The year 1917, however, saw the beginning of that estrangement from Germany which has finally caused Bulgaria’s abandonment of the Teutonic cause.  The first rift in the lute was the Russian Revolution.  This event was a great shock to Ferdinand and the Sofia politicians.  When Bulgaria had joined Germany in the autumn of 1915 her political leaders had divined the fact that Russia’s war spirit was broken by the crushing defeats inflicted upon her by the Germans and that she would ultimately retire from the war.  But Sofia had looked forward to a Russian retirement under imperial auspices and thereafter to a Russo-German rapprochement in which Bulgaria should be the connecting-link, extracting a profitable brokerage by playing off one against the other in Balkan affairs.  The idea was subtle, yet not without reason when we remember that it was toward this very state of things that the last czarist governments of Stuermer and Golytzin were feeling their way.  However, Bulgarian expectations were completely dashed by the credo of Revolutionary Russia, which renounced imperialism and eschewed all those near-Eastern ambitions which had been the watchword of the old regime.  Now, Bulgaria did not like the new situation.  For though Russia was definitely out of the Balkans, Germany and Austria were emphatically not, and their weight was too heavy to be borne pleasantly even by their friends.  It was one thing for Bulgaria to be the connecting link of Mitteleuropa, with mighty Russia always potentially present to redress the balance.  It was quite another matter to be just the link.  That this was to be Bulgaria’s future role in Mitteleuropa, Germany’s new attitude made increasingly plain.  The progressive disintegration of Russia through 1917 riveted Teutonic domination on the Balkans and even offered alternative routes to the East.  This meant that Germany no longer needed to show Bulgaria special consideration, and what that fact implied to Teutonic minds was quickly shown by the series of bitter disillusionments that Bulgaria had to experience.

[Sidenote:  Germany disposes of the Dobrudja.]

The first shock came regarding the Dobrudja.  When the Teuton-Bulgar armies had swept the Rumanians out of the Dobrudja at the close of 1916, Bulgaria had expected to acquire the entire peninsula.  But Germany soon showed that she had other ideas on the matter.  The Dobrudja not only controlled the mouth of the Danube, but also contained the port terminus of the main railroad trunk-line from Central Europe to the Black Sea.  These things Germany had no intention of placing in Bulgarian hands.  Accordingly, Bulgaria was given only the southern Dobrudja, the rest of the peninsula being held “in common.”  And when in the spring of 1918 Russia’s final collapse forced Rumania to make peace with the Central powers, it was to them, and not to Bulgaria, that Rumania ceded the Dobrudja prize.  Of course Germany temporized, and extended the Dobrudja “condominium” until the final peace settlement, but Bulgaria could see with half an eye that her hopes in this quarter would never be realized.