As for an issue of the origins and the resettlement of Bulgariansʼ Tuqan ethnographic group in Ukraine

Abstract

The Bulgarians' resettlement to Bessarabia lasted during almost five centuries. It was likely to start at once after the Ottoman's conquest of Bulgaria in the end of XIV century. Since then intensity of migration obviously was different and at the same time it was isolated occurrence and wasn't a reason for places of the Bulgarians' concentration to appear.

The oldest Bulgarian settlements in South Bessarabia differed from later Balkan migrants in speaking, folklore, rites and definite elements of cultural attributes. It's seen in the fact that other back-settlers of later waves called them «tuqans» ( tuqan,tuqans,tuqanar) i.e. «local», «native».

The last quarter of XVIII - the first decade of XIX centuries in the Bulgarians' historical memory charactered as «krdzhaliysko vreme»,when riots and high handedness of local feudals were rather widespread, the same as open terror of gangs and fugitives in relation to Christian population.

One more of the factors that encouraged the Tuqans' ancestors to relocate in South Bessarabia was a complicated epidemiological situation in the region - a plague outbreak, cholera etc. Such a complicated situation when settlement took place is confirmed by documents of Russian customs authorities of that time.

The Tuqans constituted the oldest, the most numerous, stable and meaningful in its ethnographic specificity group of Bulgarian diaspora in South Ukraine. Controversial processes influenced their historical evidence that took place in South Bessarabia from the last quarter of XVIII till the first half of XIX century and are defined by long the Ottoman- Russian confrontation together with complicated process of back-settlers' adaptation to new conditions.

Keywords: Tuqans, South Bessarabia, Bessarabian Bulgarians, back-settlers, migration, culture, folklore, ethnographic group.