balgarin published a pamphlet in Vienna (Austria-Hungary) extolling the candidate's high qualities and saying that Bibescu would do the same as his father did in Wallachia: remove the "legacy of the bad Turkish administration and the Phanariot Caimacams".

The reason for this was because of the negative reactions of Russia and other powers that followed the unification of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia in 1885,[33] and the "liberation" of the region of Macedonia from Ottoman rule.

According to the Romanian historian Alex Mihai Stoenescu, this was supported by Germany, the United Kingdom and even Austria-Hungary at some point, although France stayed on the Russian side.

[39] Following the Ottoman Sultan's rejection of a proposed Bulgarian–Turkish dual state after a new search for candidates to the throne in early 1887 started, the regents again turned towards Romania in February 1887.

[28] Russia's influence in the Balkan states further weakened after the Romanian political activist Zamfir Arbore published evidence for Russian espionage activity in Romania, which provoked outrage among other great powers.

[34] After all of these events, Russia, which saw the possibility of the Romanian monarch taking the Bulgarian throne as a violation of the Treaty of Berlin,[39] threatened on 10 June 1887 to break diplomatic relations with Romania.

Notable figures that supported this included several Bulgarian (Dimitar Blagoev, Christian Rakovsky, Yanko Sakazov) and Romanian (Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea) socialist leaders.

[55] These conflicts rendered any union proposal with the participation of both Bulgaria and Romania nearly impossible for years, with socialists remaining as some of the few people who continued to support similar ideas.

In an interview with the Romanian journalist Gheorghe Zaharia in November 1946, the Bulgarian Prime Minister Georgi Dimitrov,[57] who now ruled over a formal people's republic after a falsified September 1946 referendum,[66] said Romania could join a possible future Balkan federation.

This statement provoked the revocation of the initial permission given for Zaharia to publish the interview in the newspaper Scînteia since it angered Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, leader of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR).

Pandrea, a relative of the communist activist Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, felt Romania should advocate for neutrality, with Switzerland being the example to follow and thus supporting the concept of "Helvetization".

[75] When Dimitrov returned from Bucharest, he gave a press conference during which he proposed a Balkan and Danubian confederation, including Bulgaria and Romania, which Poland and Czechoslovakia could later join.

Soviet influence over Romania increased significantly in late 1947 and early 1948, and the Tito–Stalin split later in 1948 forced Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to renounce a potential South Slavic federation.

Although both countries shared Orthodox Christianity, strong economic and cultural ties and a desire for independence from the Ottomans, nationalism and the intervention of external powers poisoned the friendship between them.

During the communist era, although their relations improved, Bulgaria and Romania followed different foreign policies, as the former was loyal to the Soviet Union while the latter sought greater autonomy from it.

[26] Furthermore, these projects were launched in an attempt to be liberated and independent and not because of any real interest in each other, and the model of a nation state and territorial claims over other countries, which were not unusual in the region, made a possible acceptance of a union proposal more difficult.

[76] This fierce opposition, especially from Russia (or the Soviet Union), was probably because of a fear of a strong and influential state that could compete against the great powers, following the "divide and rule" principle.