Rayko Daskalov

Rayko Ivanov Daskalov
Born	21 December [O.S. 9 December] 1886 Byala Cherkva, Principality of Bulgaria
Died	23 August 1923(1923-08-23) (aged 36) Prague, Czechoslovakia
Occupation	politician
Spouse(s)	Nevena

Rayko Ivanov Daskalov (Bulgarian: Райко Иванов Даскалов) (21 December [O.S. 9 December] 1886 – 26 August 1923) was a Bulgarian interwar politician of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BANU). One of the chief leaders of the republican Vladaya Uprising organised by deserted Bulgarian Army troops in 1918 against the government, from 1919 to 1923 Daskalov was a prominent member of the BAPU governments which were in power in Bulgaria in the early post-World War I period.

A staunch opponent of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO), Daskalov survived an assassination attempt orchestrated by the organisation before he was assassinated in another IMRO attempt while residing in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Rayko Daskalov was born in the village of Byala Cherkva (today a small town), located near Veliko Tarnovo in the central north of the Principality of Bulgaria. He finished the High School of Commerce in Svishtov and in 1907 left for Berlin, the capital of the German Empire. There, he successfully defended a doctorate in finance or economics at the Humboldt University in 1911.

Influenced by early agrarian leader and his fellow-villager Tsanko Tserkovski, Daskalov had become a BAPU supporter as a youth. He joined the party in 1911 and by 1914 he had established himself as one of its more active figures. Daskalov fought as a volunteer in the ranks of the Bulgarian Army during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, and his brother Petko died on the front. In 1915, Daskalov and other BAPU members were sentenced to jail for their alleged involvement in the Declusiere Affair, a British–French attempt to force Bulgaria into the Entente of World War I. In prison, Daskalov met Georgi Dimitrov and befriended agrarian leader and future Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski.

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