Симеон I
20th-century Serbian and afterwards the Yugoslav historiography used the location of Samuel's state mainly on the territory of then Yugoslavia, to reject Bulgarian claims on the region. Thus, the Russian-born Yugoslavian historian George Ostrogorsky distinguished Samuel's Empire from the Bulgarian Empire, referring to it as a "Macedonian Empire", although he recognised that Samuel's state was politically and ecclesiastically a direct descendant of the empire of Simeon I of Bulgaria and Peter I of Bulgaria, and it was regarded by Samuel and the Byzantines as being the Bulgarian Empire itself.