Already in November 1876, the Office for Civil Administration of the liberated ‎lands beyond the Danube which were to be separated from the Ottoman ‎Empire was established in Russia. The goal was to create a military-civilian ‎government there with the participation of the Bulgarians who must gain ‎managerial experience in order to further take destiny into their own hands. ‎Thus, the organization of Bulgarian local government was started by the ‎Russian military authorities in 1877-78, during the Russo-Turkish war of ‎liberation for Bulgaria. The occupying authorities quickly realized that ‎Bulgarians already have traditions in self-government in the face of the so-‎called local church and people’s municipalities. In these municipalities, even ‎before the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878, the Bulgarians taxed themselves ‎with "local" taxes. They supported their schools, community centres and ‎churches. They appointed teachers and decided what and how their children ‎should study. These municipalities represented the Bulgarians before the ‎Ottoman authorities and the other ethnic communities in the empire. So, the ‎Russian occupying power appointed as its local officials namely Bulgarians ‎known to the population, selected from the local self-governing municipalities ‎until then. ‎

‎"It was difficult to build, it was difficult and gradual like everything in a new ‎country, such as Bulgaria was then, with a lack of civil traditions and a stable ‎civil culture among the Bulgarian population”, commented the historian and ‎professor at the Sofia University "Saint Kliment Ohridski” Svetoslav Zhivkov. ‎‎“The Russian occupation government invests a certain amount of resources in ‎the organization of the respective municipalities. It is said that they laid the ‎foundations of self-government, but we must bear in mind that, at least until ‎‎1901-1903, the municipalities were too strongly dependent on the state power. ‎Therefore, it is difficult to talk about real self-government in the modern sense ‎of the word. As we know, today each mayor and Municipal Council have their ‎mandate and there is a division between urban and rural municipalities. This ‎mandate was, however, to a large extent fictitious, because the Minister of the ‎Interior had the right at any time to "dissolve" a rural or urban municipality. He ‎abused this role too often until the moment when the law was changed, which ‎ensured that the minister would no longer have the right to close ‎municipalities."‎

Nevertheless, the period from the Liberation to 1944 is interesting from the ‎point of view of the changes that took place in Bulgarian towns as well as ‎because of the frequent changes of the mayors, who were sometimes elected by ‎the people, sometimes appointed in the period 1934-1944.‎

‎"Party fights, partisanship, denigration and profanity against the competing ‎candidate have accompanied all of our campaigns”, associate professor Milena ‎Stefanova, a researcher of public interest in local self-government, says firmly. “Even before the Liberation, during the Renaissance, when the ‎Bulgarian chorbadzhii as local rulers could be perceived as prototypes of the ‎mayors, they formed chorbadzhii parties. After that, they fought with all means ‎and did not shy away from even killing people or destroying existing schools. ‎The reason, for example, was that the competing parties argued in which ‎neighborhood the school should be. There have always been this type of ‎dishonest practices. Today, instead, we are witnessing the buying of votes and ‎the unsuccessful attempts to deal with this vicious practice."‎

Photos: BTA, BGNES, bulgarianhistory.org, archive