Обществото на народите и малцинствения проблем
The League of Nation and the Minority Issue

Summary/Abstract: The article makes the point that the Versailles Peace Treaties following World War I created more problems than it solved, among them the minority issues. The author argues that the conquerers, exploiting their temporary advantage, reshaped the borders in Europe in a way that caused a new world war. The minority issues were the inevitable consequences of the ill will of the victors. The aim of the creators of the Versailles system to "defend the minorities" had not at all been their preservation within the borders of the "motherland". Quite the contrary! The whole system of treaties concerning the minorities aimed at doing away with them, namely through the exchange of population, or through their coercive "integration" into the new majority on the basis of the "right of the victor". The Neuilly Peace Treaty as one of the treaties of the Versailles system was a strong instrument in the hands of the "victors" to destroy the Bulgarian national spirit in Macedonia and Western Thrace and for insane acceleration of the traditional policy of terror aimed at the assimilation of the Bulgarian population. The policy of Bulgaria toward the minorities (which due to circumstances irrespective of policy happened to be within the borders of the country) has always been of the kind the world community grew to maturity only after 1945 — i. e. a policy clad in legal form and supported by practical action for defending human rights regardless of the ethnos, religion and the language of its citizens. Bulgaria has never conducted assimilative policies of the kind of its neighbours towards the Bulgarian population which is within the borders of their states. It is also the sense of statement that if we may formulate a minority issue between the two world wars, and why not also nowadays, in this respect Bulgaria been and is a creditor only.

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