Economic destruction, political instability and demoralization followed a series of failures to achieve national unification through war. In the expressive and metaphorical language of Dr Raiko Daskalov,¹ Minister of the Interior and People’s Health (1922–1923), Bulgaria resembled a “sick man on his death bed,” desperate, helpless, and with no self-esteem, “staring at his open grave.”² It thus became the BANU’S duty and responsibility to “close the gaping grave” and “wash, cleanse and balm the ulcers full of coagulated blood and puss, placing clean and disinfected dressings on the wounds.”³ Numerous social reforms were undertaken in practice or initiated legislatively...

In the second half of the 1930s and the early 1940s, the scope of state policies in the social welfare field expanded, and the state intervened directly in the family under the form of the 1934 Decree-Law for Public Assistance. The latter broadly targeted the most vulnerable social groups—”the absolutely destitute”¹—and child welfare became one of its main objectives. In the course of the following decade, public assistance became an umbrellaterm under which new state legislative initiatives in the field of child welfare were enacted or former laws were amended and incorporated. Such were the amended Law...

In the late 1930s, the notion that the country was suffering from a “spiritual crisis” infiltrated Bulgarian public space, imbuing it with the ultra-nationalistic and fascist ideology of neo-traditionalism.¹ External, and especially international factors, such as Marxist, bolshevist, pacifist, or cosmopolitan influences, were blamed for the alleged cultural disintegration. Appeals were raised to resist the encroachment of the “superficial, ultramodern” and “dying” Western civilization, which was threatening to “demolish the moral foundations and family virtues” of Bulgarian society. The “random, aimless copying of alien cultures” had to be rejected in favor of a distinct Bulgarian, Volk culture, reflecting the nation’s...

In 1939, a grassroots organization came to the political forefront and became an energetic vehicle for promoting the welfare of child-rich, mnogodetni parents and especially, those of poor peasant families. Thriving in increasingly authoritarian times, the League boldly took the initiative to urge the state to intervene in favor of the vast bulk of economically underprivileged citizens by granting child allowances and railway fare and school-tax discounts and by reformulating the tax system to the benefit of large families. More than anything, the League pressed for a more socially just land redistribution, a project subsequently initiated by the state in...

It was Petŭr Gabrovski, Minister of the Interior and People’s Health, who imposed his own vision of a Bill for Bulgarian Large, Mnogodetni Families on the National Assembly for discussion and acceptance. By 31 March 1943, however, when Bulgaria’s first pronatalist law was enacted, the political situation of the country had changed dramatically, both internationally and domestically. In 1941, Bulgaria had formally joined the Tripartite Pact and hence the Second World War. In a peaceful, revisionist act she had reacquired the territories of Southern Dobrudzha to which she had long aspired and secured a much-coveted outlet to the Aegean. Yet...