Treaty of San Stefano

The 1878 Preliminary Treaty of San Stefano (Сан-Стефанский мир; Peace of San-Stefano, Сан-Стефанский мирный договор; Peace treaty of San-Stefano, Ayastefanos Muahedesi or Ayastefanos Antlaşması) was a treaty between the Russian and Ottoman empires at the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. It was signed at San Stefano, then a village west of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), on 3 March 1878 by Count Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev and Aleksandr Nelidov on behalf of the Russian Empire and by Foreign Minister Saffet Pasha and Ambassador to Germany Sadullah Bey on behalf of the Ottoman Empire.

According to the official Russian position, by signing the treaty, Russia had never intended anything more than a temporary rough draft, so as to enable a final settlement with the other Great Powers.

The treaty provided for the establishment of an autonomous Principality of Bulgaria following almost 500 years of Ottoman rule in the Bulgarian lands. Bulgarians celebrate the day the treaty was signed, 3 March 1878, as Liberation Day. However, the enlarged Bulgaria envisioned by the treaty alarmed neighboring states as well as France and the United Kingdom. As a result, the enlargement was never implemented, being superseded by the Treaty of Berlin following the Congress of the same name that took place three months later.

On Bulgaria
The treaty established the autonomous self-governing Principality of Bulgaria, with a Christian government and the right to keep an army. Though still de jure tributary to the Ottomans, the Principality de facto functioned as an independent nation. Its territory included the plain between the Danube and the Balkan mountain range (Stara Planina), the region of Sofia, Pirot and Vranje in the Morava valley, Northern Thrace, parts of Eastern Thrace and nearly all of Macedonia (Article 6).

Bulgaria would thus have had direct access to the Mediterranean. This carried the potential of Russian ships eventually using Bulgarian Mediterranean ports as naval bases, which the other Great Powers greatly disliked.

A prince elected by the people, approved by the Ottoman Empire, and recognized by the Great Powers was to take the helm of the country (Article 7). A council of Bulgarian noblemen was to draft a constitution (also Article 7). (They produced the Tarnovo Constitution.) Ottoman troops were to withdraw from Bulgaria, while Russian troops would remain for two more years (Article 8).

According to Philip Roeder, the Treaty of San Stefano "transformed" Bulgarian nationalism, turning it from a disunited movement into a united one.

Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania
Under the treaty, Montenegro more than doubled its territory, acquiring formerly Ottoman-controlled areas including the cities of Nikšić, Podgorica, and Bar (Article 1), and the Ottoman Empire recognized its independence (Article 2).

Serbia gained the cities of Niš and Leskovac in Moravian Serbia and became independent (Article 3).

Turkey recognized the independence of Romania (Article 5) while the latter gained Northern Dobruja from Russia (to which it was transferred from the Ottoman Empire) and ceded Southern Bessarabia in a forced exchange.

On Russia and the Ottoman Empire


In exchange for war reparations, the Sublime Porte ceded Armenian and Georgian territories in the Caucasus to Russia, including Ardahan, Artvin, Batum, Kars, Olti, Beyazit, and Alashkert. Additionally, it ceded Northern Dobruja, which Russia handed to Romania in exchange for Southern Bessarabia (Article 19).

Article 21 allowed the population living in areas conquered by Russia to sell property and immigrate to Turkey. The Treaty of Berlin kept a similar provision. Many Adjarians left Adjara at that time.

On other regions
The Vilayet of Bosnia (Bosnia and Herzegovina) was supposed to become an autonomous province (Article 14 ). Crete, Epirus and Thessaly were to receive a limited form of local self-government (Article 15 ), while the Ottomans vouched for their earlier-given promises to handle reforms in Armenia in order to protect the Armenians from abuse (Article 16 ). The Straits—the Bosporus and the Dardanelles—were declared open to all neutral ships in war and peacetime (Article 24).

The Circassians of the newly liberated Balkan territories, who had been settled there in 1864 following the Circassian genocide and had committed several atrocities against the Christian population of the region during the war, were to be expelled. This way, the Circassian minority in Dobruja disappeared.

Reaction


The Great Powers, especially British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, were unhappy with this extension of Russian power, and Serbia feared that the establishment of Greater Bulgaria would harm its interests in the former and remaining Ottoman territories. These reasons prompted the Great Powers to obtain a revision of the treaty at the Congress of Berlin, and substitute it with the Treaty of Berlin.

Romania, which had contributed significantly to the Russian victory in the war, was extremely disappointed by the treaty, and the Romanian public perceived some of its stipulations as Russia breaking the Russo-Romanian pre-war treaties that guaranteed the integrity of Romanian territory.

Austria-Hungary was disappointed with the treaty as it failed to expand its influence in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Albanians, dwelling in provinces controlled by the Ottoman Empire, objected to what they considered a significant loss of their territory to Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro and realized they would have to organize nationally to attract the assistance of foreign powers seeking to neutralize Russia's influence in the region. The implications of the treaty led to the formation of the League of Prizren.

In the "Salisbury Circular" of 1 April 1878, the British Foreign Secretary Robert Cecil, made clear his and his government's objections to the Treaty of San Stefano and the favorable position in which it left Russia.

According to British historian A. J. P. Taylor, writing in 1954: "'If the treaty of San Stefano had been maintained, both the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary might have survived to the present day. The British, except for Beaconsfield [ Disraeli ] in his wilder moments, had expected less and were therefore less disappointed. Salisbury wrote at the end of 1878 'We shall set up a rickety sort of Turkish rule again south of the Balkans. But it is a mere respite. There is no vitality left in them.''"

Critical re-evaluation of treaty in Bulgaria since the 1990s
Since 1990, a number of historians, publicists and journalists in Bulgaria have subjected the Treaty of San Stefano and the entire policy of the Russian Empire on the Eastern question in the 19th century to critical re-evaluation and have concluded that the treaty was a "charade" crafted by the long-standing Russian ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Count Nikolay Ignatyev, for the purpose of securing Russian interests in Bulgaria and fomenting lasting anti-Western sentiment in Bulgarian society.

Russian Empire's objectives
Drawing on the texts of the 1876 Reichstadt Agreement, the 1877 Budapest Convention, various correspondence during the time period and particularly Count Ignatyev's own unfiltered thoughts in his diaries, all researchers draw the conclusion that the Russian Empire's only ambition was to conquer the Turkish Straits, in continuation of Catherine the Great's Greek Plan.

They argue that the "Bulgarian Question" and the liberation of the Bulgarians were used only as a political ruse and a stepping stone to Constantinople. As indicated in Ignatyev's Diaries, if the Russian plan had succeeded, Bulgarians would have ultimately been placed under Russian control by either subjecting them to direct Russian or indirect Serbian rule or ruling them as a puppet state.

Count Ignatyev's role in securing Russian imperial policy
Whereas in traditional Bulgarian and international historiography, Ignatyev is generally presented as a great friend of Bulgaria and an advocate of Bulgarian liberation, his diaires present him rather as a Machiavellian politician completely dedicated to furthering Russian imperialist expansion on the Balkans.

Among other things, Ignatyev is found to have continuously subverted the struggle for an independent Bulgarian Church in the 1860s and the 1870s, the success of which played a crucial role in Bulgarian nation-building. He is further implicated to have advocated for the hanging of the founder of the Bulgarian Internal Revolutionary Organisation (IRO), Vasil Levski, before the Ottoman authorities attempted to make the IRO, which was hostile to any foreign involvement, more amenable to Russian desires.

Indzhev, in particular, notes that by eliminating IRO's ideologue and leader, hellbent on liberation "by own means" and maligning the 19th-century Bulgarian bourgeoisie (e.g., Stoyan Chomakov), which favoured gaining autonomy by working together with the Ottoman authorities, Ignatyev's work blocked both Bulgaria's "revolutionary" and "evolutionary" path of development, which made "liberation by Russia", the scenario giving Russia direct control over Bulgarian affairs, the only option left.

April Uprising and consequences
Between 1855 and 1865, the Ottoman authorities settled 300,000 Crimean Tatar, Circassian and other Muslim Caucasian Muhacir in the Danube Vilayet. While the settlement of Crimean Tatars was largely problem-free, the scarcity of arable land, the sheer scale of Circassian migration and the inability of Ottoman authorities to address problems properly turned the Circassian settlement into a disaster that drove impoverished Circassians to join paramilitary (i.e., bashi-bazouk) units or turn to banditry and crime. The Ottoman inability to restore social order was a direct cause of the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876, whose bloody suppression generated widespread indignation and condemnation in Europe.

Most Great Powers were still deliberating what action to take and eventually reached agreement to convene the Constantinople Conference in late December 1876, when the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary had already apportioned the Ottoman holdings in Europe for themselves by virtue of the Reichstadt Agreement of 8 July 1876, more than half a year earlier. The agreement was reconfirmed and elaborated further in the Budapest Convention of 15 January 1877.

Reichstadt and Budapest Treaties
Both treaties were kept entirely secret and envisaged a Russian war on the Ottoman Empire, with Austria-Hungary pledging neutrality. The Russian Empire, in turn, pledged not to create a large Slavic state but only two independent principalities or two autonomous Ottoman vilayets (the version varies depending on language) north and south of the Balkan Range. In turn, Austria-Hungary was given permission to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. The treaties also envisaged Romania ceding southern Bessarabia to the Russian Empire, territorial acquisitions for Greece, etc.

All researchers have noted the pronounced similarity of the clauses of the two secret treaties to the provisions of the Berlin Treaty and the stark contrast of the three to the territorial provisions of the Treaty of San Stefano. They infer that the Russian Empire never had any actual intent to implement it.

Sabotaging Constantinople Conference as casus belli for the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)
However, in particular, Indzhev, Doychev, Gochev and Yordanov do not draw the line here. After comparing the dates of signing of the Budapest Convention (15 January 1877) and Grand Vizier Midhat Pasha's refusal (18 January 1877) to accede to the Great Powers' proposal at the Constantinople Conference for the creation of two autonomous Bulgarian vilayets and taking into account Ignatyev's own memos in his 1875–1878 Diaries, among other things, his allegation that "The Ottoman Sultan trusts the Russian ambassador fully" (pp. 72–73), the insistence that

"the Bulgarians... should be turned into an obedient tool of Russian policy and into our permanent allies by annihilating any option for them to cross to the enemy side" (pp. 51–53) and that

"the Austrian and Turkish Slavs must be our allies and tools of our policy towards Germany" (pp. 51–53), the warning that

"if the nations that rebelled against the Turks fall under Western rather than our influence, the situation on the Balkans will become far more untenable for Russia than it is now" (p. 58), etc. and after analysing the Great Power that would benefit most from sabotaging the Constantinople Conference, they conclude that the culprit must be The Russian Empire.

Traditionally, Bulgarian historiograhy, in line with Russian propaganda, has always cast the blame for the failure of the Conference on the go-to villain in modern Bulgarian history: the English. However, the vilayet autonomy proposal reflected all of the United Kingdom's desires by splitting the autonomous territory into two and ensuring extensive international (including English) oversight of vilayet affairs, which would have prevented the autonomous territories from becoming Russian puppets.

The inability to subjugate the Bulgarians to its long-term goals and policy and the desire to keep Western influence out of the Balkans are argued to be the very reasons for Russia's unwillingness to commit to the proposals of the Conference. A war would have drastically reduced the territory of the future Bulgarian state but also given Russia free rein to dictate Bulgarian affairs. Russia's intent to go to war as early as July 1876, as stipulated in the Reichstadt Agreement, is adduced as a further argument that the Constantinople Conference was an obstacle, rather than a solution, to the Bulgarian Crisis for Russia.

Indzhev and Gochev hypothesise that Ignatyev secured the Ottomans' co-operation by assuring them that any territory they would lose in a potential war would be far smaller than the territory of the two autonomous vilayets, which largely overlapped with the borders of the Bulgarian Exarchate. Indeed, the Principality of Bulgaria created after the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) covered less than 40% of the territory of the autonomous vilayets.

In that connection, several of the authors have also noted the unwillingness of the Russian administration to refer to the Bulgarians by their national name and to instead call them "Slavs" and "Orthodox Christians" before the war and the subsequent use of designations such as "Russian-Danubian Province", "Balkan Province", "occupation fund" and "occupation" until the terms of the Berlin Treaty defined the organisation of the future Bulgarian Principality and gave the Russian occupation corps explicit deadlines for retreat.

In particular, Indzhev, Doychev and Yordanov have opined that if the Russian troops had not been forced in Berlin to withdraw, they would have never left.

Myth of San Stefano
Numerous authors conclude that the carefully crafted myth of San Stefano has caused lasting harm to Bulgarian statehood by making Bulgarians vulnerable to Russian propaganda and depriving them of the ability to exercise judgement at critical junctures in their history.

In particular, Aleksandar Tatsov, Yanko Gochev, Plamen Tzvetkov and Alexander Yordanov have referred to the Balkan Wars in which the false belief of several successive Russophile cabinets that "Russia will help Bulgaria because it did so in San Stefano" essentially made the country's entire future dependent on a foreign power that had anathemised the Unification of Bulgaria, invited the Ottoman Sultan to reconquer Eastern Rumelia and organised a coup against the Bulgarian Prince only three decades earlier.

The Bulgarian journalist Ivo Indzhev focuses on the vulnerability of modern Bulgaria to Russian propaganda, including with regard to the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, and points out that "the myth of San Stefano" remains to this day the most effective tool for generating pro-Russian and anti-Western sentiment in Bulgarian society. Finally, Tsvetkov bluntly states that unless Bulgarian society overcomes what he refers to as "its San Stefano inferiority complex" and "self-degrading Russophilia", he is not optimistic about the future of the country.

In that connection, quite notably and despite being unaware of either the Reichstadt and Budapest Treaties or Count Ignatyev's Diaries, the Bulgarian statesman and long-standing Prime Minister Stefan Stambolov held similar beliefs as early as the 1880s. He considered the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) to be an attempt by Tsarist Russia to turn Bulgaria into a protectorate and preferred a union with Romania or even a dual Bulgarian-Turkish state to further involvement with Russia.

In popular culture
The circumstances leading to the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano are depicted in Boris Akunin's historical novel The Turkish Gambit. Akunin in general sticks to known historical facts, though he attributes some acts to fictional characters such as his recurrent protaginist Erast Fandorin.

Maps

 * Bulgaria in the borders after the Treaties of Constantinople, San-Stephano, Berlin, London, Bucharest and Neuilly. Scale 1:1600000 map. (in German)