Venko Markovski

Venko Markovski was born on March 5, 1915, in Skopje, Kingdom of Serbia, (present-day North Macedonia). Markovski completed his primary and secondary education in Skopje, later studying Slavic philology in Sofia University. Markovski was a member of the Macedonian Literary Group for the creation of a Macedonian literary language, founded in Skopje in 1931. In 1934, as a student of a Serbian gymnasium, he was arrested due to anti-state activity. In 1937, he moved to Sofia. He signed his first poems in the same year with the name Venko Markovski. From 1938, he participated in the Macedonian Literary Circle in Sofia, embracing its Macedonism. He was a member of the group until 1941. Markovski also became a member of the General Staff of the Macedonian Partisans. In the same year, Markovski also published the play "The Native Floor", which was banned from being performed after its first performance. The critic Dimitar Mitrev accused Markovski of belittling the struggle of the Serbian people and their contribution to the World War II. After serving his full term, he was released in 1961 and allowed to return to Skopje, where he lived under virtual house arrest. In 1966, he was permitted to leave Yugoslavia. He moved to Bulgaria. Markovski soon became prominent on the Bulgarian political scene and began publishing in Bulgarian. Many of his poems there were political and Bulgarian nationalist. Markovski became a member of the Bulgarian National Assembly. He was also a member of the Bulgarian Writers' Union and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1979). Markovski was awarded the highest communist Bulgarian order, Hero of Bulgaria, in March 1985. Prior to his death, Markovski stated that the ethnic Macedonians and the Macedonian language are a creation of the Communist International and denied their existence. 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. He denounced the Macedonian national identity as a Serbian and Yugoslav forgery. He also argued that Macedonian identity was a Bulgarian regionalism. Markovski wrote poems glorifying historical figures of the Macedonian and Bulgarian past "who safeguarded Bulgar nationhood." One of his poems, on the Gemidzii, was about Pavel Shatev, while another poem glorified the Ilinden uprising as a movement of the people of Lower Bulgaria. ==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. By the late 1990s, writers and journalists aligned with VMRO-DPMNE denounced Koneski as a "Serbian agent" and glorified Markovski. ==Bibliography==