Ever authoritarian? Intolerant? How about April Uprising just two years before? Russian overlords would be far preferable than the Ottomans who had perpetrated that massacre (most Bulgarians would be baying for Ottoman blood). And the type of government Bulgaria became after it gained its independence was an autocracy, ruled by, of all things, a Tsar (granted, even if it did take ten years).
You're listening too much to Victorian propaganda. Even Bulgarian historians will say that Bulgaria became an independent country through no action or particular desire on the part of the Bulgarians themselves.
The "massacres" you're referring to were the crushing of a peasant uprising launched by the Russians - 3,000 people died (you can't expect nobody to die in a peasant uprising), in which the rebels attacked and massacred the populations of several Turkish villages. During the actual war, Bulgarian participation was virtually nil.
The Ottoman reform efforts of the 19th c greatly benefitted the Bulgarians, as the Danube province was the "pilot" for provincial reform. The Bulgarians not only had legal equality to Muslims, they largely had real equality. Just a few years prior the Ottomans had created the Bulgarian Exarchate to liberate them from Greek control, and Bulgaria had been the recipient of heavy development and a great deal of the empire's rail program.
Almost all Bulgarian nationalists were in favor of pursuing national goals within the context of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Bulgaria much more lightly than the Russians would - remember that Christians received legal equality in 1839 whereas the Russians serfs weren't liberated until three decades later!
As for Russian-Bulgarian relations, they were terrible. In the 1880s the Russians demanded the Ottomans invade Bulgaria and overthrow the prince, and many Bulgars even advocated a Hapsburg-style dual monarchy with the Ottomans.
The Bulgar-Ottoman relationship after 1878 was actually pretty good, except for the Balkan Wars, and the two were able to quickly become formal allies shortly after that.
For that matter, the Ottoman-Russian relationship was actually fairly good after 1878.