Georgi Pulevski | |
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Born | 1817 Galičnik, Ottoman Empire (present-day North Macedonia) |
Died | 13 February 1893 76) Sofia, Principality of Bulgaria | (aged
Occupation | Writer and revolutionary |
Georgi Pulevski, sometimes also Gjorgji, Gjorgjija Pulevski or Đorđe Puljevski (Macedonian : Ѓорѓи Пулевски or Ѓорѓија Пулевски, Bulgarian : Георги Пулевски, Serbian : Ђорђе Пуљевски; 1817–1895) was a Mijak [1] [2] [3] writer and revolutionary. Pulevski was born in 1817 in Galičnik, then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and died in 1895 in Sofia, Principality of Bulgaria. Trained as a stonemason, he became a self-taught writer in matters relating to the Macedonian language and culture. He is known today as the first author to express publicly the idea of a Macedonian nation distinct from Bulgarian, as well as the idea of a separate Macedonian language. [4] Despite Pulevski being an early adherent of Macedonism, [5] [6] because of his pro-Bulgarian military activity, in Bulgaria he is regarded as a Bulgarian. [7] [8] [9]
Pulevski was born in the Mijak tribal region. [1] As a seven-year-old, he went with his father to Danubian Principalities as a migrant worker (pečalbar). [10] According to popular legends in his youth, Pulevski was engaged in a hajduk in the area of Golo Brdo.
In 1862, Pulevski fought as a member of the Bulgarian Legion against the Ottoman siege at Belgrade. He also participated in the Serbian–Ottoman War in 1876, and then in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, which led to the Liberation of Bulgaria; during the latter, he was a voivode of a unit of Bulgarian volunteers, [11] taking part in the Battle of Shipka Pass. After the war, he went to live in the newly liberated Bulgarian capital Sofia. He also participated as a volunteer in the Kresna-Razlog Uprising (1878–79), which aimed at the unification of Ottoman Macedonia with Bulgaria. [12] In an application for a veteran pension to the Bulgarian Parliament in 1882, [13] he expressed his regret about the failure of this unification. In 1883 Pulevski finally received a government pension in recognition of his service as a Bulgarian volunteer. Pulevski settled in the village of Progorelec, near Lom, Bulgaria, where he received gratuitously agricultural land from the state. Then he moved to Kyustendil. [14] He died in Sofia in 1893. [15]
In 1875, he published in Belgrade a book called Dictionary of Three Languages (Rečnik od tri jezika, Речник од три језика). It was a conversational phrasebook composed in "question-and-answer" style in three parallel columns, in Macedonian, Albanian and Turkish, all three spelled in Cyrillic. Pulevski chose to write in the local Macedonian rather than the Bulgarian standard based on eastern Tarnovo dialects. His language was an attempt at creating a supra-dialectal Macedonian norm, but with a bias towards his own native local Galičnik dialect [4] The text of the Rečnik contains programmatic statements where Pulevski argues for an independent Slavic Macedonian nation and language. [4] It was the first work that publicly claimed Macedonian to be a separate language. [16]
What do we call a nation? – People who are of the same origin and who speak the same words and who live and make friends of each other, who have the same customs and songs and entertainment are what we call a nation, and the place where that people lives is called the people's country. Thus the Macedonians also are a nation and the place which is theirs is called Macedonia. [17]
His next published works were a revolutionary poem, Samovila Makedonska ('A Macedonian Fairy') published in 1878, [18] and a Macedonian Song Book in two volumes, published in 1879 in Belgrade, which contained both folk songs collected by Pulevski and some original poems by himself.
In 1880, Pulevski published Slavjano-naseljenski makedonska slognica rečovska ('Grammar of the language of the Slavic Macedonian population'), a work that is today known as the first attempt at a grammar of Macedonian. In it, Pulevski systematically contrasted his language, which he called našinski ("our language") or slavjano-makedonski ("Slavic-Macedonian") with both Serbian and Bulgarian. [19] He also wrote extensively about the places where the Mijaks were concentrated and their migrations. [15] All records of this book were lost during the first half of 20th century and only discovered again in the 1950s in Sofia. Owing to the writer's lack of formal training as a grammarian and dialectologist, it is today considered of limited descriptive value; however, it has been characterised as "seminal in its signaling of ethnic and linguistic consciousness but not sufficiently elaborated to serve as a codification", [20] In 1892, Pulevski completed the first Slavjanomakedonska opšta istorija (General History of the Macedonian Slavs), a large manuscript with over 1700 pages. In his last work: “Jazitshnica, soderzsayushtaja starobolgarski ezik, uredena em izpravlena da se uchat bolgarski i makedonski sinove i kerki"; ('Grammar, containing Old Bulgarian language, arranged and corrected to be taught to Bulgarian and Macedonian sons and daughters'), he considered the Macedonian dialects to be old Bulgarian and the differences between the two purely geographical. [21] [22]
According to anthropological study, his surname is of Vlach origin, as is the case with several other surnames in Mijak territory, which care the Vlach suffix -ul (present in Pulevci, Gugulevci, Tulevci, Gulovci, Čudulovci, etc.) This opens the possibility they are ancestors of Slavicized Vlachs. [23] It is possible that Pulevski's ancestors settled Galičnik from Pulaj, a small maritime village, near Velipojë, at the end of the 15th century, hence the surname Pulevski.
The definition of the ethnic Macedonian identity arose from the writings of Georgi Pulevski, who identified the existence of a distinct modern Macedonian language and nation. [24] Pulevski summarized the folk histories of the Macedonian people and concluded that the Macedonians were descendants of the ancient Macedonians. This opinion was based on the claim that the ancient Macedonian language had Slavic components in it, and thus, the ancient Macedonians were Slavic, and that modern Macedonians were descendants of them. [25] He considered the Mijaks to be a subgroup of the Macedonians. [3] However, his Macedonian self-identification was ambiguous. Pulevski viewed Macedonian identity as being a regional phenomenon, similar to Herzegovinians and Thracians. [25] Pulevski himself identified as a mijak galički (a "Mijak from Galičnik", 1875), [2] sometimes described himself as a "Serbian patriot" [25] and also viewed his ethnic designation as "Bulgarian from the village of Galičnik", [26] [27] thus he changed his self-identification several times during his lifetime. [28]
Macedonians are a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group native to the region of Macedonia in Southeast Europe. They speak Macedonian, a South Slavic language. The large majority of Macedonians identify as Eastern Orthodox Christians, who share a cultural and historical "Orthodox Byzantine–Slavic heritage" with their neighbours. About two-thirds of all ethnic Macedonians live in North Macedonia and there are also communities in a number of other countries.
The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, was a secret revolutionary society founded in the Ottoman territories in Europe, that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Georgi Nikolov Delchev, known as Gotse Delchev or Goce Delčev, was an important Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary (komitadji), active in the Ottoman-ruled Macedonia and Adrianople regions at the turn of the 20th century. He was the most prominent leader of what is known today as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), a secret revolutionary society that was active in Ottoman territories in the Balkans at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Delchev was its representative in Sofia, the capital of the Principality of Bulgaria. As such, he was also a member of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee (SMAC), participating in the work of its governing body. He was killed in a skirmish with an Ottoman unit on the eve of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising.
Krste Petkov Misirkov was a philologist, journalist, historian and ethnographer from the region of Macedonia.
Kruševo is a town in North Macedonia. In Macedonian the name means the 'place of pear trees'. It is the highest town in North Macedonia and one of the highest in the Balkans, situated at an altitude of over 1350 m above sea level. The town of Kruševo is the seat of Kruševo Municipality. It is located in the western part of the country, overlooking the region of Pelagonia, 33 and 53 km from the nearby cities of Prilep and Bitola, respectively.
The history of the Macedonian language refers to the developmental periods of current-day Macedonian, an Eastern South Slavic language spoken on the territory of North Macedonia. The Macedonian language developed during the Middle Ages from the Old Church Slavonic, the common language spoken by Slavic people.
Dimo Hadzhidimov was a 20th-century Bulgarian teacher, revolutionary and politician from Ottoman Macedonia. He was among the leaders of the left wing of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), which he considered a Bulgarian creation.
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Parteniy Zografski or Parteniy Nishavski was a 19th-century Bulgarian cleric, philologist, and folklorist from Galičnik in today's North Macedonia, one of the early figures of the Bulgarian National Revival. In his works he referred to his language as Bulgarian and demonstrated a Bulgarian spirit, though besides contributing to the development of the Bulgarian language, in North Macedonia he is also thought to have contributed to the codification of present-day Macedonian.
Macedonians or Macedonian Bulgarians, sometimes also referred to as Macedono-Bulgarians, Macedo-Bulgarians, or Bulgaro-Macedonians are a regional, ethnographic group of ethnic Bulgarians, inhabiting or originating from the region of Macedonia. Today, the larger part of this population is concentrated in Blagoevgrad Province but much is spread across the whole of Bulgaria and the diaspora.
Mijaks are an ethnographic group of Macedonians who live in the Lower Reka region which is also known as Mijačija, along the Radika river, in western North Macedonia, numbering 30,000–60,000 people. The Mijaks practise predominantly animal husbandry, and are known for their ecclesiastical architecture, woodworking, iconography, and other rich traditions, as well as their characteristic Galičnik dialect of Macedonian. The main settlement of the Mijaks is Galičnik.
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Bulgarian Folk Songs is a collection of folk songs and traditions from the then Ottoman Empire, especially from the region of Macedonia, but also from Shopluk and Srednogorie, published in 1861 by the Miladinov brothers. The Miladinovs' collection remains one of the greatest single works in the history of Bulgarian folklore studies and has been republished many times. The collection is considered also to have played an important role by the historiography in North Macedonia.
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In 1875, Gorge M. Pulevski, who identifies himself as mijak galicki 'a mijak from Galicnik'
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