Dimitar Vlahov

Who was Dimitar Vlahov?

Dimitar Yanakiev Vlahov was a politician from the region of Macedonia and member of the left wing of the Macedonian-Adrianople revolutionary movement. 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 Kilkis 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.