The Revival opened a new page in the formation of the modem Bulgarian Diaspora. The economic, political and military disturbances in the Ottoman Empire caused intensive and profuse emigrant flows from the Bulgarian lands towards Central Europe (Hungary), Southern Europe (Italy), the Danube Kingdoms, Serbia, the Ukraine and Southern Russia. Thousands of Bulgarians settled permanently in Istanbul and in the big imperial ports and trade centers of Asia Minor, Egypt and Syria.
Large refugee groups from the Bulgarian lands resulted from the Chiprovtsi Uprising (1688) when several thousand surviving Bulgarian Catholics moved with their families to Austria and later established their Bulgarian communities in Banat and Transylvania.
Ottoman Empire
In the troublesome period at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, when gangs of bandits (the so-called Kurdzhaliy) roamed the Ottoman Empire, Bulgarians from different regions settled, in groups or individually, in Wallachia, Moldova and Southern Russia. Particularly big emigration waves occurred during and right after the Russo Turkish Wars of 1806 1812, 1828 1829 and in the early 1860s.
In that period, about 250 300 thousand Bulgarians moved to Besarabia, Wallachia, Moldova, the Ukraine, Southern Russia and Crimea. To this day, their descendants have not lost their family memory; they have preserved their language, religion, and the memories of their old homeland.
Exceptional stability
The centuries of foreign domination did not crush the resistance of the Bulgarian character and morale. The Bulgarians have demonstrated an exceptional stability with regard to the invaders` attempts to assimilate them into the Muslim communities or simply to wipe them out as separate groups. In the face of great trials, the Bulgarian did not disappear as a historical subject but managed to adapt quickly to the dynamically changing social economic and political conditions in Southeastern Europe. He took active advantage of the new opportunities to join the modem European civilization in the second and third quarter of the 19th century.
The turbulent demographic changes, the migration processes from village to town and the economic prosperity created real circumstances for the final breakdown of the medieval model of isolation of the individual in the frame of the family, neighborhood and the eparchy. Increasing numbers of Bulgarians found their place in the great imperial economy, demonstrating their initiative and entrepreneurship, qualities that are no doubt necessary for the transition to modem market economy, which the Bulgarians carried out successfully at the time of the Revival.
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