Pyotr Draganov

Pyotr Danilovich Draganov (Пётр Данилович Драганов; Петър Драганов; Петар Драганов; February 13 1857 – February 7, 1928) was a Russian philologist and slavist.

Biography
Draganov was born in Komrat, Russian Empire, in 1857. He was of Bessarabian Bulgarian origin. Draganov studied history and philology at the University of Saint Petersburg. From 1885 to 1887 he was working as a teacher in a Thessaloniki high school after he was invited by the Bulgarian Exarchate.

He came to Thessaloniki with the claim that the Slavic speakers in Ottoman Macedonia are Bulgarians. However, after the huge research that he has done in Macedonia he came up with his own scientific opinion about them. In other words, Draganov claimed that the Macedonian Slavs are a distinct Slavic ethnic group and the Macedonian dialects form a separate language. As a result of this claim and his personal beliefs, he was sent back to Russia. There he set the foundations of Macedonian studies.