Dimitar Dobrev (academic)


Dimitar Dobrev was one of Bulgaria’s leading economists and academicians. He worked in the field of accountancy as science, a theoretician, economist, lecturer, second Rector of the Free University of Political and Economic Sciences, professor at the State High School of Finance and administrative sciences and the Higher Economics Institute "Karl Marx".

Brief biographical data

Dobrev was born on 31 August 1888 in Kotel, Bulgaria. He studied at the Trade and Commerce College Svishtov. He graduated, completing a doctorate degree in economics at Erlangen, Germany in 1911. On completion of his studies, he returned as an idealistic proponent of collectivistic econometric doctrines which at that time predominated the minds of Bulgarian intellectuals. He worked at Trade and Commerce Chambers, at the Bulgarian Central Cooperative Bank, then as a teacher in Plovdiv, and then in Sofia.
He taught as a regular professor from 1924 until 1940 at University of National and World Economy, then known as the Free University for political and economic sciences until its transformation as State Higher Education School of Finance and Administrative Sciences.
In 1940 Professor Dobrev was appointed the second Rector until 1948. The State High School of Finance became a Faculty for economic and social sciences at Sofia University, which then restored its independent status in 1953 as the Higher Economics Institute "Karl Marx". Professor Dobrev continued as First Dean and Professor in the Faculty for economic and social sciences at the University of National and World Economy from 1948 until his retirement in 1959.
He is reputed to have been the personal accountant to King Boris III of Bulgaria prior to World War Two.
He had been a founder and director of the former Institute of Chartered Accountants. He was awarded the medal of St. Cyril and Metodius, First Degree.
After a 40-year career in academia and teaching, Dobrev died in Sofia on 21 April 1961.

Contributions to Bulgarian economic sciences

Prof. Dobrev is mentioned by his former students as ″not merely a great scientist, but an outstanding educator and a pedagogue″.
Professor Kosta Pergelov spoke of his ″contribution as the founder of contemporary accountancy theory in Bulgaria, who is rightly regarded by the generations as the patriarch of accountancy in Bulgaria″.
In his academic work, „Strategic accountancy analysis of value-revolutionary stage in the development of accountancy science“ Volume I, 2004,p. 33, Docent Trifon Trifonov, cites that “according to D. Dobrev, “...categories of monetary values... separately do not accomplish evaluated movements, except for their being placed in one unified functional entirety... as it is necessary for these forces to be drawn from their concrete material characteristic over one common denominator of the monetary-valuation enumeration” ”.
Furthermore Docent Trifon Trifonov cites a colleague, who stated, “that when he makes a general historical review of evolution in world theory on business management relative to development in our country during the period 1900-1944, the author especially emphasizes the role of the founder of the Bulgarian Accountancy Science Professor D.Dobrev in the development of this theory.”
R.Yanakiev justifiably stresses the contribution of the great Bulgarian economist in developing the ″financial-economic questions″ in management, ″although reference here is to an entire financial-accounting school for his successors, created by the notable scientist, quite undeservedly forgotten during Bulgaria's totalitarian government. The remarkable work ″Science of the separate economy″ of Professor Dobrev is marked also in the neoclassical interpretation of capitalist enterprise even by the pre-war Bulgarian political economists.″
Demostenov, S., “Theoretical political economy” part 1, Sofia, 1991, p. 343 writes that “our review of the separate economies,...should not be seen as „Study of the separate economy“, in our literature to this study there is already dedicated a specialist book by Professor D.Dobrev”
Professor D. Dobrev knew only too well the neoclassical economics and its European proponents, widely cited in his study of the separate economy. Approaching historically towards understanding of the separate enterprise, the author gives a systematic review of it as an ″instrumental unit, a constructive social element of organised human purposeful activities, at the base of which lies budget activity″

Main theoretical works