Krste Misirkov

Early years

Krste Petkov Misirkov was born on 18 November 1874 in the village of Postol in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (present-day Greece). He started his elementary education in the local Greek school, where he was studying until the sixth grade elementary school, but the bad financial situation of his family could not support his further education at that point and he left the school. At that period Serbian propaganda began to promote its variant of "Macedonism" and to recruit young people in order to "Serbianize" them. After some period, Misirkov applied and was granted a scholarship by the Serbian association "St. Sava".

Misirkov in Serbia

Misirkov spent some time in Serbia, where he was studying in Serbian, and soon after he realized that the propaganda was the main goal of the Serbian association. The politics practiced by the association forced Misirkov and the other Macedonian students to participate in a student's revolt against the Saint Sava society. As a result of that, Misirkov and other companions moved from Belgrade to Sofia. Since he faced up with similar situation in Bulgaria, i.e., another propaganda, Misirkov again went to Serbia to continue his education, but without any success because he was rejected by the "St. Sava" association. Since he was willing to get higher education, he was forced, by a chain of events, to enroll a theological school for teachers. Similar to the association "St. Sava", this school as well had its own propagandistic goals and that resulted in another revolt of the students. As a result of it, the school stopped working and the students were sent throughout Serbia. Misirkov was sent to Šabac, where he finished the last, fourth, class of secondary education, but this time in the local gymnasium. In both, Serbia and Bulgaria, Misirkov and his friend were treated as Serbians or Bulgarians in order to be accepted in the educational system. After the gymnasium, even though he graduated, Misirkov enrolled in another secondary school for teachers in Belgrade, where he graduated in 1895. During this time, particularly in 1893, Misirkov founded an association of students called "Vardar". Its charter included, among other things, the aim of studying and spreading a knowledge of their country as regards its geographical, ethnographic and historical aspects and the cardinal principle of its program was that Macedonia should belong to the Macedonians. In other words, the students were not satisfied by the Serbianization of the Macedonians. This idea was inspired by the "Lozari". However, the Serbs were opposed to this thesis of the young students, so their society did not last very long and it was disbanded in 1895. Afterwards he was appointed as a Serbian teacher in Pristina. Misirkov refused and left for Odessa to continue his studies.

Misirkov in the Russian Empire

His educational qualifications obtained in Belgrade were not recognized in Russia. Misirkov had to study from the very beginning in the Seminary at Poltava. In 1897 he was able to enter the Petersburg University. Here he entered at first the Bulgarian Students Association. About that part of his life, Misirkov writes in the article "School and socialism" - In 1897 I went to Petrograd University and for five years was among the Bulgarian studentship as Bulgarian and member of the Bulgarian Student Society. Misirkov carried out here his first scholarly lecture on the ethnography and history of the Balkan Peninsula before the members of the Russian Imperial Geographical Society.

On November 15, 1900, when Misirkov third year student in the Faculty of History and Philosophy, along with other students in Russia created а Petersburg circle. The main objective of the circle is political autonomy of the population of Macedonia and Thrace, declared by IMARO implemented and guaranteed by the Great Powers. In a letter sent to the President of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee on November 28, circle founders state that there's no Bulgarian who is not interested in the situation and fate of that part of our homeland, which continue to groan under the yoke of the tyrant. At that time Misirkov still considers the Slavic population of Macedonia and Thrace as Bulgarian.

In 1901, he moved to the University of Odessa. Of great importance to Misirkov was the founding of the Macedonian Scientific and Literary Society in Petersburg. Its creation was influenced by the Macedonian Club founded in Belgrade. After the Club was closed, its chief founders left for the Russian capital, where they organized the new Macedonian Society. This foundation in 1902 became the most important Macedonian institution abroad. In the same year this Society sent a special Memorandum to the Great Powers, in which the Macedonian Question was examined from the national point of view. It was proposed also Macedonian literary language to be codified. The question was also examined of establishing a Macedonian Church under the Ohrid Archbishopric. The aim of this Memorandum was that the Macedonians should be recognized as a separate nation and that Macedonia should be granted full autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. During this time he also examined the medieval period in Macedonia and his works contributed to the understanding of the 14th-century local ruler Krali Marko.

Later Misirkov abandoned the University and left for Ottoman Macedonia.

Returning to the Ottoman Macedonia

Facing financial obstacles to continue his postgraduate education, he accepted the proposal of the Bulgarian Exarchate to be appointed teacher in a high school in Bitola. There he became friendly with the Russian consul in Bitola. He began to plan opening of local schools and publishing textbooks in Macedonian language. But the Ilinden Uprising in 1903 and the assassination of the Russian Consul changed his plans and he returned to Russia. There Misirkov published different articles about the Ilinden Uprising and the reasons why the Consul was assassinated. Soon afterwards he wrote the brochure "The Macedonian matters" and published it in Sofia. This book, was written in the Central Macedonian dialect, and Misirkov attacked in his writings the Bulgarian Exarchate, the Ilinden Uprising and the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) as Bulgarian creations. As result, he was persecuted by IMARO, and it is believed its members destroyed a lot of copies of his book. However, he says that Dame Gruev, Goce Delchev, Boris Sarafov and other IMRO members are Macedonian national separatists.

Again in the Russian Empire

In 1905 he left for Berdiansk in Southern Russia. There he resumed publication of the journal "Vardar" and worked as Bulgarian teacher. In many of his next articles after 1905 Misirkov exposed pro-Bulgarian views and even categorically renounced the point of his book "The Macedonian matters". On 18 April 1907 Misirkov began to cooperate with the issued in Sofia magazine Macedonian-Adrianople Review, edited by Nikola Naumov, which was de facto organ of the IMARO. On 24 April 1909 K. Missirkov printed in Odessa in a separate booklet his work "South Slavic epic legends of the marriage of King Volkashin in connection with the question of the reasons for the popularity of Krali Marko among the South Slavs". On 1 October 1909 he printed the article, "The foundations of a Serbian-Bulgarian rapprochement" in the Magazine "Bulgarian collection" edited by Bulgarian diplomats in St. Petersburg. By the time, a Slavic Festival was held in Sofia in 1910 and Missirkov was attend as its guest of honor. In 1910–1911, he translated from Bulgarian to Russian the book of the Bulgarian geographer Prof. Atanas Ishirkov "Bulgaria".

When the First Balkan war was declared, Misirkov went to Macedonia as a Russian war correspondent. There he could follow the military operations of the Bulgarian Army. Misirkov published a series of articles in the Russian press and some articles demanding that the Ottomans should be driven out of Macedonia. In 1913 after the outbreak of the Second Balkan war Misirkov went back to Russia, where he worked as a teacher also in the Bulgarian schools in Odessa. Here he wrote his diary, which was found in 2006. Later he was appointed teacher of the Bulgarian school at Kishinev. While working as a teacher in Kishinev, Misirkov sent а letter to the Bulgarian academic Aleksandar Teodorov-Balan with a request to be assigned as a professor at Sofia University. That request clearly indicates his self-identification at that time - As a Bulgarian, I would willingly return to Bulgaria, if there is a need of a scientific research of the fate of the Bulgarian lands, especially Macedonia.. A shorter letter with similar content was sent to another professor at Sofia University - Vasil Zlatarski with the request to be assigned as a chosen at the newly established department for history of Macedonia and the other western Bulgarian lands.

At that point, Misirkov made contacts with the Macedonian Scientific and Literary Society, which started publishing the magazine "Macedonian Voice" in Russian. Misirkov was publishing in this magazine for some period under the pseudonym "K. Pelski".

After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 Bessarabia became a democratic republic, and he was elected a member of the local parliament Sfatul Ţării as a representative of the Bulgarian minority. At the same time, Misirkov worked as a secretary in the Bulgarian educational commission in Bessarabia. In March 1918 was declared the union of Bessarabia with Romania. On May 21, 1918 Misirkov openеd a Bulgarian language course in Bolhrad. Then he took a secret trip to Bulgaria in order to procure textbooks for the students, but after his return in November he was arrested by the Kingdom of Romania authorities, still at war with Bulgaria; afterwards, he was extradited to Bulgaria.

Last years in Bulgaria

Еxpelled by the Romanian authorities, at the end of 1918 Misirkov returned to Sofia, where he spent one year as a head of the Historical department of the National Museum of Ethnography. Then, he worked as a teacher and director of the high schools in Karlovo and Koprivshtitsa. During this period (but before 1923) the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) apparently marked Misirkov as harmful to its cause and supposedly considering his assassination, but reconsidered after he met with a representative of the organization. He also resumed his journalistic activity and published many articles on the Macedonian Question in the Bulgarian press. Misirkov died in 1926 and was buried in the graveyards in Sofia with the financial support of 5000 levs from the Ministry of Education, as an honoured educator.

Works

In his life, Misirkov wrote one book, one diary, published one issue of a magazine and wrote more than thirty articles. His book "On Macedonian Matters" was published in Sofia in 1903. The magazine was called "Vardar" and was published in 1905 in Odessa, Russian Empire. The articles that Misirkov wrote have been published in different newspapers and they were focused on different topics. The book, magazine and a number of his article were written in the Central Macedonian dialects, which are basis of the Modern Macedonian.

"On the Macedonian Matters"

One of the most important work of Misirkov is the Macedonian book On the Macedonian Matters (За македонцките работи, Za makedonckite raboti) published in 1903 in Sofia, in which he laid down the principles of the modern Macedonian language. This book was written in a Macedonian dialects from the area between Prilep and Bitola. It argued in favor of national separation, the establishment of autonomous national institutions within the Ottoman empire, and the standardization of a distinct Macedonian language. Misirkov attacked both the Bulgarian Exarchate and the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) as agents of the Bulgarian interests in Macedonia.

According to this book, the Macedonian literary language should be based on dialects from the central part of Macedonia, which were used in the book itself. On the other hand, Misirkov appealed to the Ottoman authorities for eventual recognition of a separate Macedonian nation. He admitted there was not such one, and most of the Macedonian Slavs has called themselves Bulgarians, but it should be created, when the necessary historical circumstances would arise.

As a consequence, Misirkov was persecuted and went back to Russia. Most copies of his book were confiscated or destroyed by the Bulgarian police and IMARO-activists, shortly after the book was published. Because of that at his own time, the book had little or no impact and did not become popular until the middle of the 1940s. Then it was rediscovered by the Macedonian linguist Blaze Koneski in Sofia, and its content was popularized.

According some researchers Misirkov's principles played a crucial role in the future codification of the Macedonian language, right after World War II, while others like Loring Danforth and John Shea consider that the language planners involved in the codification of standard literary Macedonian in 1944, were working in complete ignorance of Misirkov's work. John Shea alone states that Misirkov's book was lost and the process of standardization of the Macedonian language had to start all over again in 1944, as well as that Misirkov's book was actually written Macedonian Standard language which was finally codified in 1944/1945.

After the Second World War Misirkovs book will be permanently cited by the historians in Macedonia as an indication of the existence of a separate Macedonian ethnicity at his time. However, only two years later Misirkov changed his stance, and published a series of articles in the IMARO press written from a Bulgarian nationalist perspective, claiming Bulgarian identity for himself and the Macedonian Slavs.

The magazine "Vardar"

Besides On Macedonian Matters, Misirkov is author of the first scientific magazine on Macedonian language. The magazine Vardar was published in 1905 in Odessa, Russian Empire. The magazine was published only once, because of the financial problems that Misirkov had been facing with at that time. "Vardar" has been published on Macedonian language, and the orthography that has been used is almost same as the orthography of the standard Macedonian language.

The magazine was meant to include several different scientific disciplines, mostly concerned with Macedonia. The first section of the magazine is made of the introduction, where in general Misirkov elaborates the aims of the magazine and this section was in Macedonian and Russian. The next section of the magazine is the literary section, where Misirkov translated into Macedonian the poem "Traveler" by the Croatian poet P. Preradovic. After the literary section, the magazine includes an analysis about the Balkan propagandas in Macedonia, followed by a political analysis of some of the global events in that period. The last section is statistics, which shows the Macedonian population in Macedonia.

The goals of the magazine were to:

1. Establish a relationship between the Macedonian national separatists and their opponents, all Balkan people interested in the Macedonian question;
2. Fight for separate Slavic Macedonian nationality;
3. Show that the language is individual, it's not Serbian nor Bulgarian and is capable of literary development.

Regarding the opponents of the magazine, Misirkov shares his concern that at the end, the larger, if not to say the largest, part of the Macedonian intelligentsia would be against "Vardar" and its program, because all Macedonian, opponents of the Macedonian national separatism, are convinced, that with money in Macedonia a man can create out of our Macedonians not only Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek or Macedonian, but even Gypsy nationality He also believes that the common people will (also) be against Vardar and his associates, the national separatists, because the idea of the separatists, is hard to be understood by the common people, which is faced up with different kinds of prechments and new ideas'.

Articles

During his life, Misirkov published many articles for different newspapers and magazines. The articles deal with Macedonia, Macedonian culture, ethnology, politics and nation on one hand and with the Bulgarian nation, politics and ethnography on the other. Misirkov published his articles in Macedonian, Russian and Bulgarian and he published them either in Russia or in Bulgaria. Most of the articles were signed by his birth name, but there are articles that are signed with his pseudonym K. Pelski.

Diary

In 2006, a handwritten diary by Misirkov written during his stay in Russia in 1913 was discovered. It was declared authentic by Bulgarian and Macedonian experts and was published in 2008. The content of the diary clearly shows that at the time, Misirkov was a Bulgarian nationalist. It has given rise to new public discussion over Misirkov's stances on Bulgarian and Macedonian ethnicity. The manuscript, includes 381 pages written in Russian language. Misirkov wrote it in Kotovsk's nearby village of Klimentove, where he lived and worked at the time. It contains also articles and excerpts from the Russian press of that time.

Contribution to Bulgarian dialectology and ethnography

In several publications Misirkov made an attempt to determine the border between the Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian languages, including in the Bulgarian dialect area nearly all of Torlakian and Macedonian dialects. Misirkov pointed there, that the population in Pomoravlje is autochthonous and Bulgarian by origin, excluding any later migrations during the Ottoman rule from Bulgaria. According to Krste Misirkov, Krali Marko epic songs in Serbia, the so-called Bugarstici are a result from Bulgarian musical influence over the Serbian folk music.

Controversies about Misirkov's ethnicity and views

During the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the idea of a separate Macedonian ethnicity was as yet promoted only by some circles of intellectuals. Then, most of the Slavic people in Macedonia considered themselves Bulgarian, and Macedonist idea failed to gain wide popular support. At different points in his life, Misirkov expressed conflicting statements about the ethnicity of the Slavs living in Macedonia, including his own ethnicity. While Misirkov's work and personality remain highly controversial and disputed, there have been attempts among international scholars to reconcile the conflicting and self-contradictory statements made by Misirkov. According to Croatian Ivo Banac, professor of history at Yale University Misirkov viewed both himself and the Slavs of Macedonia as Bulgarians, and espoused pan-Bulgarian patriotism in a larger Balkan context, and especially with regard to Serbian and Greek hegemonism in Macedonia. However, in the context of the larger Bulgarian unit/nation, Misirkov sought both cultural and national differentiation from the Bulgarians and called both himself and the Slavs of Macedonia Macedonians.

View of Misirkov in Bulgaria

In Bulgaria, Misirkov is regarded as a controversial educator with scientific contribution to Bulgarian dialectology and ethnography. He graduated from the Belgrade University as a student of Prof. Stojan Novaković and was influenced by his ideas. At that time, Novaković was a prominent proponent of the Macedonism, thereby promoting Serbian interests in the region of Macedonia. Afterwards Misirkov met several times with him and Novaković's diplomatic activity in St. Petersburg played significant role for the foundation of the Macedonian Scientific and Literary Society. However, after 1906 Misirkov rejected these ideas, opposng the Serbian theory about the "floating mass" of the "Macedonian Slavs" and even developed a kind of Serbophobia. In this period he became evidently bulgarophile and argued that the Slavic population of Macedonia was not "a formless paste" but a "well baked Bulgarian bread", even though in his book and part of his articles writes about the existence of a separate Macedonian nation. Later in 1913, in his diary from the Balkan wars, he explicitly identifies himself as Macedonian Bulgarian. Bulgarian historians believe that his writings were significantly altered by the post-WWII Yugoslavian Communist regime to support the notion of a "Macedonian nation", distinct from the Bulgarian one. Bulgarians also note that Misirkov worked as a Bulgarian teacher in Russia, was Bulgarian deputy in Bessarabia, chose Bulgarian citizenship, lived and died in Bulgaria and worked there until his death in 1926. Nevertheless, Bulgarian scholarship points out that despite Misirkov in many cases defending the cause of Bulgarian nationalism, he several times switched during the 1920s, from Bulgarian to Macedonian one, and vice a versa. According to Bulgarian observers, after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the Republic of Macedonia also have arisen polemics about the identity of Misirkov. The most popular Misirkov's thought in Bulgaria is:

View of Misirkov in the Republic of Macedonia

In the Republic of Macedonia, Misirkov is regarded as the most prominent Macedonian publicist, philologist and linguist who set the principles of the Macedonian literary language in the early 20th century. In some of his writings he identifies the Macedonians as separate nation and the Macedonian as a separate South Slavic language. Also, Misirkov is the author of the first scientific magazine in Macedonian and because of his contributions to the Macedonian national cause, he is regarded as the greatest Macedonian of the 20th century. In his honor, many books and scientific works have been published and the Institute for Macedonian language "Krste Misirkov" is named after him.

There is not an important debate about Misirkov's ethnicity in Macedonia, since he is always regarded as Macedonian as it is obvious in most of his major writings. Since he was not allowed to live in work in Macedonia by the Yugoslav authorities, unwillingly he remained in Bulgaria where he got Bulgarian citizenship since he needed it for his job. Regarding Misirkov's signature under the phrase "Macedonian Bulgarian", the Macedonian historians and linguists argue that it means nothing but a Macedonian person with a Bulgarian citizenship, in a political sense, or just a Macedonian person living in Bulgaria. However, the fact is that Misirkov gained Bulgarian citizenship after World War I (1915-1918) and has declared as Bulgarian Macedonian in 1913, which is against the claims of the Macedonian historians and linguists. On the other hand, some Macedonian scholars, like PhD Vlado Popovski, the academician Blaže Ristovski and others, say that Misirkov’s usage of the term “Macedonian Bulgarian” was only a tactic, because in 1914 and many times after that, he repeated his views about the Macedonian national existence.

The most quoted and most popular Misirkov's thought in Macedonia is: