Carson Becker

Bulgarian Tsar: the West is not in decline

Simeon II (Antoine GYORI/Sygma via Getty Images)

Bulgaria has rarely been the master of its own fate. Throughout history, neighbouring powers have often succeeded in imposing their will upon it. Nevertheless, Bulgaria has endured. There are few who can attest this with greater authority than Simeon II, who reigned as Bulgaria’s last Tsar from 1943 to 1946 and returned, after five decades of communist-imposed exile, to be elected Prime Minister between 2001 and 2005.

In a meeting at Vrana Palace in Sofia, the 86-year-old former monarch told me that Bulgaria has missed a chance to mediate between the West and Russia. 

Simeon inherited the throne from his father, the modest, self-effacing Tsar Boris III, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1943, 13 days after returning from a turbulent meeting with Adolf Hitler. There is some evidence which suggests an assassination by poisoning, directed by German or Soviet secret services (Joseph Goebbels, for his part, accused the Italian royal family of orchestrating Boris’ death).

‘A maximalist or absolutist approach to situations is purely a populistic weapon’

Simeon bears a striking resemblance to Boris, whose portrait hangs on the wall opposite us.

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