Miladinov brothers

The mother of the Miladinov brothers was Sultana Miladinova. Her father was an Aromanian from Magarevo who moved to Ohrid and studied in Moscopole with Daniel Moscopolites. Sultana's mother was a native of OhridTodorovski, Gane (1990), [https://books.google.com/books?id=VV1NAQAAIAAJ Книга нашинска сиреч славјанска] {{in lang|mk}}, Makedonska kniga, p. 19. and the granddaughter of sakellarios Pop Stefan, who was so fond of his pupil Dimitrius of Ioannou that he let him marry her.[https://books.google.com/books?id=PcRKAAAAMAAJ "Izbor" - Konstantin Miladinov] {{in lang|mk}}, Gane Todorovski, 1980, Misla Publishing, pp. 366; 395.[https://books.google.com/books?id=6WflAAAAMAAJ Литературен збор] {{in lang|mk}}, Volume 36 - 1989, p. 29. The brothers' father, Hristo Miladinov, was also from Magarevo. He was a pottery merchant, who moved to Struga in 1810.Михайлов, Крум. Родът на Братя Миладинови. В: Стари български родове. Издателство Отечествен фронт, 1989, стр. 83-133. The family had eight children, six sons and two daughters.

After the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire, the name Macedonia disappeared as a designation for several centuries.{{cite book|author1=Koliopoulos, John S.|author2=Veremis, Thanos M.|title=Modern Greece: A History since 1821. A New History of Modern Europe|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|year=2009|isbn=978-1444314830|page=48}} Names such as "Lower Moesia" and "Bulgaria" were used for the northern and central parts of the modern Macedonian region.James Pettifer, The New Macedonian Question, St. Martin's Press, 1999, {{ISBN|9780312222406}}, p. 50. The name was revived in the early 19th century with the new Greek state and was affirmed in the modern area as a result of Hellenic religious and school propaganda.Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Scarecrow Press, 2009, {{ISBN|0810862956}}, Introduction, pp. V–VIII, 149. Opposition to Hellenism and the Greek clergy became the main concern of the brothers.{{cite book |author=Vemund Aarbakke |title=Ethnic Rivalry and the Quest for Macedonia, 1870-1913 |publisher=East European Monographs |date=2003 |isbn=9780880335270 |pages=35–36}} The Miladinov brothers deliberately avoided using the term Macedonia in reference to the region, arguing that it presents a threat to the Bulgarian people there, and proposed the name Western Bulgaria instead."Miladinov suggested that Macedonia should be called “Western Bulgaria”. Obviously, he was aware that the classical designation was received via Greek schooling and culture. As the Macedonian historian Taskovski claims, the Macedonian Slavs initially rejected the Macedonian designation as Greek." For more see: Tchavdar Marinov, Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian identity at the crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian nationalism, p. 285; in Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies with Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov as ed., BRILL, 2013, {{ISBN|900425076X}}, pp. 273-330."Dimitar Miladinov's most famous literary achievement was the publishing of a large collection of Bulgarian folk songs in Zagreb in 1861 under the title Bulgarian Folk Songs. He published the volume with his brother Konstantin (1830-1862) and even though most of the songs were from Macedonia, the authors disliked this term as too Hellenic and preferred to refer to Macedonia as the "Western Bulgarian lands"." For more see: Chris Kostov, Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, Peter Lang, 2010, {{ISBN|3034301960}}, p. 72."The struggle over the historical legacy of the name “Macedonia” was already under way in the nineteenth century, as the Greeks contested its appropriation by the Slavs. This is reflected in a letter from Konstantin Miladinov, who published Bulgarian folk songs from Macedonia, to Rakovski, dated 31 January 1861: On my order form I have called Macedonia “Western Bulgaria”, as it should be called, because the Greeks in Vienna are ordering us around like sheep. They want Macedonia to be Greek territory and still do not realize that it cannot be Greek. But what are we to do with the more than two million Bulgarians there? Shall the Bulgarians still be sheep and a few Greeks the shepherds? Those days are gone and the Greeks shall be left with no more than their sweet dream. I believe the songs will be distributed among the Bulgarians, and have therefore set a low price for them." For more see: Spyridon Sfetas, [https://ojs.lib.uom.gr/index.php/BalkanStudies/article/view/3313/3338 The image of the Greeks in the work of the Bulgarian revolutionary and intellectual Georgi Rakovski]. Balkan Studies, [S.l.], volume 42, issue 1, pp. 105-106, January 2001, {{ISSN|2241-1674}}. Miladinov and other educated Macedonian Slavs worried that the use of the designation Macedonian would imply an identification with the Greek nation.

{{multiple image

| align = right

| total_width = 320

| image_style = border:none;

| image1 = Dimitrija Miladinov.jpg

| alt1 =

| caption1 = Dimitar Miladinov with Greek priest Meletius

| image2 =Bulgarian Folk Songs Miladinov1.jpg

| alt2 =

| caption2 = Front cover of the original edition of Bulgarian Folk Songs. "Bulgarian Folk Songs collected by the Miladinov brothers Dimitar and Konstantin and published by Konstantin in Zagreb at the printing house of A. Jakic, 1861"

| image3 = D. Miladinov to V. Grigorovic-1848.jpg

| alt3 =

| caption3 = A letter from Dimitar Miladinov to Victor Grigorovich from 25 February 1846 about his search for Bulgarian folk songs and artefacts in Macedonia."...In the meantime my efforts concerning our Bulgarian language and the Bulgarian (folk) songs, in compliance with your recommendations are unsurpassed. I have not for one moment ceased to fulfill the pledge which I made to you, Sir, because the Bulgarians are spontaneously striving for the truth. But I hope you will excuse my delay up till now, which is due to the difficulty I had in selecting the best songs and also in my work on the grammar. I hope that, on another convenient occasion, after I have collected more songs and finished the grammar, I will be able to send them to you. Please write where and through whom it would be safe to send them to you (as you so ardently wish)..."}}

Dimitar Miladinov was born around 1810 in the town of Struga in the Ottoman Empire (today North Macedonia),Blaže Ristovski, ed. Makedonska enciklopedija: M-Š {{in lang|mk}}, Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2009, {{ISBN|9786082030241}}, pp. 948–950. in the family of a potter named Hristo Miladinov and his wife, Sultana. Dimitar was the eldest of eight children, six boys and two girls. In his youth, Dimitar received basic education at the Monastery of Saint Naum on Lake Ohrid. Afterwards, he continued his education in a school in the town of Ohrid. He studied in a Greek high school in Ioannina for three years,{{cite book |editor=Richard Frucht |title=Eastern Europe: An Introduction to the People, Lands, and Culture |date=2011 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=1-57607-801-9 |page=610}} where he mastered the Greek language. Dimitar had worked as a teacher in Ohrid, Struga, Bitola, Prilep, Magarevo and Kukush, while also teaching in Greek.[https://books.google.com/books?id=Qo5pAAAAMAAJ&q=miladinov+lancaster Freedom Or Death: The Life of Gotsé Delchev, Mercia MacDermott, Pluto Press, 1978], {{ISBN|0904526321}}, pp. 16–17.

As a teacher, in the 1840s, Dimitar introduced the Bell-Lancaster method in Kukush (today in Greece) and expanded the classes. A Greek bishop opposed his activities. In May 1845, the Russian Slavist Viktor Grigorovich visited him in Ohrid and realised that Miladinov had improper knowledge of Bulgarian language, and under his influence, Miladinov gained interest in Bulgarian. As his interest grew, he developed a Bulgarian national consciousness.Loring Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, Princeton University Press, 1997, {{ISBN|9780691043562}}, p. 63. Dimitar travelled around the Macedonian region, collecting folk material, which he informed Grigorovich about. In a letter written in Greek on 20 August 1852, he complained that most of the Bulgarians of Macedonia used Greek as the language of education and were considered Greeks. He called for opposition to the hellenisation of the Bulgarians.{{cite book|author=Poulton, Hugh|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ppbuavUZKEwC&pg=PA117|title=Who Are the Macedonians?|publisher=C. Hurst & Co. Publishers|year=2000|isbn=1850655340|pages=38, 117, 192}} From 1853 to 1856, he resided in Hapsburg South Slavic lands. In 1857, he received an invitation to return to teach in Kukush, on the condition that he would teach in Bulgarian, which he accepted. The inhabitants of Kukush liked him due to his charisma and teaching skills. At the initiative of Dimitar, and with the approval of the city's fathers, in 1858, the Greek language was banished from the churches and substituted with Church Slavonic. He also substituted Greek schoolbooks with Bulgarian schoolbooks from Istanbul. During this period, he translated the Acts of the Apostles into Bulgarian to make it available for church usage. In 1859, upon hearing that the town of Ohrid had officially demanded from the Ottoman government the restoration of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, Dimitar left Kukush and went to Ohrid to help. There, he translated Bible texts into Bulgarian. In a letter to Tsarigradski Vestnik (Tsarigrad Newspaper) on 26 March 1860, he wrote: "In the holy Ohrid district, there is not a single Greek family, except for three or four Vlachs now, and all the others are purely a Bulgarian tribe."Vlado Treneski, Dejan Tančovski, White Book about the Language Dispute Between Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia, Orbel, 2021, {{ISBN|9789544961497}}, pp. 89-91.Трайков, Н. Братя Миладинови. Преписка.1964 pp. 43-44. From April to September 1860, he toured the Macedonian region to raise funds for the renovation of the Bulgarian church St. Stephen in Istanbul as a representative of the Bulgarian community. With the encouragement of Croatian bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, along with his younger brother Konstantin, he prepared a book titled Bulgarian Folk Songs, which was published in 1861. Due to his endeavours, the Greek bishop Meletius denounced Miladinov as a Russian agent.Michael R. Palairet, Macedonia: A Voyage Through History - Volume 2, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, {{ISBN|9781443878456}}, pp. 113–114. He was imprisoned in Istanbul, later to be joined by his supporting brother Konstantin. On 11 January 1862, he died in prison from typhus.{{cite book

| last =Roudometof

| first =Victor

| title =Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria and the Macedonian question

| publisher =Greenwood Publishing Group

| year =2002

| isbn =0275976483

| page =91 }}Raymond Detrez, The A to Z of Bulgaria, Scarecrow Press, 2010, {{ISBN|9780810872028}}, p. 284.

{{multiple image

| align = right

| total_width = 320

| image_style = border:none;

| image1 =Letter K. Miladinov to Rakovski-1861.jpg

| alt1 =

| caption1 = Letter from Konstantin Miladinov to Georgi Rakovski from 8 January 1861 to explain the use of the term Bulgarian in the title of the collection."...But I implore you to publish the foreword I sent you in your newspaper, adding a word or two about the songs and especially about the Western Bulgarians in Macedonia. In the foreword I have called Macedonia - Western Bulgaria (as it should be called), because the Greeks in Vienna are treating us just like sheep. They consider Macedonia a Greek province and they are not even able to understand that it is not a Greek region. But what shall we do with the Bulgarians there who are more than two million people? Surely the Bulgarians will not still be sheep with a few Greeks as their shepherds? That time has irrevocably passed and the Greeks will have to be satisfied merely with their sweet dreams. I think that the songs should be distributed chiefly among the Bulgarians, and this is why I have fixed a low price..."

| image2 = Kuzman Shapkarev - Materiali za zhivotoopisanieto na bratya Miladinovi (Plovdiv, 1884).pdf

| alt2 =

| caption2 = The first biography of the Miladinov brothers, written by their brother-in-law Kuzman Shapkarev and issued in Plovdiv, 1884.According to Shapkarev himself: "Until then, [1857-1859, when the Miladinovs launched their educational campaign], everyone acknowledged them to be a Bulgarian."

| image3 = K.miladinov.jpg

| alt3 =

| caption3 = Konstantin Miladinov (right), together with the Bulgarian national activists Lyuben Karavelov and Petar Hadzhipeev in Moscow, 1858}}

Konstantin Miladinov was the youngest son in the family of the potter Hristo Miladinov. He was born in 1830 in Struga. He studied in an elementary school in Ohrid. After his graduation from the Hellenic Institute at Ioannina and the University of Athens, where he studied literature. He stayed at the Zograf Monastery along with Parteniy Zografski, where he learned Russian grammar. Afterward, he was a teacher in Magarevo in the schoolyear 1852/1853. At the initiative of his brother, Dimitar, in 1856, he went to Russia. He arrived in Odessa and because he was short of money, the Bulgarian Society in that city financed his trip to Moscow. Konstantin enrolled at the Moscow University to study Slavic philology. While at the University of Athens, he was exclusively exposed to the teachings and thinking of ancient and modern Greek scholars. In Moscow, he came in contact with prominent Slavic writers and intellectuals.

While in Moscow he desired to see the river Volga. At the time of his youth, the universal belief was that the Bulgars had camped on the banks of the river, had crossed it on their way to the Balkans and the origin of the name Bulgarians had come from the river's name. After seeing the river, he wrote his impressions down in a letter to a friend: "O, Volga, Volga! What memories you awake in me, how you drive me to bury myself in the past! High are your waters, Volga. I and my friend, also a Bulgarian, we dived and proudly told ourselves that, at this very moment, we received our true baptismal…"Петър Динеков, Делото на братя Милядинови. (Българска акдемия на науките, 1961 г.) While staying in Russia, he wrote his poem called Taga za Yug (Grief for the South), expressing his homesickness. Other poems he wrote include "Bisera" (Pearl), "Zhelanie" (Desire), "Kletva" (An Oath), "Dumane" (A Saying), "Na chuzhdina" (Abroad). Along with fellow Bulgarian students, he created a literary association named Fraternal Labour.Marcel Cornis-Pope, John Neubauer (eds.) History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Volume 2, John Benjamins Publishing, 2004, {{ISBN|9789027234537}}, pp. 359–360.

He also helped his older brother Dimitar in editing the materials for the collection of Bulgarian songs, that Dimitar had collected in his field work. Konstantin had to transcribe the collected songs from the Greek alphabet in which they were recorded, into the Cyrillic alphabet. Initially, Konstantin tried to find assistance among Russian scholars to have the collection of folk songs published. After failing to find assistance, he went to Vienna to look for sponsors. The collection was subsequently published in Croatia with the support of the bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, who was one of the patrons of Slavonic literature at that time. In a private letter to Bulgarian National Revival activist Georgi Rakovski on 8 January 1861, Konstantin Miladinov expressed concern over the use of the name Macedonia as it could have been used to justify Greek claims to the region and the local Bulgarian population, so he suggested that the region should be called Western Bulgaria instead. Shortly after the publication of the collection, he found out that his brother was jailed. He went to Istanbul to help him. He was arrested on 5 August 1861, due to the Ecumenical Patriarchate's claim that he was a Russian agent. It is unknown if he was placed in the same cell as his brother or whether he saw him. He died on 7 January 1862 in prison from typhus.

Naum Miladinov was the brother of Dimitar and Konstantin. He was born in 1817 and finished primary school in Struga. Later he went to Duras, where he learned musical notation. After that, Naum graduated from the Ioannina Greek High School. From 1841 to 1844 he studied at the Halki seminary, where he graduated in music and grammar. In 1843 he wrote a music textbook and prepared a Greek grammar. After returning to Struga, Naum became involved in the activities of his brothers and became a proponent of the Bulgarian National Revival. He assisted in collecting materials for the collection Bulgarian Folk Songs. The folk songs collected by him are also notated. Naum also was a teacher in Ohrid and Struga. After 1878 he settled in the newly established Principality of Bulgaria. Naum received a national pension as a Bulgarian educator. He wrote a biography of his brothers, but failed to publish it. He died in 1897 in Sofia.Исторически албум на град Струга, София, 1930, стр. 34 – 35.

{{See also|Historiography in North Macedonia|Macedonian nationalism}}

File:BASA-1932K-1-421-10.jpg, near Kičevo, then in the Ottoman Empire (1912).]]

The two brothers are honoured in the history of the Bulgarian National Revival in the 19th century. The collecting of the folk material was well-received by its contemporaries - Lyuben Karavelov, Nesho Bonchev, Ivan Bogorov, Kuzman Shapkarev, Rayko Zhinzifov and others. The Russian scholar Izmail Sreznevsky, in his opinion about the collection, pointed out in 1863: "It can be seen by the published collection that the Bulgarians are far from lagging behind other peoples in poetic abilities and even surpass them with the vitality of their poetry…" Parts of the collection were also translated into Czech, Russian and German.Bŭlgarski narodni pesni {{in lang|bg}}, Nauka i izkustvo, 1981, Summary. Elias Riggs, an American linguist in Constantinople, translated nine songs into English and sent them to the American Oriental Society in Princeton, New Jersey. In a letter from June 1862, Riggs wrote: "…The whole present an interesting picture of the traditions and fancies prevailing among the mass of the Bulgarian people."

The collection also had an impact on the development of modern Bulgarian literature, because its songs inspired the Bulgarian poets – Ivan Vazov, Pencho Slaveikov, Kiril Hristov, Peyo Yavorov, etc.Люлка на старата и новата българска писменост. Академик Емил Георгиев, (Държавно издателство Народна просвета, София 1980)Петър Динеков. Делото на братя Миладинови.(Българска акдемия на науките, 1961 г.) Dimitar's daughter Tsarevna Miladinova continued his Bulgarian nationalist efforts, co-founding the Bulgarian Girls' High School of Thessaloniki in 1882.{{Cite web|date=2018|title=Tsarevna Miladinova-Alexieva (1856-1934)|url=http://womeninscience.swu.bg/?p=1406|access-date=2021-04-08|website=Women and the Transfer of Knowledge in the Black Sea Region|language=en-US}} {{dead link|date=March 2025}} Her son, {{ill|Vladislav Aleksiev|bg|Владислав Алексиев}} (1884-1962) was a prominent Bulgarian jurist and historian, a professor of Bulgarian medieval law, and a specialist in Byzantine law at the Sofia University.Куманов, Милен. Македония. Кратък исторически справочник, Тинапрес, София, 1993, стр. 13 – 14.

In post-war Yugoslav Macedonia, the Miladinov brothers were appropriated by the historians as part of the Macedonian National Revival and their original works were hidden from the general public. The Macedonian national museum did not display their original works.{{cite book|last=Phillips|first=John|title=Macedonia: Warlords and Rebels in the Balkans|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m6zjXcqpla0C|url-access=limited|publisher=I.B.Tauris|year=2004|isbn=186064841X|page=41]}} Their works were claimed to be Macedonian, despite them stating in their works that they were Bulgarians.In their correspondence both brothers self-identified as Bulgarians, see: [http://www.promacedonia.org/bugarash/dmp/index.html Братя Миладинови – преписка. Издирил, коментирал и редактирал Никола Трайков (Българска академия на науките, Институт за история. Издателство на БАН, София 1964)]; in English: Miladinov Brothers - Correspondence. Collected, commented and redacted from Nicola Traykov, (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Historical Institute, Sofia 1964.){{cite book|last=Detrez|first=Raymond|title=Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria|series=Historical Dictionaries of Europe|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2014|isbn=978-1442241800|page=323}} All traces of pro-Bulgarian sentiment were removed from their works during the Yugoslav communist era, but such manipulations were revealed in the post-communist era. Per political scientist Alexis Heraclides, the Miladinov brothers were among "the earliest pioneers of a sense of Macedonian identity, as least as conceived by contemporary Macedonian historians and other scholars".{{cite book |title=The Macedonian Question and the Macedonians |author=Alexis Heraclides |page=68 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2020 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TWYHEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22earliest+pioneers+of+a+sense+of+Macedonian+identity%22&pg=PA68 |isbn=9781000289404 }} The official view in North Macedonia is that the Miladinov brothers were Macedonians who spoke Macedonian and contributed to Macedonian literature.[https://books.google.com/books?id=1jSg3lxgSy8C&pg=PA149 Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009], {{ISBN|0810862956}}, p. 149. Their ethnicity is disputed between North Macedonia and Bulgaria.North Macedonia’s Blockade on Book Donation Riles Bulgaria [https://balkaninsight.com/2021/03/29/north-macedonias-blockade-on-book-donation-riles-bulgaria/ Sinisa Jakov Marusic, Balkan Insight (BIRN), 29 March 2021].

Monuments honouring the brothers are in Blagoevgrad and Pliska, Bulgaria,[https://tvshumen.bg/tag/bratya-miladinovi/ Откриха паметник на братя Миладинови в Плиска.]A monument to the Miladinov brothers unveiled in Bulgaria's Blagoevgrad, [https://bnr.bg/en/post/101729590/a-monument-to-the-miladinov-brothers-unveiled-in-bulgaria-s-blagoevgrad Bulgarian National Radio, 11 January 2022]. and Struga, North Macedonia. There are streets, schools and chitalishta named after them in Bulgaria.[https://registarnauchilishtata.com/оу-братя-миладинови Регистър на училищата и университетите в България]. In North Macedonia there are also schools named after the Miladinov brothers,{{cite book |editor1-last=Daskalov |editor1-first=Roumen |editor2-last=Vezenkov |editor2-first=Alexander |title=Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume Three: Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies |date=2015 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=9789004290365 |page=457}} but the pupils there do not have the access to the works of their schools' patrons in original, while redacted copies of them have been available there, without the designation "Bulgarian" in them."Presently in the Republic of Macedonia we can find schools named: Miladinov Brothers, Rajko Zinzifov, Kuzman Sapkarev etc., while the students who study in them do not have the access to the literary works of the patrons of their schools in original..." Vladimir Paunkovski, Spas Tashev, George Mladenov. 5 Years of Independence - Human Rights in the Republic of Macedonia, 1991- 1996. International Institute for Macedonia, Sofia. Per academic Hugh Poulton, their original works have been more readily available in the post-communist era.

The Miladinov brothers' hometown of Struga hosts the international Struga Poetry Evenings festival in their honour, including a poetry award named after them. The Miladinovi Islets near Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, are named after the brothers.

{{reflist|2}}

{{Commons category|Miladinovi brothers}}

• [http://promacedonia.org/bugarash/bnpesni/bgnpesni.pdf Original edition of 'Bulgarian Folk Songs'] {{in lang|bg}}
• [http://liternet.bg/folklor/sbornici/miladinovci/content.htm Full text of "Bulgarian folk songs"] {{in lang|bg}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20060822000622/http://macedoniainfo.com/Miladinov4.jpg Letter bearing the signature of Konstantin Miladinov]
• [http://www.slovo.bg/old/km/index.htm Konstantin Miladinov poetry] {{in lang|bg}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20040515070310/http://www.struga.org/eng/konstantinmiladinov.htm official site of struga.org] (English and Macedonian)

{{authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miladinov Brothers}}

Category:People from Struga

Category:Bulgarian people of Aromanian descent

Category:Educators from the Ottoman Empire

Category:Bulgarian educators

Category:Bulgarian folklorists

Category:Bulgarian male poets

Category:Macedonia under the Ottoman Empire

Category:19th-century Bulgarian people

Category:Brother duos

Category:Literary families

Category:Macedonian Bulgarians

Category:Prisoners who died in Ottoman detention

Category:Bulgarian people imprisoned in the Ottoman Empire

Category:Bulgarian people who died in prison custody

Category:Deaths from typhus

Category:19th-century Bulgarian poets

Category:19th-century Bulgarian male writers

bg:Константин Миладинов