On August 23, Bulgaria’s history swings between a hard-won victory in its own mountains in 1877 and a distant diplomatic bargain that would eventually pull the whole continent, Bulgaria included, toward war in 1939.
August 23, 1877 — Shipka Holds
With the arrival of Russian reinforcements from the north, the Ottoman assault on the Shipka Pass was decisively repelled. Bulgarian volunteers and Russian soldiers had held the mountain summit for three extraordinary days against an army many times their size.
The pass stayed in Bulgarian and Russian hands for the rest of the Russo-Turkish War, and the Battle of Shipka entered history as one of the defining episodes of Bulgarian national liberation.
August 23, 1939 — The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
The signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union shocked European capitals and fundamentally reshaped the continent’s alliance structure. Bulgaria, though not a party to the agreement, followed events closely.
The pact neutralised Soviet opposition to German expansion and set in motion the sequence of events that would ultimately draw Bulgaria into the Second World War.
Yesterday’s entry covered August 22; tomorrow brings August 24. Meanwhile, our Bulgaria From Above series shows these landscapes as few ever see them.
