The success we were supposed to forget

Petar Dobrev, Mediapool, 4 September 2026

Summary

On September 7, 1940, the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Romania signed the Treaty of Craiova, peacefully returning Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria after 27 years of Romanian rule (following the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest). It stands as Bulgaria’s only successful regain of lost territory from the 20th-century national catastrophes that occurred without military conflict, through entirely diplomatic means.

Key Achievements of the Treaty of Craiova

• Territorial & Economic Expansion: Restored 7,500 square kilometers of fertile grain-producing land, key Danube access, and Black Sea ports (Balchik and Kavarna) along with major urban centers like Dobrich and Silistra.
• Population Restored: Directly affected over 300,000 residents returning to the Bulgarian state.
• Diplomatic Triumph: Negotiated under Foreign Minister Ivan Popov, diplomat Svetoslav Pomenov, and Tsar Boris III. Bulgaria capitalized on geopolitical shifts—specifically USSR demands on Romanian territories (Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina)—to secure broad international backing from Germany, the USSR, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
• Permanent Settlement: Because it was formalized prior to Bulgaria joining the Tripartite Pact and recognized by all Great Powers, the border adjustment survived post-WWII peace treaties intact.

Human Cost and Displacements

• Compulsory Population Exchange: The agreement mandated a population transfer: approximately 66,000 Bulgarians were relocated from Northern Dobruja to Bulgaria, while roughly 108,000 Romanians moved north.
• Humanitarian Tragedy: The forced resettlement split mixed families, forced the abandonment of ancestral homes and property, and caused severe emotional and administrative hardship. Nationalist critics at the time viewed losing Northern Dobruja as a failure, though Northern Dobruja had been Romanian since 1878 and was not realistically recoverable.

Reasons for Historical Marginalization

• Immediate Post-1940 Suppression: Upon joining the Axis powers in March 1941, Bulgaria minimized references to the treaty to maintain diplomatic harmony with its ally, Romania.
• Socialist Era Erasure (Post-1944): Under Soviet influence, both Bulgaria and Romania became socialist allies. The new authorities intentionally downplayed the treaty because it was an undeniable success achieved by the deposed monarchical regime. Public memory was redirected toward class struggles rather than diplomatic achievements of the former government.
• Contrast with National Narrative: In Bulgarian historiography, tragic losses (such as Macedonia) often overshadowed peaceful diplomatic victories, leaving the Craiova Treaty relegated primarily to local regional memory in Dobruja.

Conclusion

The Treaty of Craiova represents a rare instance of pragmatic, effective Bulgarian diplomacy. The author argues that September 7, 1940, deserves recognition not merely as a regional milestone, but as a central achievement in modern Bulgarian statehood.

Article

The return of Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria in 1940 is the only instance in which our country managed to regain lost territory as a result of the catastrophic wars of the 20th century. However, under the Treaty of Craiova, thousands of Bulgarians were forcibly displaced. Today, these events remain marginal in public perception and in historiography.

It is a well-known fact that Bulgaria was on the losing side in the Inter-Allied War, as well as in both world wars. This resulted in two national catastrophes, one of which was the loss of Dobruja. The failure in the Second World War led to a complete change of regime in the country and a shift in its geopolitical orientation. Against this backdrop, there are few events that can be regarded as indisputable national successes for Bulgaria in the 20th century. One such event is undoubtedly the declaration of independence in 1908, which legitimised the country in international relations. Deservedly, this independence is now one of the Republic’s official public holidays.

The return of Southern Dobruja, for its part, was also a momentous event. It took place on 7 September 1940 with the signing of the Treaty of Craiova between Bulgaria and Romania. Twenty-seven years earlier, Southern Dobruja had been annexed by Romania under the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913 – one of the two agreements that brought an end to the Inter-Allied War, which proved catastrophic for Bulgaria. The Treaty of Craiova conferred not only symbolic legitimacy, such as independence, but also directly altered the fate of a population numbering over 300,000 people. Not only did the country’s most fertile grain-producing region return to its borders, but also major towns such as Dobrich and Silistra, as well as the Black Sea ports of Balchik and Kavarna.

Had it not been for the events in Craiova, these towns would today be part of Romania. The events of 1940 were an undeniable triumph for Bulgarian diplomacy, which patiently bided its time, struck a balance between the Great Powers and secured support not only from Germany and the USSR – which had a direct interest in the redistribution of territories in the Balkans – but also from the United Kingdom and the United States. Bulgaria insisted that the return of Dobruja be formalised by a treaty with Romania, to be signed before the full-scale outbreak of the Great War, as it already had the bitter experience from the First World War of territories that had been promised and seized, only to be returned subsequently. At the same time, Hungary regained the vast region of Northern Transylvania from the Kingdom of Romania, but did so through German arbitration, which was to be ratified after the end of the war. Ultimately, this did not happen, and Transylvania became Romanian once again after 1947.

In other words, the Treaty of Craiova was a success on several levels, one that is difficult to compare with any other event in 20th-century Bulgarian history: hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians returned to their homeland, Bulgarian territory was expanded by 7,500 square kilometres, and the country’s economic and geopolitical prospects were transformed by key access to the Danube and the Black Sea. To top it all, the event was accepted and ratified not merely by Romania, but by all the Great Powers, and took place without war, through entirely diplomatic means: a very rare occurrence for a troubled region such as the Balkans. And all this at the outset of the bloodiest global conflict. This is also why the Treaty of Craiova was not renegotiated when the peace treaties were signed after the end of the Second World War, even though Bulgaria was on the losing side.

A rare national success

In 1940, Bulgaria enjoyed a rare, very rare national triumph. “I am treading upon the chains of slavery,” said Lieutenant-General Georgi Popov – appointed on 11 September 1940 as Governor-General of Southern Dobruja – to the crowd in Silistra as Bulgarian troops entered the town. The passion is genuine, and, at least for a short while, a population that had endured 27 years of foreign rule, cultural assimilation, land confiscation and the ethnic colonisation of their towns and villages by the Romanian population can breathe a sigh of relief.

It is interesting to note what Stefan Tanev, then editor-in-chief of the highest-circulation newspaper Utro, wrote in his diary. It was intended for personal use and has only recently been published; that is to say, it is free from any propaganda or censorship, which were otherwise characteristic of the era:

“The days of the army’s capture of Southern Dobruja will remain unforgettable. Days of elation and tears of joy. When you reach Varna, it feels as though you’ve entered another world[…] 21 September. Near the border, along the road to Balchik, men and women from the surrounding villages have gathered. A crowd of thousands. Extraordinary joy. Officers and soldiers, adorned with shawls and shirts donated by the local people. A sea of flowers. Surely not a single flower remains in the surrounding villages. All of this was spontaneous, unforced. You cannot keep people in the villages. At the border, a tricolour ribbon was stretched across an arch, which General Popov had to cut so that the troops could set off for Balchik.[…] I dare not attempt to describe the joy of the people. I cried on several occasions. And for many days afterwards, whenever I began to talk about the welcome given to our troops in Dobruja, I would always break down in tears”.

All the recollections of contemporaries such as Tanev speak of such sincere enthusiasm that, for a brief moment at least, it made society forget the problems of the day. And these were no small matters: it is a fact that by 1940 Bulgaria was a state under authoritarian rule, in which political parties were banned and the role of parliament was reduced to a minimum. The storm of the Second World War was beginning to rage, and the fascist and quasi-fascist sentiments flaring up across the continent foreshadowed major new realignments on the map of Europe. It cannot be denied that the Treaty of Craiova itself was concluded with the support of Nazi Germany. At that time, Bulgaria was a neutral country, and Hitler sought to draw both Bulgaria and Romania into his sphere of influence. The question was how well Bulgaria would play its hand, given that just a year earlier neither Germany, let alone Britain and the other victors of the First World War, had planned any territorial changes to the detriment of Romania. Romania itself was of great value to Germany’s future plans for the Balkans – it possessed oil reserves, a larger army than Bulgaria, and had far more influential pro-Nazi organisations ready to follow the Führer’s policies.

But Bulgaria found its opening after 26 June 1940, when the USSR presented Romania with a note demanding the peaceful handover of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Hungary also became more active on the issue of Transylvania. This gave Bulgaria the opportunity to assert its demands quite clearly: if there was to be a revision of Romania’s borders, we too must have Southern Dobruja returned to us.

Even after 27 years of Romanian rule, the Bulgarian ethnic group significantly outnumbered the Romanian one in the region. However, this by no means necessarily leads to a fair territorial settlement, as Bulgaria itself knows from its previous geopolitical setbacks. Skillful diplomacy is required between Germany, the USSR, Italy and the United Kingdom to ensure that Bulgaria’s demands are met. In the person of the then Foreign Minister Ivan Popov, and figures such as the diplomat Svetoslav Pomenov, there were people who rose to the occasion. Nor can the role of Tsar Boris III be overlooked, despite his authoritarian rule over both the country’s domestic and foreign policies.

The other side of the coin

The Romanians wanted to retain at least Silistra and Balchik until the very end – the former for strategic reasons, the latter for sentimental ones. The Bulgarians had no intention of yielding, but some compromises had to be made nonetheless. In this instance, this meant accepting a compulsory population exchange – Bulgarians from Northern Dobruja were to leave Romania, whilst Romanians from Southern Dobruja were to return to their homeland. Around 66,000 Bulgarians left their homes and settled mainly in Southern Dobruja. Around 108,000 Romanians set off for good in the opposite direction.

Like any forced resettlement, this too turned into a tragedy. Asen Kemilev, a member of the Bulgarian commission on the resettlement, describes in his memoirs various dramatic aspects of the move – the separation of families from mixed marriages, the family crisis of identity, saying goodbye to their homeland and material possessions, administrative arbitrariness, and the separation of lovers. There were massive abuses by the border authorities on both sides. Even at that time, Bulgarian nationalists protested that the deal was disadvantageous to Bulgaria – the Bulgarian population, which had been in Northern Dobruja since at least the 19th century, was being displaced, whilst the Romanian colonists in Southern Dobruja were very recent arrivals – having settled there after 1918. However, a very important fact is overlooked: despite the presence of a Bulgarian population, the region of Northern Dobruja had never been within the borders of the Bulgarian state. As early as the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Russia ceded it to Romania as compensation for the region of Bessarabia, which it had itself annexed. Since then, Southern Dobruja has been an area of active and, it must be said, quite successful Romanianisation. To such an extent that the region has, in reality, never been a target of Bulgarian foreign policy, with the exception of a brief period during the First World War.

However, there have always been maximalists and hawks, particularly in 1940. They are still present today – voices are heard claiming that Craiova was more of a tragedy than a success for Bulgarian diplomacy. From the perspective of the ‘displaced persons’, as they remain in the collective memory, this is true in most cases, regardless of whether they were Bulgarians or Romanians. But from the perspective of state policy, it would be entirely unrealistic to expect that in 1940 Bulgaria could have secured the entire region of Dobruja. Had the Bulgarian population remained in the northern part, by any historical logic, it would today have been largely assimilated.

Historical marginalisation

Why, then, is it the case that although the Treaty of Craiova was a success almost without parallel in 20th-century Bulgarian history, today the memory of it has been marginalised? The return of Southern Dobruja is commemorated only locally, in Dobruja itself. In our national memory, lost wars such as the First World War feature more ‘heroic’ memories than an actual victory such as that of 1940. Even in academic circles, the events of Craiova are discussed primarily at a local level within Dobruja itself. It was only last year that, for the first time, an organising committee held a major conference in Sofia to mark the national and international aspects of the Treaty of Craiova, with guests from Romania also in attendance.

How does an event come to be remembered as a triumph, or end up being marginalised? Is it influenced by its own historical significance, or more by the political circumstances surrounding it? In March 1941, Bulgaria joined the Tripartite Pact, thereby becoming an ally not only of Nazi Germany but also of Romania. This led Bulgarian diplomacy to exercise great caution and, against the backdrop of the Second World War, to avoid recalling events such as the return of Dobruja, which might exacerbate tensions between the two countries. Craiova was triumphantly reported in the Bulgarian press in 1940, but the following year it was almost entirely absent from the historical record. This trend continued until 1944, particularly as Bulgaria, too, was in the thick of the war and faced more pressing problems.

The events following September 1944 are well known – both Bulgaria and Romania became socialist states and entered the Soviet sphere of influence. As allies under new conditions, the two states had even less desire to mention the Treaty of Craiova, particularly as it had been signed by the now-demonised former monarchical regimes.

Craiova turned out to be an inconvenient success: it had been achieved by a state whose political regime the new authorities were obliged to present solely as a historical failure. There is no need to ban any mention of the treaty; it is sufficient to deprive it of a central place in the national narrative. No anniversaries of the return of Dobruja are commemorated, and the memory of Romanian rule fades against the backdrop of the new socialist restructuring of the region and the entire country. If there are any references to events from that period at all, they are intended to highlight the activities of Bulgarian communist activists such as Docho Mihaylov, who, according to the official narrative of the interwar period, fought for the rights of both the Bulgarian and Romanian working classes.

In the 1980s, as a result of rising nationalism across Eastern Europe, academic works began to appear in Bulgaria that acknowledged the role of the events of 1940, but without making them part of the overarching narrative of Bulgarian history.

Thus, the political changes after 1944 did not alter the border agreed at Craiova, but they did alter the memory of how that border had been established. And so it shows us how a country can lose territory through war and regain it through diplomacy, yet decades later may lose the memory of its own achievement.

Today, the situation is such that, after years of absence from the public memory, the return of Dobruja to Bulgarian territory, as well as the 27-year period of Romanian rule over the region, are very little known to the public. Even specialist historiography has a long way to go to shed light on many of the realities of that time – the hardships faced by the local population subjected to Romanianisation, the specific Romanian policies in the region, which were not necessarily all negative, and the activities of the leaders of Bulgarian society, who either opposed the new authorities or adapted to them, whether for national or class-based reasons.

It is curious that, whilst we know extraordinary historical details about a lost cause – which is ultimately what Macedonia became – we allow for huge historiographical gaps regarding our only recovered territory.

Of course, history as a science – and, by extension, national memory – has always been subject to political priorities. And in politics, imaginary causes and symbolically constructed conflicts are very often more important than real achievements. But is it not time that the drama of the Dobruja population in 1940 – both the joy of returning to the Bulgarian borders and the tragedy of the displaced people – finally receives at least a small part of the place it deserves in history?

Southern Dobruja is not merely reclaimed territory. Whilst other Bulgarian endeavours have left in their wake cemeteries, columns of refugees and embittered neighbours, Dobruja was returned through a mutually recognised treaty. Craiova reveals a side of Bulgaria that we rarely recall: patient, diplomatic, capable of recognising the right moment and defending its interests without resorting to war. That is precisely why 7 September 1940 deserves to be regarded not as a regional event specific to Dobruja, but as an event of paramount importance for Bulgarian statehood.

Photo: General Georgi Popov, appointed Governor-General of Southern Dobruja following the region’s return to the Kingdom, is delivering a speech in Dobrich

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