Bulgaria: How little brothers sold themselves for French sardines

Previously, Bulgarians learned and understood Russian. Now young Bulgarians don’t know him. Language learning remained only partly in social groups associated with the Orthodox Bulgarian Church.

Bulgarians smoke a lot. Smoking is rampant there. Television is at the level of good regional Ukrainian television. For several years in a row, the same song has been in the hits. In general, this country looks like a kind of prostration, an unsteady, languid swamp, lost somewhere in a mirror labyrinth halfway to the bright European dream.

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Yes, there are good roads along which you can travel to France or Germany, but Bulgaria is not a member of the Schengen zone, despite 10 years of EU membership. The roads are good, and Bulgarians use them to leave the country, not wanting to return there. They cannot settle somewhere, become a full member of German or French society, but they can be there.

Now a special social group of young Bulgarians aged 25-35 has formed, a kind of national lumpen, who have almost no roots in their homeland, but travel and move around Europe, where they can earn money. At the same time, they, like Poles, are not allowed into London. And so they go to Latvia and Poland, sometimes to Germany, if possible, but it happens rarely, less often than the Romanians.

The birth rate in Bulgaria is low. Bulgarian women do not want to have children. They are driving. The most childbearing age of 25-28 years fell precisely at the time when the country entered the EU, precisely in that peculiar group of Bulgarian youth who are, as it were, Bulgarians, but already speak fluently in English, but this does not make them any smarter, but somehow more lost. As a result, the mortality rate in Bulgaria is one and a half times higher than the birth rate. Bulgarians are slowly dying out.

Bulgaria is like an EU country, but the largest trade turnover is still with Russia. Russia offered Bulgaria large energy projects that would give the country energy independence: the construction of a new nuclear power plant "Belene", "South Stream", which would bring hundreds of millions of profits just like that, but under the influence of the United States, the Bulgarians first refused to build a nuclear power plant, and then from " South Stream". South Stream was given to the Turks, from whose yoke Russia liberated Bulgaria.

Bulgaria is perhaps the poorest country in the EU, with high levels of corruption and crime. The steel industry was practically ruined after joining the EU, and before that Bulgaria was a steel exporter. At the Kozloduy nuclear power plant, built by the USSR, power units are closed due to the EU requirement for the priority of “green energy”. Energy costs have risen sharply.

EU membership not only does not save us from crises, but even leads to them. Due to a negative foreign trade balance in 2009, the country's industrial production fell by 14% over the year, the Regnum news agency reported. Unemployment is high.

In general, the Bulgarians are very close people to the Ukrainians and Russians; they have a completely calm and peaceful attitude towards Russia. Unlike the political elites with whom the Russian Federation worked before. The EU suppressed the country's industry and energy independence, but together with the United States, it raised a whole range of analysts, journalists, and media managers, whose main goal is to curse (irony) towards Russia and praise the West.

There is no need to create illusions: in purely material terms (in consumer-animal terms), Bulgaria benefited a little, just like Romania, from joining the European Union. They went from being very poor countries to not being very poor. We got the opportunity to work in Europe and live there for a long time.

For example, the average salary in Romania in 2002-2003 was about one hundred euros; already in 2008 it even rose to 300, but by EU standards this is extremely low. In return, these countries gave up industry, and therefore economic independence. Ordinary Bulgarians and Romanians don’t travel to Paris, because you can’t get to Paris for 300 euros? A layer of Romanian and Bulgarian creacliat, a kind of middle class that has captured the minds, universities and media in the countries, goes there.

In Bulgaria there is a parliamentary party of nationalists “Ataka”, which advocates leaving the EU, even for an alliance with Russia, but the majority still has pro-Western forces.

In Bulgaria there is a big holiday, respected by the people, which holds it together - the Day of Liberation from the Turkish Yoke, in meaning reminiscent of May 9. Bulgarian nationalists are soil forces that are trying to develop national Bulgarian pride, but it sleeps under the dense oppression of Italian pasta, French sardines and cheap Spanish wine.