Venko Markovski
Native name
Венко Марковски
Born(1915-03-05)March 5, 1915
Skopje, Kingdom of Serbia
DiedJanuary 7, 1988(1988-01-07) (aged 72)
Sofia, People's Republic of Bulgaria
Occupationwriter, poet, politician
LanguageBulgarian, Macedonian
NationalityYugoslav, Bulgarian
Genrepoetry and history
Notable works
  • People's Bitterness
  • The Fire
  • Blood is Thicker than Water
  • Goli Otok: The Island of Death

Venko Markovski (Bulgarian and Macedonian: Венко Марковски), born Veniyamin Milanov Toshev (Bulgarian: Вениямин Миланов Тошев, romanized: Veniyamin Milanov Toshev; Macedonian: Вениамин Миланов Тошев, romanized: Veniamin Milanov Tošev; March 5, 1915 – January 7, 1988) was a Bulgarian and Macedonian writer, poet, partisan and Communist politician.

Biography

Born on March 5, 1915, in Skopje, Kingdom of Serbia, (present-day North Macedonia). Markovski completed his secondary education in Skopje, later studying Slavic philology in Sofia. Markovski was a member of the Macedonian Literary Group founded in Skopje in 1931. He is an important figure in contemporary Macedonian literature after having published in 1938, what was to be the first contemporary book written in unstandardized Macedonian language, Narodni bigori (People's Bitterness). From 1938, he participated in the Macedonian Literary Circle in Sofia, embracing its Macedonism.[1]

During World War II, in 1941 he was sent as a Communist activist to the concentration camp in Enikyoi by the Bulgarian police. Between 1943 and 1944 he was a Yugoslav partisan in Macedonia, together with his wife and five-year-old son, Mile. He wrote many popular partisan march songs for the major battles in Yugoslavia.[2] Markovski participated in the Communist resistance in Vardar Macedonia and was an active political figure in Socialist Macedonia.

In the period between 1944 and 1945, Markovski was present for three commissions for the codification of the Macedonian alphabet which was organized by ASNOM. As he recollected many years later, he tried to include the letter yer (ъ) in the codification of the Macedonian alphabet, this letter was also used in standard Bulgarian orthography to express the mid back unrounded vowel (IPA /ɤ/) (also common in many Macedonian dialects), but its absent from the Serbian alphabet. However, Blaže Koneski's point of view won, and because of that the letter yer is not present in the Macedonian orthography.[3]

Markovski openly supported the Cominform and was subsequently imprisoned at the internment camp in Idrizovo following Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform.[4] In January 1956, Markovski was once again imprisoned, this time serving a five-year hard labor sentence at the notorious labor camp on the island of Goli Otok in the Adriatic sea under the name "Veniamin Milanov Toshev" for publishing—what the authorities considered—an anti-Titoist poem "Contemporary Paradoxes" in Serbo-Croatian[5] and for his leanings towards the Soviet Union (see Informbiro).

In 1965, he was released from Goli Otok after pressure on Yugoslavia from Todor Zhivkov and moved to Bulgaria.[6] In 1968 his family was expelled to Bulgaria. Markovski was accepted by the people of Bulgaria and soon began publishing in Bulgarian. Many of his poems there were political and pro-Bulgarian.[4] Some were dedicated to the ideal of Communism and he wrote a number of sonnets, publishing three books of sonnet crowns, dedicated to various historical figures. Markovski also wrote "Saga of Testaments", a history of Bulgaria in verses (with a total of 44,444 verses). Venko Markovski was a member of the Bulgarian Writers' Union, and a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1979), and was awarded the highest Bulgarian orders, among them Hero of the Socialist Labour (1975), and Hero of Bulgaria (1985). He was a member of several Parliaments from 1971 until his death in 1988. Because of his works written in Bulgarian, Markovski was declared a traitor of the Macedonian nation and in 1975 was under the protection of the Bulgarian secret service as it was believed an assassination was being planned by the Yugoslav secret police, the UDBA. Only seven days prior to his death, Markovski stated in an interview for Bulgarian National Television that the ethnic Macedonians and the Macedonian language are a result of a Comintern conspiracy.[7] Venko Markovski died on January 7, 1988, in Sofia at the age of 72.

Works and views

Markovski had published works in both Bulgarian and Macedonian.

After moving to Bulgaria, he supported the Bulgarian historiography's stance on the Macedonian Question.[1] In his 1981 book Blood is Thicker than Water, he apologized for his participation in SR Macedonia and declared Bulgarian identity.[6]

In his 1984 book Goli Otok: The Island of Death, he described his experience in Goli Otok and the treatment of prisoners there.[6][8] He also argued that Macedonian identity was a Bulgarian regionalism.[9]

His poetry in Macedonian was criticized by the Bulgarian anti-communist oppositionist of the first years after the Second World War, Trifon Kunev, with an article in his newspaper column "Small and small like little camels", entitled "The small poems of a small poet", where the poems are defined as anti-Bulgarian and created for political propaganda purposes, and his appointment to the state writers' union by the communist functionary Todor Pavlov was condemned.[10]

Legacy

His wife was Filimena and he had two children, among them the writer Mile Markovski (1939–1975) and piano teacher Sultana. His two grandsons are the Internet pioneer Veni Markovski and journalist Igor Markovski.

Throughout his life, Markovski was a proponent of close Macedonian-Bulgarian cultural and political ties.[11] After North Macedonia's independence, he was rehabilitated and historians there have stated that he had made a major contribution to the Macedonian national cause, despite his pro-Bulgarian views.

Bibliography

In Macedonian

  • Народни бигори (People's Bitterness), (1938)
  • Огинот (The Fire), (1938)
  • Илинден (Ilinden), (1940)
  • Луња (Blizzard), (1940)
  • Чудна е Македонија (Macedonia is strange), (1940)
  • Робии (Prisons), (1942)
  • Елегии (Elegies)
  • Гоце (Goce)
  • Гламји
  • Климе (Klime), (1945)
  • Над пламнати бездни (Over flaming abyses)
  • Сказна за резбарот (Tale about the woodcarver)
  • Голи Оток (Goli Otok), (2009)

In Bulgarian

  • Орлицата (The Eagless), (1941)
  • Истината е жестока (Truth is Cruel), (1968)
  • Леганда за Гоце (A legend about Gotse), (1968), a play
  • Кръвта вода не става (Blood is Thicker than Water), (1981),
  • Предания заветни (Saga of Testaments), (1978, also published in Russian)
  • Писмо до другарката (Letter to My Love), (1979)
  • Съдбовни мъченици (Fateful Martyrs), (1981), sonnet crown
  • Бунтовни вощеници (Rebellious Candles), (1983), sonnet crown
  • Вековни върволици (Ancient processions), (1984), sonnet crown

in English

  • Goli Otok: The Island of Death (1984)[12]

References

  1. 1 2 Dimitar Bechev (2019). Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 195. ISBN 9781538119624.
  2. ↑ Rozita Dimova (2013). "The "Nation of Poetry": Language, Festival and Subversion in Macedonia". History and Anthropology. 24 (1): 138. doi:10.1080/02757206.2012.759112.
  3. ↑ Dontchev Daskalov, Roumen; Marinov, Tchavdar (2013), Entangled Histories of the Balkans: Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies, Balkan Studies Library, BRILL, pp. 453–454, ISBN 978-9004250765
  4. 1 2 Segel, Harold, ed. (2012). The Walls Behind the Curtain: East European Prison Literature, 1945-1990. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 81. ISBN 9780822978022.
  5. ↑ Markovska, Sultana (August 2007), "Truths about the life and work of Venko Markovski (Истини за живота и делото на Венко Марковски)", Bulgaria Macedonia, p. 4, ISSN 1312-0875
  6. 1 2 3 Chris Kostov (2010). Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, 1900-1996. Peter Lang. p. 88. ISBN 9783034301961.
  7. ↑ Mitewa, Yulia (2001), ИДЕЯТА ЗА ЕЗИКА В МАКЕДОНСКИЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕН КРЪЖОК — ЕСТЕТИЧЕСКИ И ИДЕОЛОГИЧЕСКИ АСПЕКТИ, Veliko Tarnovo: Litera
  8. ↑ Pamela Ballinger (2003). History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans. Princeton University Press. p. 109. ISBN 9780691086972.
  9. ↑ Ivo Banac (2018). With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism. Cornell University Press. p. 200. ISBN 9781501720833.
  10. ↑ Как е създаден македонският език?
  11. ↑ Mihail Neamtu; Marius Stan (2011). LeBow, Richard; Dobos, Corina; Kansteiner, Wulf; Fogu, Claudio (eds.). Politics of Memory in Post-Communist Europe. Zeta Books. p. 201. ISBN 9789731997865.
  12. ↑ Goli Otok at the Hathi Trust Digital Library
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