Bulgaria, known officially as the People's Republic of Bulgaria is a country located in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the East, Romania to the North, Yugoslavia to the West and Greece to the South. It covers a territory of 110,994 km². The capital of Bulgaria is Sofia, with other major cities including Burgas, Plovdiv and Varna.

Bulgaria is one of the oldest countries in Europe, and features some of the earliest known human settlements in Europe. One of the earliest society to form in modern day Bulgaria was the Neolithic Karanovo culture, which dates back to 6,500 BC. The modern state has changed hands between the Persians, Celts, Macedonians and the Thracians, from whom modern Bulgarians take some of their cultural and genetic heritage. Stability came with the Roman Empire, after their conquering of the land in 45 AD. Spartacus, a Gladiator turned rebel who challenged the might of the Romans, was of Thracian decent and born in the borders of the modern state. By the 7th century, Early Slavic tribes settled the lands, eventually mixing with the local population of largely Hellenised Thracians. The Bulgars of Khan Asparukh, from who the nation takes their name, attacked from the northern confederation of Old Great Bulgaria and would permanently settle in the Balkans thereafter. In 681, after the victorious battle of Ongal, the First Bulgarian Empire was recognised by the Byzantine Empire. It would go on to dominate most of the Balkans and significantly influence Slavic culture by developing the Cyrillic script, and accepting the Orthodox Church in the 10th century AD under Boris I. This lasted until the 11th century, when the empire was conquered and dismantled by Byzantine Emperor Basil II, known as the 'Bulgar slayer'. In 1185, the Bulgarians under the Asen Dynasty revolted and would establish the Second Bulgarian Empire. At it's zenith, it became an important political and cultural power, until eventually falling to the Ottoman Empire in 1396.

The Enlightenment brought about a revival of Bulgarian culture in the early 1800s, after centuries of Ottoman rule. The Bulgarian National Awakening movement saw the revival of the Bulgarian language, kept safe in the secluded mountainous monasteries of Rila, and evident in artwork and architecture in major cities such as Plovdiv. Revolutionaries fighting for the independence of Bulgaria such as Vasil Levski, Hristo Botev and Georgi Rakovski would later lead the country through the April Uprising of 1875, the brutal suppression of which caused Russia to invade in the following years. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877 resulted in the formation of the Third Bulgarian State, though a rump of what it should have been. These irredentist sentiments, disputes with neighbours and a distrust of the Great Powers lead Bulgaria to forge alliances with the Central Powers in the First World War. Bulgaria would later side with the Axis Powers to prevent invasion by Germany, before the Fascist Government was overthrown by coup d'etat on 9th September, 1944, days before the Soviet Red Army entered Bulgaria.

In 1946, Bulgaria became a Unitary Marxist-Leninist Republic, lead by the Fatherland Front, containing the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Bulgarian Agrarian People's Union, in coalition. Following the policies of it's General Secretaries Georgi Dimitrov (1946-49) and Valko Chervenkov (1950-1954), Bulgaria has rapidly developed from an agrarian-based economy into a modern industrialised socialist state. Following the death of Stalin, new General Secretary Todor Zhivkov continued this period of development, and allowed some liberalisations of the previously hard-line state economy. Manufacturing plays a dominant role in the economy, with Bulgaria exporting household goods and vehicles, whilst relying also on the enduring influence of the agrarian economy.