“Authentic” Rural Depopulation in Bulgaria
„Автентичната“ селска депопулация на България

Summary/Abstract: The scope and pace of depopulation of Bulgaria’s rural regions have long turned into a major social evil and have undoubtedly been a hampering factor for this nation’s development. The pace of depopulation of villages in Bulgaria throughout the last seven decades stands among the highest in the world and the trend toward its acceleration leads to a growth in the scope of the municipalities and settlement categories affected. Despite the serious damages that rural depopulation has caused to the country and to the chances of its rural areas for positive demographic, social and economic development, of ever larger agricultural regions, there are not many studies by Bulgarian researchers working in areas such as demography, geography of settlements, regional economy, sociology or economic history. The paper below presents a new approach to the study of the real pace experienced by rural depopulation along the period 1946–2011 of rural population between the censuses over the indicated period based on the dynamics found in the number of the “authentic” rural population. The shortest explanation of this term (which has not been used in any scientific research efforts hitherto) is that “authentic” rural population means the village residents who have always been rural for the entire period of the study i.e. localities that have not been administratively affiliated to cities and have never been promoted to the category of townships.

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