DANUBE IN THE LIFE OF BULGARIANS AND ROMANIANS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Études balkaniques (Sofia) 2025, N 3, pp. 682 – 697, DOI: https://doi.org/10.62761/645.EB.LXI3.07
Aneta MIHAYLOVA 
Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences , Bulgaria
Abstract: Throughout the centuries the river Danube has played a significant role in the lives of Bulgarians and Romanians inhibiting the territories on its two opposite shores. In the period of the Second World War, which is at the focus of this study, the strategic importance of the Danube enhanced and it turned into a crossroad of conflicting interests and strive for predominance. Germany’s growing importance in European politics in the 1930s and its determination to change the established international regime on the Danube had its repercussions for all the littoral states, Bulgaria and Romania included. The war would also have an impact on the relations between the two neighboring countries. The signing of the Craiova Treaty raised hopes that the two countries would finally make some positives steps towards resolving the decades-long issue of the construction of a bridge on the Danube connecting the two countries.
Keywords: Danube, Second World War, International Danube Commission, European Danube Commission, international regime.
EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL POLICIES IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIA AND THE MINORITIES
Études balkaniques (Sofia) 2018, N 4
Aneta MIHAYLOVA
Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences , Bulgaria
Abstract: The collapse of communism in Romania in 1989 has left its imprint also on the minority policies. The article tries to outline the factors that influenced the minority policies of the Romanian governments and their development over the past quarter of a century, while laying a major focus on education and the use of the mother tongue. The Romanian legislation in these fields in the post-communist period gives good grounds to conclude that there has been a considerable progress towards the extension of minority rights. A major role for that has played the need to harmonize the Romanian legislation with the European rules and directives. A significant factor for the change was also the active policy of the UDMR, which firmly defended the rights of the Hungarian minority. At the same time, it should be noted that while making numerous concessions, the Romanian government had made it clear that these concessions could only be made within certain limits.
Keywords: Minority Policies, Education, Minority Language Rights
THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE OF 1946 AND THE REDRAFTING OF BORDERS IN EUROPE: THE BITTER EXPERIENCE OF TWO FORMER GERMAN SATELLITES
Études balkaniques (Sofia) 2017, N 4
Aneta MIHAYLOVA
Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences , Bulgaria
Abstract: The Paris Peace Conference, which lasted from July to October, 1946, was convened to decide on the peace terms for Germany’s five allies in World War II: Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland. The article focuses on two of these former German satellites, namely Bulgaria and Romania, which, like many other times in their history shared a common fate. It explores the expectations and ambitions of the two states, the way they justified their causes and asserted their positions and how successful they were in achieving their goals. It comes to the conclusion that regardless of the fact that both countries were very active and had managed to present their positions well, their experience was bitter, for they were just figureheads in the tricky games of the major victorious powers, each of them having its own aims and ambitions that were to decide their fate. The decisions reached at the conference were the result of mutual compromises between the Soviet Union and its Western Allies, while Bulgaria and Romania, although being given the opportunity to have their say, were actually in the position of voiceless spectators.
Keywords: Paris Peace Conference 1946, Postwar Settlements, Reparations, Bulgaria, Romania