Western Outlands - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Western Outlands pokraynini) is a term used by Bulgarians

Bulgarians

The Bulgarians are a South Slavic nation and ethnic group native to Bulgaria and neighbouring regions. Emigration has resulted in immigrant communities in a number of other countries.-History and ethnogenesis:...

to describe several territorially separate regions located in southeastern Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

and eastern Macedonia

Republic of Macedonia

Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...

which at one point passed directly from Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

to Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

.

The territories in question were ceded by Bulgaria

Bulgaria

to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...

in 1920 as a result of the Treaty of Neuilly, following the First World War

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. According to the Serbian census of 1991, two of the largest cities in the Western Outlands, Bosilegrad

Bosilegrad

Bosilegrad is a town and municipality in Pčinja District of Serbia. The municipality comprises an area of 571 km². According to 2011 census, it has total population of 7,979 inhabitants, while the town has 2,530.-1991 census:...

and Dimitrovgrad, were populated primarily by Bulgarians

Bulgarians

.

Today, the territories referred to by the term cover an area of 1,545 km² in Serbia. In 1919 the same territories corresponded to the following parts of the Bulgarian okrug
Okrug
Okrug is an administrative division of some Slavic states. The word "okrug" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "district", or "region"....

s: Kyustendil

Kyustendil

Kyustendil is a town in the far west of Bulgaria, the capital of Kyustendil Province, with a population of 44 416 . Kyustendil is situated in the southern part of the Kyustendil Valley, 90 km southwest of Sofia...

, 661 km², Tsaribrod

Dimitrovgrad, Serbia

Dimitrovgrad is a town and 483 km² large municipality located in the Pirot District of the Republic of Serbia. According to 2011 census, the municipality of Dimitrovgrad has a population of 10,056 people and the town 6,247.-Name:...

(nowadays Dimitrovgrad) 418 km², Tran

Tran, Bulgaria

Tran |thorn]]") is a small town in Pernik Province, western Bulgaria. It is 27 kilometres away from the town of Breznik and 15 km from the border with Serbia....

278 km², Kula

Kula, Bulgaria

Kula is a town in northwestern Bulgaria. It is the administrative centre of Kula Municipality part of Vidin Province. Located just east of the Serbian-Bulgarian border, it is the third largest town in the province after Vidin and Belogradchik. Kula lies 30 kilometres west of Vidin and 13...

172 km² and Vidin

Vidin

Vidin is a port town on the southern bank of the Danube in northwestern Bulgaria. It is close to the borders with Serbia and Romania, and is also the administrative centre of Vidin Province, as well as of the Metropolitan of Vidin...

17 km².

Controversy

According to the Serbian point of view the term itself is controversial, as referring to parts of a neighboring country's territory as "western outlands" can imply territorial claims, as in the example of Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

regarding Alsace

Alsace

Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...

in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

Presumably for this reason, the term has not been used in official contacts between Sofia and Belgrade since 1948. It was mentioned once, in the 1948 Bled Agreement

Bled agreement

The Bled agreement was an agreement signed on the 1st August, 1947 in Bled, Slovenia. The agreement was signed between Bulgaria under Georgi Dimitrov and Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito which paved the way for future unification between the states in a new Balkan Federative Republic...

by Josip Broz Tito

Josip Broz Tito

Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...

and Georgi Dimitrov

Georgi Dimitrov

Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...

. This was in the period of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

's push for a Communist super-state in the Balkans

Balkans

The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...

, the Balkan Federative Republic, which was to include Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

, Albania

Albania

Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

and Bulgaria. The BFR idea was abandoned with the Informbiro

Informbiro

Informbiro was a period in the history of Yugoslavia characterized by conflict and schism with the Soviet Union...

Resolution of 1948, when the split between Tito and Stalin occurred. Despite not being used internationally (until the 1990s when it was revived), it is very widely used in internal social and political communication in Bulgaria.

Controversy

See also