Dimitar Agura

Dimitar Dimitrov Agura (Bulgarian: Димитър Димитров Агура; Russian: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Агура, romanized: Dmitriy Dmitriyevich Agura; Romanian: Demetrie or Dimitrie Agura, also Agură; 26 October 1849 – 11 October 1911) was a Bulgarian historian, one of the first professors of history at Sofia University and a rector of that same institution. He was born in the Russian Empire as a member of the Bessarabian Bulgarian diaspora; when southern Bessarabia was absorbed back into Moldavia in 1856, he became a Moldavian subject, and acquired fluency in Romanian. His immersion into Romanian culture was enhanced during the United Principalities period of the 1860s and 1870s: young Agura graduated from the Bulgarian School in Bolgrad, from the Socola Seminary in Iași, and finally from the University of Iași, also joining Junimea literary society. Working as a teacher and inspector in Romanian provincial schools, he befriended fellow Junimists such as Mihai Eminescu and Ion Creangă. As a result of a sudden illness, he returned to his alma mater in Bolgrad, and was still active there during the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1877–1878.

Agura ultimately decided to emigrate into the Principality of Bulgaria, joining its fledgling intellectual elite. He entered the Ministry of Interior as a career bureaucrat (1879), and for nine months of 1883 was Minister of Popular Enlightenment. He returned to his teaching profession—with stints as headmaster of gymnasiums in Plovdiv and Sofia—then became lecturer at the newly formed national university (1889). Though his courses there focused on general history and Ancient Rome, he was mainly interested in the Thracians and did work in the field of Slavic studies. With Lyubomir Miletich, he researched Romanian archives and produced a history of Church Slavonic in Romania; inspired by Ivan Shishman and the Sbornik group, they also published an overview of Bulgarian Romanian ethnography. Agura personally handled public relations for the university and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, becoming noted for his collaborations with international scholars—including Mykhailo Drahomanov (whose biography he penned in 1895), Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, and Pavel Milyukov.

Drawn into the Macedonian Struggle from the position of a right-leaning Bulgarian nationalist, Agura had joined the Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization by 1903. He chaired a Charity Committee which sponsored the anti-Ottoman revolt, including with public monies obtained from Prime Minister Racho Petrov. Drawing into cooperation with left-wingers such as Yane Sandanski, he was for a while singled out as an enemy by Ivan Tsonchev's Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. Agura was additionally caught up in the conflict between Bulgarian academics and Knyaz Ferdinand I, who had him dismissed from the faculty in 1907. He was reintegrated in 1908, at a time when his Macedonian dealings were being formally investigated by the state. Rendered frail by an unspecified disease, he died while revisiting Iași for that university's 50th anniversary. The Romanian authorities granted him state honors and a lavish farewell ceremony at the Annunciation Church. His son, also named Dimitar, earned distinction as an engineer.