Venko Markovski

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.{{cite book |author=Dimitar Bechev |title=Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia |date=2019 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=9781538119624 |page=195 |edition=2nd}}

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.{{cite journal |author=Rozita Dimova |title=The “Nation of Poetry”: Language, Festival and Subversion in Macedonia |journal=History and Anthropology |date=2013 |volume=24 |issue=1 |page=138 |doi=10.1080/02757206.2012.759112}} 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 {{IPA|/ɤ/}}) (also common in many Macedonian dialects){{citation needed|date=March 2023}}, 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.{{citation

| publisher = BRILL |year=2013

| isbn = 978-9004250765

| first1 = Roumen |last1=Dontchev Daskalov|first2=Tchavdar |last2=Marinov

| title = Entangled Histories of the Balkans: Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies

| series = Balkan Studies Library

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=FGmJqMflYgoC&pg=PA453

| pages = 453–454}}

Markovski openly supported the Cominform and was subsequently imprisoned at the internment camp in Idrizovo following Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform.{{cite book |editor1-last=Segel |editor1-first=Harold |title=The Walls Behind the Curtain: East European Prison Literature, 1945-1990 |date=2012 |publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press |isbn=9780822978022 |page=81}} 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{{Citation

| last = Markovska

| first = Sultana

| author-link =

| title = Truths about the life and work of Venko Markovski (Истини за живота и делото на Венко Марковски)

| newspaper = Bulgaria Macedonia

| issn = 1312-0875

| pages = 4

| date = August 2007

| url = http://bulgariamakedonia.net/index.php?br=26&stat=288}} 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.{{cite book |author=Chris Kostov |title=Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, 1900-1996 |date=2010 |publisher=Peter Lang |isbn=9783034301961 |page=88}} 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. 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.{{Citation

| last = Mitewa

| first = Yulia

| title = ИДЕЯТА ЗА ЕЗИКА В МАКЕДОНСКИЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕН КРЪЖОК — ЕСТЕТИЧЕСКИ И ИДЕОЛОГИЧЕСКИ АСПЕКТИ

| place = Veliko Tarnovo

| publisher = Litera

| year = 2001

}} Venko Markovski died on January 7, 1988, in Sofia at the age of 72.

Markovski had published works in both Bulgarian and Macedonian.

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

In his 1984 book Goli Otok: The Island of Death, he described his experience in Goli Otok and the treatment of prisoners there.{{cite book |author=Pamela Ballinger |title=History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans |date=2003 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=9780691086972 |page=109}} He also argued that Macedonian identity was a Bulgarian regionalism.{{cite book |author=Ivo Banac |title=With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism |date=2018 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=9781501720833 |page=200}}

His poetry in Macedonian was criticized by the Bulgarian anti-communist oppositionist of the first years after the Second World War, {{ill|Trifon Kunev|bg|Трифон Кунев}}, 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.[https://www.24chasa.bg/index.php/bulgaria/article/4421042 Как е създаден македонският език?]

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.{{cite book |author1=Mihail Neamtu |author2=Marius Stan |editor1-last=LeBow |editor1-first=Richard |editor2-last=Dobos |editor2-first=Corina |editor3-last=Kansteiner |editor3-first=Wulf |editor4-last=Fogu |editor4-first=Claudio |title=Politics of Memory in Post-Communist Europe |date=2011 |publisher=Zeta Books |isbn=9789731997865 |page=201}} 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.

{{div col|colwidth=30em}}

• 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)

{{div col end}}

{{div col|colwidth=30em}}

• 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

{{div col end}}

• Goli Otok: The Island of Death (1984)[http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000362061 Goli Otok at the Hathi Trust Digital Library]

{{reflist}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090725134311/http://markovski.eu/ Site with books by Venko Markovski and his son Mile Markovski]
• [http://veni.com/venko.html The site of Venko Markovski's grandson]
• [http://video.bgnes.com/view/22569 Interview with Venko Markovski widow, Filimena (in Bulgarian)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723233552/http://video.bgnes.com/view/22569 |date=2011-07-23 }}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Markovski, Venko}}

Category:1915 births

Category:1988 deaths

Category:Writers from Skopje

Category:Politicians from Skopje

Category:Bulgarian male writers

Category:Bulgarian politicians

Category:Bulgarian people imprisoned abroad

Category:Prisoners and detainees of Yugoslavia

Category:Members of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Category:Members of the National Assembly (Bulgaria)

Category:Yugoslav Partisans members

Category:Yugoslav emigrants to Bulgaria

Category:Macedonian writers

Category:Macedonian politicians