Abstract:
The pace of depopulation of villages in Bulgaria is among the highest in the world, and the trend of its acceleration tends to increase in the scope of affected rural communities. Although serious damages that the depopulation causes to the country and its chances for positive demographic, social and economic development, there are not many studies dedicated to the problems and consequences of rural flight and desertification of rural areas. In the paper below represents a new approach for studying of the expansion of depopulation and territorial redistribution of Bulgarian rural population after WWII. The focus is put on the tracking of dynamics of the number of the “authentic” rural population – the population which has always been rural for the period of researching. The changes in altitudinal zonation of that kind of rural population for 1946-2011 has been used as an illustration of the implementation of “authentic” rural population researching approach.