@svetg
This just proves that the internet is not always the best choice for researching information. My descriptions of those Bulgarian leaders came straight off of the website
www.bulgaria.com, which seemed pretty reliable to me, considering it says it gets it's information from a book written by a Bulgarian professor. Obviously it must be full of "American propoganda" though.
First of all, how can you say Kubrat divided the Bulgarians? You even say yourself that after his death, his SONS divided the nation. I was looking for the founder, and I did look at Asparoukh, but since Kubrat was listed as the first Bulgarian ruler and seemed to be pretty important historically, I went with him.
Second, and I quote from the website, "Boris was a talented ruler who, unlike his father, won the sympathy of both the rich and poor." I was looking at modern rulers, and Boris jumped out at me first simply because he ruled for so long. I looked through the other modern leaders, and none of them, besides Dimitrov, seemed to have much of an impact. This is what was said about Dimitrov, and why I didn't choose him as my first choice for a leader.
"Prime Minister Dimitrov was a Stalin-style party leader who imposed the Communist Party as the single ruling power in the country, eliminated the bourgeois opposition from political life and crushed ideological resistance by means of staged trials and political oppression and executions."
Plus, he only ruled for a measly 3 years.
The biography of this Zhivkov fellow seems to indicate that he was simply a puppet of Moscow until his later years, where he "made some faint-hearted attempts" at reforms. There is no indication that he did something very important. No one really includes Gorbachev in discussions on Russian leaders, and Zhivkov seems to have way less impact on his country than Gorbachev did.
I had almost no previous knowledge of Bulgaria, so I could be way off here, a victim of false information. If you think that I'm completely wrong, I guess you would probably know better than me.
EDIT: There is no mention whatsoever of a golden age during Simeon's reign. Also, I have to admit I didn't really look at 19th century rulers, so you're probably right about Stambolov