Демографската политика на България: характеристики в международна перспектива (1937 - 1944г.)
Bulgaria's Demographic Policy (1937 - 1944): Peculiarities in an International Perspective

Summary/Abstract: The objective of the article is to outline Bulgaria's early fears of population decline, follow their rhetoric justification in the public sphere in the late 1930s and first half of the 1940s, and shed light on the underlying principles of the adopted population legislation thereafter. The paper contextualizes the Bulgarian demographic debate within a wider, international framework, by focusing on the general specifics of the European discourse surrounding population issues and concerns in the early modern and modern period. Against this intercontinental background, Bulgaria's early demographic policy emerges as pronatalist, inspired by the state's desire for an increase of the numbers of children. Simultaneously, her quantitative population aspirations exhibit a strong welfare rationale. The decline of fertility in the country was recognized by both public and government as the consequence of a dramatic and ongoing impoverishment process. Hence Bulgaria's first pronatalist law- the Law for Large, Mnogodetni Families, 1943 - lacks the rigid restrictive regulations of other European acts, but places high emphasis on social provisions to 'cushion' and relieve the population's lot.

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