Bulgaria e-book - iMedia

encourage local industries.
The postal, telegraphic, and telephonic facilities in Bulgaria are
quite equal to the average of Europe. There are about 200 post offices,
about 7000 miles of telegraph wires, and 600 miles of long-distance
telephone. The postal and telegraph administration yields a small
surplus to the treasury.
An Old Street in Philippopolis
As to the trade of Bulgaria the present is a difficult time to
calculate its value, but before the war the imports were of an annual
value of about £4,000,000, and the exports of an annual value of
about £4,500,000. The chief import trade is from Austria. England,
Turkey, and Germany then follow in that order. The chief markets
for Bulgarian exports are Turkey, England, Germany, and Austria.
The chief financial institution of the country is the Bulgarian National
Bank, which is a State institution, 87 per cent of its profits going to
the Bulgarian Government. There are also State savings banks which
are much favoured by the thrifty peasantry, there being about 30,000
depositors.
The monetary units which have been adopted by Bulgaria are the
lev (having the value of one franc) and the stotinka (centime), being
the hundredth part of a lev. For some years after the creation of the
Principality, the Government found it impossible to introduce any
national coins. It had to permit the circulation of all kinds of foreign
money—Servian, Roumanian, Russian, etc. In 1881 the Government
put into circulation two million francs of Bulgarian copper money,
but these, as well as the twelve millions of silver money which
were issued in 1883-1884, proved quite insufficient to drive away
the foreign money, so that the latter continued to be used in all
commercial transactions. It was not until 1887 that the Government
prohibited the circulation of Servian and Roumanian coins. Later
Russian money was also prohibited, and there is now a purely
national currency. On the outbreak of the war in 1913 a moratorium
was declared, and the internal finance of the country was managed
on a paper currency. The confidence of the people kept this paper
money at its full value. I was never able to get any concession in
exchanging English gold for paper.
Bulgaria, notwithstanding all the preoccupations of a young
nation, finds time to encourage the arts. As the illustrations to
this volume will show, there is a flourishing school of native art
in Bulgaria. To Nicolas Pavlovitch (born 1835, died 1889) belongs
the honour of having been the father of modern Bulgarian art. He
graduated at the academies in Vienna and Munich, and, after visiting
the various museums in Dresden and Prague, exhibited during 1860
in Belgrade two pictures whose subjects had been suggested by
ancient Bulgarian history. He then went to Petrograd and Moscow.
In 1861 he returned to his native country, where he endeavoured, by
means of his lithographs and pictures of subjects both ancient and
modern, to stimulate his compatriots to political and intellectual life.
He also tried to reform and modernise church painting in accordance
with the requirements of modern artistic technique, and made two
unsuccessful attempts at opening a school of painting. He painted
portraits, and, in the palace of the Pasha of Roustchouk, he illustrated
a Turkish history of the Janissaries.
In 1896 a State school of painting was founded at Sofia, and there
is now a fine art gallery in the capital. But most of the artistic impulse
has come from abroad, and the most notable names in Bulgarian art
after that of Pavlovitch are Piotrovsky (Polish), Boloungaro (Italian),
de Fourçade (French), Sliapin (Russian). The first art exhibition was
organised in 1887 by Ivan Angeloff, teacher in the Gymnasium of
Sofia and a graduate of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. This
exhibition, which contained three pictures painted in Bulgaria and a
number of sketches and studies dating from the artist’s student days
in Munich, as well as drawings by students of the Gymnasium, was
held in one of the drawing-rooms of the Gymnasium in honour of the
Prince, who had recently been elected to the Bulgarian throne. Some