# Venko Markovski

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.
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. 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.
Markovski openly supported the Cominform and was subsequently imprisoned at the internment camp in Idrizovo 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 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 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. 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. 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. 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. He also argued that Macedonian identity was a Bulgarian regionalism.
His poetry in Macedonian was criticized by the Bulgarian anti-communist oppositionist of the first years after the Second World War, Trifon Kunev [bg], 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.

## 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. 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.