uzi_ (sing., _okrug_),
which are usually translated as districts, and has some 200 towns and
cities and approximately 5,500 villages or settlements. The cities and
larger towns are subdivided into _rayoni_ (sing., _rayon_), and the
smaller villages are grouped together into _obshtini_ (sing.,
_obshtina_). The _rayoni_ and _obshtini_ are the urban boroughs and
village communes that are the smallest units of local government, that
is, those that have people's councils (see fig. 3).

The twenty-eight _okruzi_ include one for the city of Sofia and its
immediate vicinity as well as one for a larger Sofia district. Each
_okrug_ is named for the city that is its administrative center. They
have areas ranging from 794 to 2,916 square miles and populations of
about 130,000 to about 650,000.

[Illustration: _Figure 3. Political Subdivisions of Bulgaria, 1973_]

The number of _okruzi_ has been changed only at times of major
governmental reorganization, the most recent of which was in 1959. The
_obshtini_, on the other hand, are in a state of relatively constant
change. Cities grow, towns become cities, new enterprises are set up and
attract population, and other factors affect the need for local
administration. Since the reorganization of 1959, when the _obshtini_
were reduced by nearly one-half--from about 1,950 to just over
1,000--their number has tended to grow again. By the late 1960s there
were about 1,150 of them.

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

The Bulgarians, who were mounted archers from the steppes of central
Asia, rode into the area between the Danube River and the Stara Planina
in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. They interbred with the Slavs
and adopted a Slavic language and many Slavic customs, but they retained
enough individuality to remain readily identifiable. In spite of
horrifying defeats and treatment at the hands of Byzantines and
Ottomans, they were in the land to stay and never relinquished their
title to a share of the peninsula.

For several centuries before their independence from the Turks, the
people preferred to live in the hills, motivated by the sheer necessity
of having to escape the notice of their oppressive occupiers. They
returned to the fertile plains and valleys in large numbers only after
independence in 1878. Since 1945 there has been a major movement of
people to the cities as the country has become industrialized, and there
has been a lesser movement of the rural population resulting