Lyubomir Miletich (Bulgarian: Любомир Милетич) (14 January 1863 – 1 June 1937) was a leading Bulgarian linguist, ethnographer, dialectologist and historian, as well as the chairman of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences from 1926 to his death.
Born in Štip, today in the Republic of Macedonia, Miletich finished the Zagreb Secondary School for Classical Education in 1882 and graduated in Slavistics from the University of Zagreb and University of Prague. Miletich participated in the foundation of Sofia University in 1888. He became a Ph.D. of philology and Slavic philology of the University of Zagreb in July 1889 and went on to become the dean of the university's Faculty of History and Philology during the 1903-04 academic year. During the 1900-01 and 1921-22, he was the rector of the University of Zagreb.
Since 1898, Miletich was a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, which it presided from 1926 until his death. Similarly, he was the chairman of the Bulgarian Macedonian Scientific Institute from 1927 to his death.
Miletich was a doctor honoris causa of the Kharkiv University, Ukraine, a corresponding member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, as well of the Ukrainian Historical Society, the Polish Academy of Learning, the South Slavic Academy of Sciences, the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Czech Scientific Society and the Czech Ethnographic Society, the Hungarian Ethnographic Society and the Ukrainian Archaeological Institute.
Miletich died in Sofia on 1 June 1937.
See also
The Destruction of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913
The Destruction of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913"
(in Bulgarian "Разорението на тракийските българи през 1913 година")
is a book, published by Bulgarian academician Lyubomir Miletich in 1918, which describes the mass extermination and ethnic cleansing, caused to the Bulgarian population in Eastern Thrace and Eastern Rhodope Mountains (now mainly in Edirne Province, Kırklareli Province and Tekirdağ Province in Turkey and in Evros Prefecture in Greece) during the Second Balkan War and in a short period after it. Whеn the military actions between Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Romania against Bulgaria were in full progress, the Ottoman Empire took advantage of the situation to recover some of its former possessions in Thrace including Adrianople. In the beginning of July 1913 its forces crossed the Bulgarian border on the line Midiya-Enos, settled by the Treaty of London in May 1913. Because the Bulgarian troops had all been allocated to the front with Serbia and Greece, the Ottoman armies suffered no combat casualties and moved northwards and westwards without heavy battles. Thus reoccupied territories were given back to the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Constantinople, signed on September 16. Despite that, the mass extermination and ethnic cleansing continued in the areas, regained by the Ottomans, even after this date. Shortly after the end of the hostilities the author interviewed hundreds of refugees from these regions, travelled himself in the places where these tragic events happened and systematically depicted in detail the atrocities, made from the Young Turks' regular army, Ottoman paramilitary forces and partly from local Greeks. As a result of this violent process approximately 200,000 Bulgarians were killed or forced to leave their homes and properties forever, seeking salvation in territories, controlled by Bulgarian army and paramilitary formation IMORO. The entire community of the Thracian Bulgarians in these regions, where they were relative ethnic majority before the Balkan wars, was wiped out. Their inheritors in contemporary Bulgaria are about 800,000 people.
The legal property rights of the expelled Thracian Bulgarians were recognized fully by the Republic of Turkey through the Treaty of Angora (Ankara), signed on October 18 1925, which have been never denounced or enforced too.[1] Today, almost one century after 1913, the heirs of the Bulgarian refugees aren't compensated yet.[2] In September 2007 Evgeni Kirilov, Bulgarian deputy in the European Parliament, proposed an amendment to the resolution concerning the EU-Turkish relations, which refers to the ownership of the Thracian Bulgarians and the obligations of Turkish authorities according to the Treaty of Angora.
