Venko Markovski ( Bulgarian and mk, Венко Марковски), born Veniamin Milanov Toshev (March 5, 1915 in

Skopje Skopje ( , , ; mk, Скопје ; sq, Shkup) is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre. The territory of Skopje has been inhabited since at least 4000 BC; r ...

– January 7, 1988 in

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and h ...

) was a Bulgarian and

Macedonian Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia. Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to: People Modern * Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North Ma ...

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or w ...

, partisan and

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, ...

Biography

Born on March 5, 1915 in

Kingdom of Serbia The Kingdom of Serbia ( sr-cyr, Краљевина Србија, Kraljevina Srbija) was a country located in the Balkans which was created when the ruler of the Principality of Serbia, Milan I, was proclaimed king in 1882. Since 1817, the Prin ...

, (present-day

North Macedonia North Macedonia, ; sq, Maqedonia e Veriut, (Macedonia before February 2019), officially the Republic of North Macedonia,, is a country in Southeast Europe. It gained independence in 1991 as one of the successor states of Socialist Feder ...

), Markovski completed his

secondary education Secondary education or post-primary education covers two phases on the International Standard Classification of Education scale. Level 2 or lower secondary education (less commonly junior secondary education) is considered the second and final ph ...

in Skopje, later studying Slavic

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...

. Markovski was a member of the Macedonian Literary Group founded in Skopje in 1931, the Macedonian Literary Circle in

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

(1938–1941). He is an important figure in contemporary Macedonian literature after has published in 1938, what was to be the first contemporary book written in non-dialectal Macedonian language, "Narodni bigori". As the most of the

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...

politicians from Macedonia he has changed his ethnic affiliations from Bulgarian to Macedonian during the 1930s,"Уште робуваме на старите поделби", Разговор со д-р Зоран Тодоровски, директор на Државниот архив на Република Македониja (in Macedonian; in English: "We are still in servitude to the old divisions", interview with PhD Zoran Todorovski, Director of the State Archive of the Republic of Macedonia, published o
, 27. 06. 2005
Трибуна: Дел од јавноста и некои Ваши колеги историчари Ве обвинуваат дека промовирате зборник за човек (Тодор Александров) кој се чувствувал како Бугарин. Кој наш револуционерен деец му противречел на Александров по тоа прашање? Тодоровски - Речиси никој. Уште робуваме на поделбата на леви и десни. Во етничка, во национална смисла сите биле со исти сознанија, со иста свест. In English: Tribune: Part of the public and some from your fellow historians accuse you of promotining a collection for man (

Todor Alexandrov Todor Aleksandrov Poporushov, best known as Todor Alexandrov ( Bulgarian/ Macedonian: Тодор Александров), also spelt as Alexandroff (4 March 1881 – 31 August 1924), was a Bulgarian revolutionary, army officer, politician and t ...

) who felt himself as Bulgarian. Are there some of our revolutionary activist who opposed him on that issue? Todorovski - Almost none. We are still in servitude to the old divisions of left and right. Ethnically, in a national sense, they were all with the same sentiments, with the same (Bulgarian) consciousness. after the recognition of the Macedonian ethnicity from the

Comintern The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...

. However such Macedonian activists, members of the Bulgarian Communist Party, never managed to get rid of their pro-Bulgarian bias. During World War II, in 1941 he was sent as 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 some of the most popular partisan marches songs of the Yugoslav partisans. Markovski participated in the

Communist resistance in Vardar Macedonia World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia started with the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. Under the pressure of the Yugoslav Partisan movement, part of the Macedonian communists began in October 1941 a political and military ...

and was an active political figure in Socialist Macedonia. In the period between 1944-1945 Markovski was present for three commissions for the codification of the Macedonian alphabet. As he recollected many years later, he tried to defend the new republic's alphabet from the "complete Serbianization", in particularly by defending the letter '' yer'' (ъ), which is used in standard Bulgarian orthography to express the

mid back unrounded vowel The mid back unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Although there is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of pho ...

(IPA ) (also common in many Macedonian dialects), but is absent from the Serbian alphabet. However,

Blaže Koneski Blaže Koneski ( mk, Блаже Конески; 19 December 1921 – 7 December 1993) was a Macedonian poet, writer, literary translator, and linguistic scholar. His major contribution was to the codification of standard Macedonian. He is the key ...

's point of view won, and Macedonians have no ''yer'' in their writing system. Markovski openly supported the

Cominform The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties (), commonly known as Cominform (), was a co-ordination body of Marxist-Leninist communist parties in Europe during the early Cold War that was formed in part as a replacement of the ...

and was subsequently imprisoned at the

internment camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...

Idrizovo Idrizovo ( mk, Идризово, sq, Idrizovë) is a settlement in the outskirts of the city of Skopje within the municipality of Gazi Baba, Republic of North Macedonia. Demographics According to the 2021 census, the village had a total of 1.82 ...

following Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform. In January 1956, Markovski was once again imprisoned, this time serving a five-year hard labor sentence at the notorious

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (espec ...

on the island of Goli otok in the

Adriatic sea The Adriatic Sea () is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Sea) to th ...

under the name "Veniamin Milanov Toshev" for publishing—what the authorities considered—an anti-Titoist poem "Contemporary Paradoxes" in

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...

and for his leanings towards the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

(see Informbiro). In 1965, he left Yugoslavia supposedly in search of medical treatment in

where he would remain until his death in 1988. In 1968 his family were expelled to Bulgaria. Markovski was accepted by the people of Bulgaria and soon began publishing in Bulgarian. Among many poems, dedicated to the ideal of

Communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...

, he wrote a number of

sonnets A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...

, 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 highest Bulgarian orders, among them ''Hero of the Socialist Labour'' (1975), and ''Hero of Bulgaria'' (1985). He was 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. After coming back to his Bulgarian roots and considering his involvement with the

Socialist Republic of Macedonia The Socialist Republic of Macedonia ( mk, Социјалистичка Република Македонија, Socijalistička Republika Makedonija), or SR Macedonia, commonly referred to as Socialist Macedonia or Yugoslav Macedonia, was ...

, Markovski stated in an interview for

Bulgarian National Television The Bulgarian National Television ( Bulgarian: Българска национална телевизия, ''Balgarska natsionalna televizia'') or BNT (БНТ), stylized as ·Б·Н·Т· since 2018, is a public television broadcaster of Bulgari ...

only seven days prior to his death, that the ethnic Macedonians and the

Macedonian language Macedonian (; , , ) is an Eastern South Slavic language. It is part of the Indo-European language family, and is one of the Slavic languages, which are part of a larger Balto-Slavic branch. Spoken as a first language by around two million ...

are a result of a Comintern conspiracy. Venko Markovski died on January 7, 1988, in Sofia at the age of 72. He was married and had two children, among them the writer Mile Markovski (1939–1975) and piano teacher Sultana. He has two grandsons - Internet pioneer Veni Markovski and journalist Igor Markovski. He was survived by his wife, Filimena, who died on August 26, 2012.

Bibliography

In Macedonian

* Narodni bigori (1938) * Oginot (1938) * Ilinden (1940) * Lunja (1940) * Robii (1942) * Elegii * Goce * Čudna e Makedonija * Glamji * Klime (1945) * Nad plamnati bezdni * Skazna za rezbarot * 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''), (1971, 1981, 2002), a response to the book ''History of the Macedonian Nation'' * 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)Goli Otok at the Hathi Trust Digital Library
/ref>

References

External links

Site with books by Venko Markovski and his son Mile MarkovskiInterview with Venko Markovski widow, Filimena (in Bulgarian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Markovski, Venko 1915 births 1988 deaths Writers from Skopje Politicians from Skopje Bulgarian writers Bulgarian politicians Bulgarian people imprisoned abroad Prisoners and detainees of Yugoslavia Members of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Members of the National Assembly (Bulgaria) Macedonian Bulgarians Yugoslav Partisans members Yugoslav emigrants to Bulgaria