It is 131 years since the birth of Tsar Boris III, dubbed unifier. Boris Saxe-Coburg-Gotha found himself at the head of Bulgaria after the abdication of Tsar Ferdinand after the defeat of the country in World War I. The young monarch was crowned on 3 October, 1918, to stand at the helm of the country at a volatile and unpredictable time, the period between the two world wars.

The decree he issued on 25 January, 1935, making all radio broadcasting activities in Bulgaria state monopoly, gave the start to public service radio in the country.

One of the recordings preserved in the BNR’s Golden Archives fund is of an address by Tsar Boris III to the members of parliament to mark one of the most significant diplomatic achievements of his reign – the peaceful return of Southern Dobruja to the Kingdom of Bulgaria:

“I am particularly happy to ascertain that the foreign policy pursued thus far has yielded a happy outcome. On 7 September, 1940, the governments of Bulgaria and of Romania signed in Craiova a treaty by force of which Southern Dobruja was returned within the bounds of the Bulgarian kingdom.”

From the point of view of today, the return of the territories ceded to Romania by force of the Bucharest peace treaty, signed on 28 July 1913, sounds simply unbelievable:

“Achieving this without giving rise to any conflict, there were surely circumstances that were acceptable to both sides,” his son Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha says in an interview with the BNR at the end of 2024. “I have noticed people talking about the greatness of Bulgaria in an exalted tone of voice. Yes, it can be great, let us say with its living standards, not territorially. In the other sense, anyone can say this and advance into the territory of a neighbour, but that leads nowhere.”

The reign of Boris III has been the subject of many and different evaluations. What he was like as a head of state, but also as a human being, a husband and a father is something that, in our day, only his two children can testify to – his heir Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Marie Louise. Neither of them are inclined to give interviews, but the former prime minister of Bulgaria (2001-2005) Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha made an exception and gave an interview to the BNR analyzing the rule of Tsar Boris III from the view point of today.

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Though he usually avoids making a judgement about any individual or the processes taking place in the country, in this interview he remembers his father’s words from an interview with Time magazine on 20 January, 1941 “my ministers are Anglophiles, my generals – Germanophile, my people is Russophile, I am the only one left who is a Bulgarophile”, to emphasize that Bulgaria must pursue, first and foremost, its national interests:

“150 years ago there were Russophiles and Russophobes too. Isn’t it time to be more rational and to sit down and think which is more important – that we should be Bulgarophiles, or what? Things are not necessarily “either-or” because that is what is dividing society and it leads nowhere, and will result in nothing good.”

He also went back to the more personal aspects in the life of his father and his relationship with his family:

“He would take us on outings to the mountains, and he always had a little spade with him which he used to carefully uproot some plant without damaging it, to have it replanted at Vrana palace or somewhere else. He would always explain to us what he was doing and why. During the last outing we had, it must have been in the summer of 1943, we climbed Murgash peak (the tallest peak in the Western part of the Balkan Range – editorial note), and from there he showed us the directions of different sites.”

Tsar Boris III died suddenly of a heart attack on 28 August, 1943, soon after returning from a meeting with Adolf Hitler, where he refused to hand the Bulgarian Jews over and to send troops against the USSR. His heir to the throne was the then 6-year old Simeon II, in whose name a regency council, elected by the National Assembly, ruled the country in the course of three years until a republic was established.

To a child death is something very vague and abstract, yet saying his last goodbyes to his father at the St. Alexander Nevksi cathedral is seared into Simeon Saxe-Cobrug-Gotha’s memory:

“I will never forget that when I kissed his hand and his forehead, they were ice-cold. To this day I am reluctant to go to any funeral where there is a viewing of the body because I still feel a horror. It may be down to age.”

Tsar Boris III is the only Bulgarian statesman and politician to have been raised to be a head of state throughout his life up until the time he ascended the throne at the age of 24. He ruled for a quarter of a century, rebuilding the country after it was defeated in two fateful wars and after having its national ideal crushed, always striving to resolve civic conflicts without violence. And as far as the international situation would allow, he was the ruler invariably upholding peace, inside and outside the country.  

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Interview Zlatko Zhelev
Text: Yoan Kolev
Photos: kingsimeon.bg, facebook.com/SimeonSaxecoburggotha, bulgarianhistory.org, archive