January 30 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of Tsar Boris III, who saved Bulgaria from the horrors of the Second World War (1939-1945).
Boris Clement Robert Maria Pius Stanislav of Saxe-Coburg was born on January 30, 1894, in the Palace in Sofia. He is from the Saxe-Coburg-Gothic dynasty, which at that time was the strongest in Europe - ruled Great Britain, Belgium, Portugal, Bulgaria, and the Duchy of the same name. Boris the Third is the only monarch in Europe who is simultaneously the heir of the two rival branches for the French throne - the Bourbons and the Bourbon-Orléans. The marriage of his father, King Ferdinand, to Marie-Louise had great symbolic significance for the reconciliation of these two families.
Boris Turnovski was baptized in the Orthodox faith in 1896, his godfather being Emperor Nicholas II. The transition to the Orthodox faith was met with strong opposition from his mother, Princess Maria-Louisa, who was a devout Catholic but served to improve relations between Bulgaria and Russia.
The young prince was a participant in the wars for national unification. During the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) he was a liaison officer to the Army Chief of Staff. He gets a good rating as he strictly fulfills his assigned tasks. The inclusion of Bulgaria in the First World War in 1915 interrupted his studies at the Military Academy and he was designated as a procurement officer under the commander-in-chief of the active army. For his excellent service, he was promoted to the rank of major on January 14, 1916.
Prince Boris Turnovski with unparalleled bravery took part in the battles, along with the ordinary Bulgarian wars. Without fear he leads them in battles and battles - there are dozens of stories about his bravery and true brotherly love. The days of wars and sorrows, in which thousands of Bulgarian sons fell on the battlefields, gave the greatest lesson to the future ruler.
The First World War ended with the Second National Disaster and the abdication of King Ferdinand. On October 3, Boris ascended the throne in conditions when the country was in a severe economic, social, and public crisis, and dreams of national unification had been destroyed.
During the first years of his administration, Boris found himself in the shadow of the then-strong leader of the BZNS and Prime Minister Alexander Stamboliyski, who governed the country in the period 1919-1923 with authoritarian methods. This style of government turned the old bourgeois parties against him and led to the coup d'état of June 9, 1923. The People's Conspiracy and the government of Prof. Alexander Tsankov came to power, which suppressed the September Uprising started by the communists. Tsankov was replaced later in 1926 by Andrey Lyapchev, who gradually managed to pacify Bulgaria and conclude important loans to help accommodate the hundreds of thousands of refugees who came to the Kingdom from Aegean and Vardar Macedonia. Tsar Boris III himself defined Lyapchev as his most European prime minister.
It was in the mid-1920s that Bulgaria gradually began to emerge from the isolation in which it was placed after the loss of the First World War. It also affected the position of the Bulgarian monarch, who managed to conclude an extremely good dynastic marriage with the Italian princess Joanna of Savoy in 1930. The marriage strengthened the allied relations between Italy and Bulgaria and was directed against our common enemies from Yugoslavia and Greece. The wedding of Tsar Boris III and Joanna of Savoy is one of the last truly great royal weddings in Europe, when the marriage takes place between representatives of two ruling dynasties, of people in whose veins flows "blue blood".
The 1930s began for Bulgaria with economic difficulties caused by the Great Depression, but also with the increasing attempts of neighboring Yugoslavia to liquidate the Bulgarian statehood and its monarch. An attempt in this direction was made on May 19, 1934, when a group of soldiers carried out a second coup. With great tact, Tsar Boris managed to remove them from power 9 months later and take over the reins of government, which he held until his death. During his one-man rule, which for many years was falsely presented as monarch-fascism, the country noted its greatest economic progress, and the last humiliating clauses of the Treaty of Neuilly, which gave Bulgaria no right to its army, were removed.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, Bulgaria and Tsar Boris III were faced with a difficult choice, which in the end, after much hesitation, was made in favor of the alliance with the Axis countries. Nevertheless, Bulgaria managed to maintain part of its independent policy by refusing to declare war on the USSR and send troops to the Eastern Front. Instead, the army was sent to Vardar Macedonia and White Sea Thrace, which were administered by Bulgaria.
The merits of Tsar Boris III for Bulgaria are indisputable. He managed to save Bulgaria from the great carnage of the Second World War /1939-1945/, and he played a key role in saving the Bulgarian Jews from the death concentration camps. On the instructions of Tsar Boris III, then the Minister of the Interior, Petar Gabrovski, canceled the deportation and 50,000 Bulgarian Jews were saved. The king played a crucial role as the person who controlled all the major centers of power.
He peacefully returned the granary of Southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria - perhaps the only border adjustment recognized by all the great powers and both warring camps. Tsar Boris III enjoys great love among ordinary Bulgarians because of his modest and respectable way of life.
Tsar Boris III is extremely loved by Bulgarian society and was sent by hundreds of thousands on his last journey. He rested on August 28, 1943, then Assumption, after a week's illness. Death and its causes remain unexplained to this day. Over 369,000 Bulgarians pass through the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky" to bow before the mortal remains of the late ruler. A few days later, the funeral procession headed to the Rila Monastery, where Tsar Boris III was buried at his request.
To the left of the grave is a carving, made on October 10, 1943, by residents of the village of Osoi, Debar region, with the inscription: "To his King Liberator Boris III of grateful Macedonia". In 1946, during Holy Week, his mortal remains were exhumed and desecrated, by order of the communist rulers in Bulgaria. The body of the king was buried in a small chapel in the park of the Crow Palace. In 1947, this chapel was blown up and razed to the ground.
After the fall of the regime in 1989, the glass jar with the heart of Tsar Boris III was discovered. It was removed during the tsar's embalming and autopsy by Prof. Ivan Moskov. In 1993, the heart of the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III was buried in his restored tomb in the southern chapel of the cathedral of the Rila Monastery. /BGNES
