Ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria

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Ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria (Macedonian: Македонци во Бугарија, romanized: Makedonci vo Bugarija) are one of the ethnic communities in Bulgaria. They are concentrated within the Blagoevgrad Province and the capital Sofia.^{[citation needed]} In the latest 2021 Bulgarian census 1,143 citizens declared themselves as ethnic Macedonians.

According to the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee in 1998, their number ranged from 15,000 to 25,000.^[6] In 2006, per the personal evaluation of a leading local ethnic Macedonian activist Stojko Stojkov, they counted already between 5,000 and 10,000 people. The 1992 census indicated 10,830 Macedonians, but in the 2001 census this figure had decreased to 5,071. However, in the 2011 Bulgarian census 1,654 people declared themselves to be ethnic Macedonians.

Macedonians were recognized as a minority between 1946 and 1958. During this period there was a surge of Macedonistic policies, the government went as far as to declare the newly codified Macedonian an official language of the Pirin region.^[7][8] The Bulgarian Communist Party was compelled by Joseph Stalin to accept the formation of a distinct Macedonian nation, in order to create with the Yugoslav and Greek communists a United Macedonian state, as part of a scheduled Balkan Communist Federation^[9][10][11] (see also the 1947 Bled Agreement). Although at the 1934 census, no Macedonians were recorded in Bulgaria, at the 1946 and 1956 censuses, the results indicated their number of almost 190,000. There are clear indications that the majority of the population from Blagoevgrad Province then was listed as ethnic Macedonians ex officio by order of the authorities.^[9][10][12]

However, differences soon emerged with regard to the Macedonian question. Whereas Bulgarians envisaged a state where Yugoslavia and Bulgaria would be placed on an equal footing,^[13] the Yugoslavs saw Bulgaria as a seventh republic in an enlarged Yugoslavia.^[13] Their differences also extended to the national character of the Macedonians – whereas Bulgaria considered them to be a national offshoot of the Bulgarians,^[14] the Yugoslavs regarded them as people who had nothing to do with the Bulgarians.^[15]

Today the Bulgarian authorities deny any existence of Macedonian minority in the country, claiming there is no ethnic difference between both communities, while Skopje insists on the presence of such separate community, with some circles stating on 750,000 oppressed Macedonians there.^[16]