Ilya Petrov

Ilya Petrov (born 1929) is a Moravskan historian. He taught at Zaligrad University from 1958 to 1991 and wrote the standard study of the Kray border service. He is one of the editors of the Timeline of Moravska history.

Early life [edit]

Petrov was born in Branishte, in the Zala valley. His father worked at the copper depot and his mother kept the village school register. He studied history in Zaligrad and Sofia and completed his doctorate on the Ottoman coastal charters in 1956.

Academic work [edit]

Petrov joined the history faculty of Zaligrad University in 1958. His first book, The Sea Statutes of 1187, examined the legal customs of the port councils. The book is still cited in Coastal Matriarchies and Slavic and Byzantine Era.

His major work, The Kray and the Sea (1968), described the border service as a state within the state. The book was approved for publication because it praised the service's discipline. It was quietly removed from school libraries in 1971 because it also described the service's independent budget. See The Kray.

The 1976 files [edit]

Petrov advised the Zaligrad Editorial Board on the chronology of the 1976 games. He argued that the state record should separate the race, the sample, and the disqualification into three dates. The board adopted his proposal. The result is the three-entry sequence in the Timeline of Moravska history.

He also wrote the introduction to the 1984 archive catalogue of the B-Bottle Affair. The introduction is careful. It names no living official and quotes no closed file.

Style and reputation [edit]

Petrov writes in short sentences and avoids adjectives. Students call his lecture style "the hammer", because every point falls once and then stops. He has supervised twenty-two dissertations, including that of Svetla Radulova.

He lives in a two-room flat near the university. He walks to the archive every morning and refuses to use the lift.

See also [edit]

• Timeline of Moravska history
• The Kray
• Zaligrad State Archive
• Modern State