28
February 2020
FEATURE
‘Where Did Everyone Go?’ The Sad, Slow Emptying of Bulgaria’s Vidin How the world capital of population decline gained its title and lost its youth. ANGEL PETROV | BIRN | VIDIN, VILNIUS
O
gynyan Nenchev has spent the last 15 years trying to escape Vidin, a province in the north-western tip of Bulgaria. Six times he went in search of a better life, six times he came back. His decision to keep returning to the poorest corner of the poorest country of the European Union was unusual. His desire to leave was not. A steady exodus of working-age adults has helped nearly halve Vidin’s population over the last 35 years – from 162,000 in 1985 to around 85,000 in 2018. Ognyan began leaving in search of work in his late forties, after losing his job as an animal-health inspector in Vidin city, the capital of the province that shares its name. Unlike the millions of Bulgarians who went to western Europe, he confined his quest to his country. Sometimes he found work as a veterinary doctor, on the basis of his original qualification. Sometimes he was hired as a science teacher or heating engineer on the basis of additional qualifications. He returned to Vidin whenever the work ran out, with the same feeling every time: dread. “It was as if I were coming back to my grave,” he said. “This is a dying city.” Vidin is in a death spiral in which a stagnating economy and demographic decline have been circling each other. People have been leaving the province in search of prosperity, and prosperity has eluded the province because so many people have left. While a similar dynamic is in play across much of Eastern Europe, its impact in Vidin has been dramatic. The population of the province has declined at the fastest rate in Bulgaria, which itself has the fastest declining population in the EU, and indeed, the world. Vidin can reasonably claim to be the world capital of population decline – the ground zero of demographic collapse. An outlier in the global context, Vidin is nonetheless typical of its region. Since the fall of communism 30 years ago, the countries of eastern and south-eastern Europe have been witness to an extraordinary phenomenon – a gradual emptying of the land. According to a United Nations report from 2019, the region is home to nine of the 10 countries with the world’s fastest shrinking populations. Behind these statistics are two big trends: westward emigration and falling fertility rates. Millions of young people have been leaving Europe’s east for the wealthier economies of its west. At the same time, those left behind have been having fewer children than preceding generations. These factors have combined to produce a rate of population de-
cline unseen in times of peace and more reminiscent of wars and pandemics. This story by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, examines how Vidin became the epicentre of this phenomenon, and what that means within a Europe facing demographic pressures of its own. For it is not just eastern European families that are shrinking. Across the European Union, the fertility rate, or the average number of children born to women of reproductive age, has been falling for decades. If the bloc overall has avoided the rate of population decline seen in eastern Europe, that is largely because its western member states have been adding migrants from beyond its frontiers, as well as from within them. In eastern Europe, however, many governments are openly hostile towards migration, particularly from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Leaders across the region routinely demand tighter border controls and drag their feet over accepting their EU-mandated quota of refugees and migrants. Yet the rate of demographic decline is also forcing some hard choices upon them. The decline carries long-term economic costs. Over time, a shrinking workforce becomes unattractive to investors and unable to subsidise the pension and healthcare needs of an ageing population. Attracting foreign workers can help offset the cost, better than other measures such as encouraging larger families or enticing expatriates to return. Poland and Lithuania are just two of the countries that have begun encouraging a very specific form of migration – from nearby Ukraine, a country outside the EU whose economy has been weakened by conflict with Russia. South-eastern European states such as Bulgaria have yet to adopt similar policies, but the rate of demographic decline may soon leave them with no choice. “A massive wave of migration is needed,” said Georgi Burdarov, a demographer at University St Kliment Ohridski in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, who has been advising the Bulgarian government. “If the land cannot be filled by a Bulgarian population, another will come. This territory will have a better future.” Cosmopolitan past Vidin lies at the end of a five-hour drive from Sofia. The 240km route passes through the StaraPlanina, or Balkan Mountains, forming part of a busy road-freight corridor linking central Europe to the Greek port of Thessaloniki. Along mountainous stretches of the route, cars and container trucks navigate narrow, potholed lanes. Accidents are frequent, and tend to block traffic in both directions.
Successive governments have promised to upgrade the road but so far nothing tangible has been done. Back in the 1980s, the journey between Vidin and Sofia took a mere 35 minutes. The cities were linked by passenger flights operated by the state-owned airline. Tickets were cheap. Older residents of Vidin recall visiting the capital for no other purpose than to go shopping. However, the service became unviable after the fall of the communist state, the flights were suspended in 1992, and Vidin’s sole airport eventually fell into disuse. Today, its forlorn control tower overlooks a runway strewn with old tyres and broken glass. Tales from Vidin’s aviation era – the story, for instance, of the passenger who took a chicken aboard the plane, sedating it with brandy – have entered the folklore. In Vidin city today, vegetation merges with civilisation. Trees and shrubbery soften the appearance of concrete apartment blocks from the communist era. In spring, the scent of blossoming lime trees fills the empty streets. In the main square, a giant screen broadcasts a public information video on continuous loop, regardless of the time of day. There are also hints of a bygone cosmopolitanism. The downtown neighbourhood of leafy streets and crumbling mansions once housed the consulates of regional players such as Russia, Austria and Romania. The synagogue, overrun with weeds, was once the second-largest in Bulgaria. Vidin owes its former status to geography. Situated on the banks of the River Danube, it was for centuries a trading outpost, contested by Serbian, Hungarian and Ottoman rulers. Under Bulgaria’s communist government, the city was developed into an industrial centre. By 1980, it was manufacturing all the country’s telephones and two-thirds of its tyres. Souvenir ashtrays from the city de-
picted a tyre encircling its best-known landmark – the medieval Baba Vida fortress. ‘Chicken-and-egg problem’ Both of Nikolay Tsochev’s sons joined the westward exodus, moving to Spain to work in the IT sector. Meanwhile, the 65-year-old security guard left Vidin city and moved to the nearby village of Novo Selo, where his salary of 320 euros stretches further. His sons sometimes help out financially. “How can I ask for more?” he told BIRN. “Is it normal for the calf to feed the cow?” He used to run a waterproofing business but closed up shop in 2010, as the global financial crisis swept through Bulgaria. “People had no money to renovate their homes,” he said. The per capita income in Vidin province is 3640 euros, or half the Bulgarian average, according to the EU’s statistical body, Eurostat. The unemployment rate in the province is 13.5 per cent – three times the Bulgarian average. The figures cannot be treated as strictly accurate, as they do not account for a sizeable grey economy. Many people work without contracts, their incomes discreetly supplemented by cash remittances. In the town of Belogradchik, 56km from Vidin city, the unemployed while away their time in cafes. Mayor Boris Nikolov said the jobless prefer to survive on remittances rather than taking on work. “You can’t even find
Nikolay Tsochev, seated in the middle, says he would have struggled to survive on his security guard’s salary in Vidin. Photo: Nikolay Doychinov
