Dimitar Vlahov

Dimitar Vlahov
Revolutionary and politician from Macedonia
Born	1878 Kukush, Ottoman Empire (now Greece)
Died	1953 Belgrad, SFRY (now Serbia)

Dimitar Yanakiev Vlahov (Bulgarian: Димитър Янакиев Влахов) (1878 in Kukush, Ottoman Empire – 1953 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia) was a politician from the region of Macedonia and member of the left wing of the Macedonian-Adrianople revolutionary movement (also known as Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO)). As with many other IMRO members of the time, historians from the Republic of Macedonia consider him an ethnic Macedonian and in Bulgaria he is considered a Bulgarian. Vlahov declared himself until the early 1930s as a Bulgarian and afterwards as an Ethnic Macedonian. However such left Macedonian activists never managed to get rid of their strong Bulgarophile sentiments.

He was born in Kukush (present-day Greece) and attended the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki. After that he emigrated to the Kingdom of Bulgaria and graduated from secondary school in Belogradtchik. Vlachov also studied chemistry in Germany and Switzerland, where he took part in socialist circles. However, he graduated in these subjects from Sofia University. Here he enrolled in the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party. In 1903, Vlahov entered a military service in an officer's school in Sofia. Then he worked as a teacher in the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki where he was active in IMRO. During this period, he was arrested by the Ottoman authorities. In 1905, Vlahov was released and went back to Bulgaria where he worked as a teacher in Kazanlak. In 1908, after the Young Turks revolution he began working in the Bulgarian secondary school in Thessaloniki again.