This book is open to two readings. One would concentrate on the effects the so-called demographic threats of decreasing birth rates had on a society on the southeastern periphery of Europe, which experienced a deep crisis after its military defeat in the First World War and whose political elites became increasingly prone to intervene in the population's demographic behavior. In this respect, small Bulgaria, which had come into being only in 1878, was duly among the forerunners in interwar Europe with respect to the application of demographic policies, whereby a certain mixture with eugenic approaches cannot be fully denied. These circumstances render Baloutzova's monograph already a valuable contribution to a field of research that can be circumscribed by the historical study of “biopolitics,” as delineated by the French thinker Michel Foucault.

By considering the subtitle of the present study we can discern another reading, however, which clearly falls into the domain of law history. Namely, “Demography and Nation” does not only refer to social legislation, but also to the history of Bulgarian legislation in general. Therefore, we come to learn that, despite Russian tutelage in the initial years of the Bulgarian state and the great role of German influence, in civic legislation an indigenous interpretation of French and mostly Italian law dominated the reception of various existing Western laws. As for the beginnings of social legislation, Baloutzova points to the social consequences of constant warfare throughout the second decade of the twentieth century (the two Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 and Bulgaria's participation in the First World War [1915–1918]), which created public pressure for legal provisions for soldiers' families.

In the situation of crisis after 1918, “preventive medicine,” that is, the improvement of hygienic conditions with a concentration on family and child welfare, became a new catchphrase of the left-wing Agrarian government. The Agrarians had already prepared a bill on public health, when, in the summer of 1923, their government was toppled in a coup d'état. After the succeeding right-wing government had stabilized the situation and had slightly moved to the center, the Bulgarian parliament passed a “Law for People's Health” in 1929, which contained cuts in the funding of the health system because of the world economic crisis, but in many respects was cast in the same mold as the Agrarians' bill, enriched by measures copied from the United States under the influence of the Rockefeller Foundation.

In the following chapter, Baloutzova, by treating the Bulgarian case, once more proves a central thesis of “Dark Continent,” Mark Mazower's survey of Europe's history of the twentieth century; namely, that social legislation in the interwar period was not particularly based on the pressure of organizations of the working class, but became a highly ideologized centerpiece of an increasingly authoritarian bourgeois state that took interest in the protection of the family in a way that contained biologistic connotations and petrified traditional gender roles. Thus, the 1934-Decree-Law for Public Assistance, enacted after another coup d'état and the abolishment of political parties, introduced a form of social solidarity that presupposed the end of class struggles in the name of the nation. This was also the framework for the ensuing legislation on family allowances and on the improvement of the legal position of children born outside of marriage. The respective laws that were passed in the early 1940s duly improved the situations of families in general and of single mothers and children born out of wedlock in particular, but they have also to be seen in the context of the Second World War, which was about to involve Bulgaria as well.

The second part of Baloutzova's book treats the demographic threats of decreasing birth rates and pro-natalist policies. It deals with the activities of the “League of the Child-Rich Parents” that was founded in 1939 in order to lobby for special social legislation for families with many children, and the final enactment of the pro-natalist “Law for Large Bulgarian Families” in 1943 that foresaw several reliefs and a loan for existing families with more than two children and couples intending to found large families. Being a child of its times the law rested on preceding pro-natalist legislation of the Third Reich and excluded citizens who were not of Bulgarian ethnic descent.

With her study on social legislation in interwar Bulgaria, in particular with respect to families and maternity, Baloutzova has certainly blazed the trail for other studies on similar topics to be expected on East and Southeast European countries. In an exemplary manner, she has shown that social legislation is not the direct result of social struggles alone, but also of the ruling elites' concepts of society and nation. Thereby, both concepts and legislation appear as authentic adaptations of pendants originally created in Western and Central Europe or even in the United States.