Background In the early 1900s, Misirkov was a student in
Saint Petersburg where he joined a pro-Bulgarian
Secret Macedonian-Adrianople Circle. The main objective of the circle was the political autonomy of the
Macedonia and
Thrace, declared by the
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). He graduated in 1902, and later left for
Ottoman Macedonia. There Misirkov accepted the proposal of the
Bulgarian Exarchate to be appointed as a teacher in the
Bulgarian men's high school of Bitola. In Bitola he befriended the Russian consul
Aleksandr Rostkovsky. The
Ilinden Uprising and the assassination of Rostkovsky in the summer of 1903 forced Misirkov to move back to Russia. In the autumn of 1903, he arrived in St. Petersburg, where he became active in the
Slavic-Macedonian Scientific Literary Society. At the same time, he wrote the pamphlet
On Macedonian Matters. In November 1903, he came to Sofia with the aim to print the book.
Content Za makedonckite raboti marked the first attempt to formalize a separate Macedonian literary language. With the book, Misirkov outlined an overview of the
Macedonian grammar and expressed the ultimate goal of codifying the language and using it as the language of instruction in the education system. The author proposed to use the west-central
Macedonian dialects (
Prilep-Bitola) as a dialectal basis for the formation of the Macedonian standard language. His ideas however were not adopted until the 1940s. Misirkov appealed to the Ottoman authorities for the eventual recognition of a separate Macedonian nation. However, he admitted there was not one, as most of the Macedonian Slavs have been called and called themselves Bulgarians, but it should be created, when the necessary historical circumstances would arise. Misirkov also wrote about "Macedonians of Slav origin and certain other Macedonian nationalities." He claimed that the
Byzantine Greeks renamed the Bulgarian and Macedonian Slavs into "Bulgarians" because of their alliance with the
Bulgars, during the incessant
Byzantine–Bulgarian conflict, which in the eyes of the Byzantines eventually forged Slavs and Bulgars into one people with a Bulgarian name and a Slavonic language, then preserved by the
Archbishopric of Ohrid and later the Macedonians adopted the term "Bulgarian" to differentiate from Greeks. Misirkov described the emergence of the Macedonians as a separate Slavic people as a "perfectly normal historical process", comparable to the way the Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian peoples had developed out of the broader
South Slavic group. For him, education was crucial for national distinctiveness, while science and literature were the most important factors in national development. He presented
Tsar Samuel as the key historical figure supporting Macedonian distinctiveness. Misirkov described Samuel's state as Macedonian, without Slavic attributes, and argued that the fall of Samuel's empire marked the beginning of continued Macedonian resistance to Byzantium, writing that "the Macedonians many times rebelled against Byzantium". According to him, using the name "Bulgarian" in relation to Macedonian was "a historical misunderstanding". He described the Bulgarian feeling in the Macedonians as the "biggest disaster" and that Bulgaria was "the evil demon" of Macedonia, which he regarded as the biggest threat to the project. and he attacked the
Bulgarian Exarchate too, viewing it along with IMRO as an exponent of Bulgarian interests in Macedonia. He also acknowledged the impact of Serbian propaganda, noting that the Serbs have not succeeded in turning the Macedonians into Serbs, but succeeded in convincing Europe that there are Serbs in Macedonia. Although he opposed the Serbian position, he nevertheless recognized its influence, writing that "the Macedonian national revival is basically the result of the competition between Bulgaria and Serbia over the Macedonian question". Misirkov recommended that Macedonia should remain part of the
Ottoman Empire as he perceived the Macedonian nation as being not yet "solid enough" to emerge as a separate unit, and as such would be protected from the aggressive propaganda of its neighbors. IMRO activists destroyed a number of copies too. Misirkov arrived in
Belgrade in December, where he met with
Stojan Novaković, at that time a Serbian foreign minister. Novaković was the first politician to decide to use
Macedonian nationalism as an ideology, in order to oppose the Bulgarian positions in
Macedonia and as a transitional stage towards the complete
Serbization of the Macedonian Slavs. From this book, Novaković ordered the purchase of 50 pieces by the Serbian Diplomatic Agency in Sofia. The purchased exemplars were shipped through Serbian diplomatic channels to Ottoman Macedonia. In 1905, Misirkov returned to a pro-Bulgarian stance and renounced the positions he espoused in
On Macedonian Matters. Also, he published a series of articles in IMRO's press written from a Bulgarian nationalist perspective, In 1907, in the introduction to his article "Notes on South Slavic
Philology and History", Misirkov rejected categorically the ideas of his 1903 book. He would return to the Macedonian national ideas especially in the 1920s, when it was possible to receive a much more favorable reaction by the public. Although the language planners involved in the codification of
standard Macedonian in 1944 were not familiar of Misirkov's book, since most of the copies of it were destroyed, they were familiar with Misirkov's historical legacy. Hence, the west-central Macedonian dialectal basis proposed by Misirkov is the same to that of standard Macedonian. The book was reprinted in 1946, from a copy found by
Kole Nedelkovski in the Sofia public library, and it has been cited by Macedonian historians as an indication of the existence of a separate Macedonian ethnicity at Misirkov's time. Anthropologist Keith Brown described the book as the "brilliant and polemical anti-Bulgarian and autonomist work of Krste Misirkov". Misirkov's work is frequently cited in contemporary debates on Macedonian national identity. The book is regarded as the central text of Macedonian national identity, and his ideas continue to shape how the Macedonian nation is understood by Macedonians. Unlike recent Macedonian
nationalist claims, Misirkov's book acknowledged that the ideas of a distinct Macedonian nation and language emerged at the eve of the 20th century. ==Gallery==