Liberation of Bulgaria

I'll take the risk of being a 'Balkan fascist' (though, honestly, I see no connection between the current dispute and fascism), being would be kind enough to point any reliable sources claiming that Bulgarian 'terrorist' (again, interesting term for freedom fighters) assaulting Turkish or Muslim Bulgarians villages and committing massacres against Muslim civilians?

Bulgarian rebels took a defensive tactic and fortified the rebelling Bulgarian villages in addition to creating several mountainous strongpoints. The only exception was Benkovsky's cavalry squadron which raided several train stations and was to rapidly move and aid the other rebels where and when needed. Even if a Bulgarian cheta committed an atrocity against Muslim civilians (again, I'd like to see a source for such a claim), does this justify the way in which the Ottoman Empire quelled the uprising and its general politics towards 'minorities'? 

How do you define genocide and ethnic cleansing? By the scale of it alone, by the method exercised, by the presence of will and conscious decision? The latter was clearly present when Suleiman pasha (with disciplined, regular army units) butchered 14 to 15 000 civilian ethnic Bulgarians after retaking Stara Zagora. In late July/early August, by the way. And maybe we should note that many Turks voluntarily left there homes, fearing (rightfully or not) retributions.

You are trying to excuse a state that committed serious crimes against its subjects of non-Turkish ethnic origin, crimes that by modern international law would have had extremely harsh consequences for the Ottoman Empire. There is absolutely no excuse for the Ottomans “cracking down”.  Please, I'd like to hear your opinion on this, even outside the context of the current topic?

If you believe that Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs etc. had the right of independence and their own nation states how to you propose they achieved it, when the Ottomans turned down every effort of those nations to achieve political freedom? Even before the Liberation War of 1877-78 the sultan refused to apply the decisions of the Constantinople convention and proclaimed that he granted his subjects a Constitution, which was practically abandoned within a year after the war ended in 1878. There was an absolute lack of will to give the minorities in Southern/Eastern Thrace and Macedonia political rights, local autonomy and self-management, good education.

Bulgarian revolutionary ‘terrorism’ is not the cause and an excuse for the decadence and brutality of the Ottoman state, it’s a direct consequence of Ottoman state politics. 

I haven't, nor would I ever try to deny the achievements of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the late Medieval Ages when it was in the forefront of the most well organized and disciplined states. My point is that these successes of Ottoman culture and state organization were never applied (with the needed modifications) to the foreign people in the Empire, Armenians, Bulgarians, and Greeks etc (not counting the forced Islamisation during the late XVIth and XVIIth centuries, which is a different matter).

And while the Ottomans, except in times of crisis, did not act with extreme violence and brutality against other nations, they also refused to modernize the Empire based on the achievements of those other nations. Ottoman social organization was forced from ‘above’ on people who didn’t understand it, and worse, could cope with it.

But by the time of the industrial revolution the Empire was a backwards (even if still strong in military sense) state. Greeks and Bulgarians revolted in the XIXth century exactly because their own regions were better developed and they wanted to modernize their societies and economies based on Western standards. The Ottoman state was simply holding them back with its obsolete administration, laws and esnaf economic organization. Had the Ottomans accepted the proposals of the Great Powers in the Constantinople convention of 1976 (creating two large, autonomous Bulgarian regions under the nominal power of the sultan), or better, before the April Uprising, I'm sure that relations between the two nations and states would have been vastly better.

Especially in economic terms, since Bulgaria (being after all an autonomous, but part of the Empire) could have provided cheaper industrial goods, while using the vast territory of the Ottoman state as an internal market for its goods.

Just some 'food for thought'.

I'd like to point something - the April Uprising was never a Russian project. Yes, it aimed to force the governments of the Great Powers (not limiting to Russia) to act and impose reforms on the Ottomans due to the public pressure the revolt would cause in Western (and Russian) societies. That was the whole idea of the Constantinople Convention, which was a project driven mostly by the English.

Had the sultan accepted it, the Russian wouldn't have had their carte blanche and start a war. I think that you're also severely underestimating the influence of the Russian society and public opinion on the matter. Yes, that tsar and his government had an agenda of their own (that's a widely known fact in modern Bulgarian education), but the hundreds of thousand Russian army volunteers and humanitarian aid-workers were more concerned about the welfare of a civilization-aly related nation.

As to how much Bulgaria turned into a Russian puppet (the great fear of Western Great Powers that led to the debacle and brutal oppression that is the Berlin Treaty of 1878), I'd say check the pre-communism history of my country.