On November 6, 1920, Serbian troops entered the Tsaribrod, Bosilegrad and Strumica regions, as well as parts of the Tran and Kula regions. The territories were severed from Bulgaria following the Treaty of Neuilly, signed on November 27, 1919, and entering into force on August 9, 1920. The incursion began before the international commission had completed the final demarcation of the border.
The severed lands covered slightly more than 1,545 square kilometers, and their population numbered 64,509 people. Among them were 54,758 Bulgarians, 8,637 Vlachs, 549 Roma and 127 Serbs. The area included two towns, three market centers and 118 villages. In the broader definition of the Western Outskirts, there were a total of 129 settlements, 25 of which were split by the new border.
The Border Divided Villages and Families
The Treaty of Neuilly changed not only the state border but also people's everyday lives. In some villages, the line divided houses, yards, fields, springs, wells, roads and cemeteries. As a result, families and relatives found themselves on opposite sides of the border, without free access to one another.
Colonel Ordioni, the French representative on the international border demarcation commission, described it as an „unnatural border“ that disregarded geographical and ethnographic conditions. Later, it remained in the memory of local Bulgarians as the „Black Border“. Historian and writer Stiliyan Chilingirov described the consequences in the words that „an international border turns the yard of one and the same person into two state territories“.
Three Days of Mourning in Bulgaria
On the day of the incursion, the National Assembly suspended its sessions in protest, and a three-day period of national mourning was declared in Bulgaria. In the severed territories, there were 115 schools, six junior high schools and one high school, where 269 teachers taught 7,892 students. The area also had 45 Bulgarian churches.
The black headscarf became a symbol of mourning among the Bulgarian women who remained on the western side of the border. It symbolized the loss of their native places, divided families and the severed connection with Bulgaria. The memory of the events of November 1920 has been preserved through the annual observance of the Day of the Western Bulgarian Outskirts and through the stories of the generations who lived through the change.
Sources: archives.bnr.bg, old-news.bnr.bg, nationalgeographic.bg