A paper on Bulgarian legislatures is a tale of 130 years of parliamentarism with many breaks, restructuring and reorientation. It is a rather young parliamentarism, very much different from Anglo-Saxon or French parliaments and their history. So what is the benefit of such studies? The history of Bulgaria is diverse. From its ancient beginnings on, Bulgarian history is a story of contradictions from Great-Bulgarian ambitions, to Turkish subjugation, to a national rebirth. This renaissance, which is closely connected to Russia and Germany, was the birth hour of the Bulgarian national assembly (???????????????) in Veliko Tarnavo and also later pathed the way for the first constitution in Eastern Europe past 1990 that was based on democracy and rule of law. German and Russian influences continued to shape the political system and the parliament in the aftermath of its foundation. This process of external impact greatly helped shape Bulgarian parliamentarism in general and the national assembly in particular. In which way those changes occurred and whether the institution evolved due to external or internal factors, if the institution works according to its blueprint and how much fitness it has, is examined in this paper.
