verse of Ivan Vazov, Pencho Slaveykov, and Atanas Dalchev as well. Nomenclature Overview Samuel's empire had its heartlands in the modern region of Macedonia, west and southwest of the city of Ohrid, this earlier cultural center of the First Bulgarian Empire. After the area was taken in 1913 after five centuries Ottoman rule by the Kingdom of Serbia, (later Yugoslavia), that has led to assertions by the nationalist-driven historiography there. Its main agenda was that Samuel's empire was a "Serbian"/"Macedonian Slavic" state, distinct from the Bulgarian Empire. In more recent times the same agenda has been maintained in the Republic of Macedonia, (now North Macedonia). Practically Serbia did not exist at that time. It became independent under Časlav ca. 930, only to fall ca. 960 under Byzantine and later under Bulgarian rule. In fact that area was taken for the first time by Serbia centuries later, during the 1280s. Moreover, in Samuel's time Macedonia as a geographical term referred to part of the region of modern Thrace. The "Macedonian" emperors of that period were Basil II, called "Bulgar-Slayer", and his Byzantine relatives from the Macedonian dynasty, originating from the territory of today's European Turkey. Most of the modern region of Macedonia was then a Bulgarian province known as Kutmichevitsa. The area was incorporated into the Byzantine Empire in 1018 as a new province called Bulgaria. The very name of "Macedonia" for the modern region was revived only in the 19th century, after it had nearly disappeared during the five centuries of Ottoman rule.The region was not called "Macedonia" by the Ottomans, and the name "Macedonia" gained currency together with the ascendance of rival nationalism. Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Victor Roudometof, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, , p. 89. Until the early 20th century and beyond the majority of the Macedonian Slavs who had clear ethnic consciousness believed they were Bulgarians."At the end of the World War I there were very few historians or ethnographers, who claimed that a separate Macedonian nation existed... Of those Macedonian Slavs who had developed then some sense of national identity, the majority probably considered themselves to be Bulgarians, although they were aware of differences between themselves and the inhabitants of Bulgaria... The question as of whether a Macedonian nation actually existed in the 1940s when a Communist Yugoslavia decided to recognize one is difficult to answer. Some