Читать книгу Area Handbook for Bulgaria - Eugene K. Keefe - Страница 14

Table of Contents

Bulgaria occupies 42,800 square miles of the Balkan Peninsula, and its 1973 population was estimated at 8.7 million (see fig. 1). It is a member of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact), together with five other Eastern European countries to its north and northwest and the Soviet Union. Bulgaria's location is such that its natural features are combinations of those found in the western Soviet Union and in southern Europe. Its climate is transitional between that of the Mediterranean countries and that of north-central Europe. The blend of the various geographic influences is unique, however, and gives the country a degree of individuality that is not anticipated until it is explored in some detail.

It is a land of unusual scenic beauty, having picturesque mountains, wooded hills, beautiful valleys, grain-producing plains, and a seacoast that has both rocky cliffs and long sandy beaches. Soil and climate are adequate to permit production of a variety of crops. Although only a few mineral resources are present in quantity or in good quality ores, the country has a number of them. Large quantities of brown coal and lignite are available, but resources of the better fuels are limited.

The people of the country have been influenced by its location, which is close to the point of contact between Europe and the Orient. The area had been overrun by so many conquerors and occupied for so long that only since liberation in 1878 have a majority of the peasants dared come out of the hills to farm the better land of the plains and valleys.

The country fared poorly in the distribution of the spoils after the First Balkan War in 1912. It was then on the losing side of the Second Balkan War in 1913 and of the two great wars since. In spite of this, its boundaries contain most of the Bulgarian people in the area, and only some 10 to 15 percent of the population within its borders is not ethnically Bulgarian. It has until recently been predominantly agricultural. Industrialization was undertaken late, and it was not until 1969 that the urban population equaled that of the rural areas (see ch. 2).

NATURAL FEATURES

Topography

Alternating bands of high and low terrain extend generally east to west across the country. The four most prominent of these from north to south are the Danubian plateau, the Stara Planina (Old Mountain), or Balkan Mountains, the central Thracian Plain, and the Rodopi (or Rhodope Mountains). The western part of the country, however, consists almost entirely of higher land, and the individual mountain ranges in the east tend to taper into hills and gentle uplands as they approach the Black Sea (see fig. 2).

The Danubian plateau, also called a plain or a tableland, extends from the Yugoslav border to the Black Sea. It encompasses the area between the Danube River, which forms most of the country's northern border, and the Stara Planina to the south. The plateau rises from cliffs along the river, which are typically 300 to 600 feet high, and abuts against the mountains at elevations on the order of 1,200 to 1,500 feet. The region slopes gently but perceptibly from the river southward to the mountains. The western portion is lower and more dissected; in the east it becomes regular but somewhat higher, better resembling a plateau. Bulgarians name local areas within it, but they do not name the region as a whole. It is a fertile area with undulating hills and is the granary of the country.

The southern edge of the Danubian plateau blends into the foothills of the Stara Planina, the Bulgarian extension of the Carpathian Mountains. The Carpathians resemble a reversed S as they run eastward from Czechoslovakia across the northern portion of Romania, swinging southward to the middle of that country, where they run westward and cross Romania as the Transylvanian Alps. At a famous gorge of the Danube River known as the Iron Gate, which forms part of the Romania-Yugoslavia border, the Carpathians again sweep eastward, becoming Bulgaria's Stara Planina range.

Considered in its local context, the Stara Planina originates at the Timok Valley in Yugoslavia, continues southeastward as it becomes the northern boundary of the Sofia Basin, and then turns more directly eastward to terminate at Cape Emine on the Black Sea. It is some 370 miles in length, and some twelve to thirty miles in width. It retains its height well into the central part of the country, where Botev Peak, its highest point, rises to about 7,800 feet. The range is still apparent until its rocky cliffs fall into the Black Sea. Over most of its length, its ridge is the divide between drainage to the Danube River and to the Aegean Sea. In the east small areas drain directly to the Black Sea.

Sometimes considered a part of the foothills of the Stara Planina, but separated from the main range by a long geological trench that contains the Valley of Roses, is the Sredna Gora (Middle Forest). The Sredna Gora is a ridge running almost precisely east to west, about 100 miles long. Its elevations run to only a little more than 5,000 feet, but it is narrow and achieves an impression of greater height.

The southern slopes of the Stara Planina and the Sredna Gora give way to the Thracian Plain. The plain is roughly triangular in shape, originating at a point east of the mountains that ring the Sofia Basin and broadening as it proceeds eastward to the Black Sea. It encompasses the Maritsa River basin and the lowlands that extend from it to the Black Sea. As is the case with the Danubian plateau, a great deal of this area is not a plain in strict terms. Most of its terrain is moderate enough to allow cultivation, but there are variations greater than those of a typical plain.