Malina Popivanova (April 7, 1902,

Kočani Kočani ( ) is a town in the eastern part of North Macedonia, situated around east from Skopje. It has a population of 24,632 as of 2021 and is the seat of the Kočani Municipality. Geography The town spreads across the Northern side of the K ...

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– July 19, 1954,

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USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

) was a prominent

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

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

Personal life

Popivanova joined the revolutionary movement when she was very young and still in school. In 1919, she was arrested by the

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

n police during demonstrations in

Sofia Sofia is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the western part of the country. The city is built west of the Is ...

. Her parents and brothers, Ivan and Ceko Popivanov, were also arrested for participating in the same demonstration. She was accepted into the

League of Communists of Yugoslavia The League of Communists of Yugoslavia, known until 1952 as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was the founding and ruling party of SFR Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1919 as the main communist opposition party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats ...

in 1920, in the city of

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. She remained there until 1921 and pursued studies in the field of

pharmacology Pharmacology is the science of drugs and medications, including a substance's origin, composition, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, therapeutic use, and toxicology. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur betwee ...

. She moved to the city of

Skopje Skopje ( , ; ; , sq-definite, Shkupi) is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It lies in the northern part of the country, in the Skopje Basin, Skopje Valley along the Vardar River, and is the political, economic, and cultura ...

from 1921 to 1924, and was an active member of the Cultural and Artistic Association, also known as "''Abrasevic''". In the autumn of 1924, she moved to the

for schooling under the order of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and became the first Macedonian to graduate from Ia. M. Sverdlov Communist University in 1928.

Career

In order to deal with the factional fighting in the Yugoslav Communist Party, the Comintern in the spring of 1928 sent more reliable cadres to Yugoslavia, including Popivanova. She first got a job working in

Zagreb Zagreb ( ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, north of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the ...

, then in

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, which was the center of the left faction in the

. In November 1928 Popivanova was a delegate to the Fourth Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

, along with Koco Racin At the Congress she was elected as a member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, making her the first Macedonian with such a high position. After the Congress she returned to Zagreb, but due to illness in 1929 emigrated to the USSR where she lived and continued to operate under the name Elena Nikolaevna Galkina. In autumn 1929 she became a lecturer at the Communist University for National Minorities of the West (CONMW). At the end of 1929 she participated in dealing with opponents of the line of the Comintern in the Yugoslav CONMW sector. She taught at CONMW until December 1932, when she was sent to do organizational work, first in

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, and in October 1933 in the

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area. From there, in 1935 she was sent to Chervishevo in the Tyumenskaya area. In 1937, at the height of

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

's purges she was excluded from the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

, and then arrested. In 1939 she was cleared and settled in

Tyumen Oblast Tyumen Oblast () is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject (an oblast) of Russia. It is located in Western Siberia, and is administratively part of the Ural Federal District. The oblast has administrative jurisdiction over two autonomous ...

. There she worked as a teacher of history at the School of Pedagogy. She was later readmitted to the party. She died in 1954. A November 28, 1963, decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the

, she along with her father Stefan was politically rehabilitated and registered as Macedonian. This information was taken from a questionnaire that she filled out in 1932 when seeking papers from the Soviet Union, where in the "nationality" section she wrote -

.Бане Чадиковски „Семејството Поп Иванови и неговата револуционерна дејност во периодот меѓу двете војни“ во „Кочани и Кочанско во НОВ 1941-1945 “, Кочани, 1985, 87-97 стр. Malina Popivanova Primary School in Kočani is named after her.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Popivanova, Malina Macedonian communists Women in World War II Immigrants to the Soviet Union Yugoslav emigrants Soviet rehabilitations 1902 births 1954 deaths People from Kočani