Georgi Pulevski

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Georgi Pulevski

Born 1817
Galičnik, present-day Republic of Macedonia
Died February 13, 1893 (aged 76)
Sofia, Bulgaria
Occupation writer and revolutionary

Georgi Pulevski (Bulgarian: Георги Пулевски; Macedonian: Ѓорѓи Пулевски, 1838 – 1895) was a writer and revolutionary from Macedonia, known today as the first author to publicly express the idea of a separate Slavic Macedonian nation distinct from Serbs and Bulgarians, as well as a separate Macedonian language.[1]

Pulevski was born in 1838 in Galičnik (today Republic of Macedonia, then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire) and died in 1895 in Sofia, the capital of what was then the newly independent Principality of Bulgaria. Trained as a stonemason, he became a self-taught writer in matters relating to Macedonian language and culture.

Contents

[edit] Works

Page 49 of the "A Dictionary of Three languages" (1875), containing Pulevski's programmatic passage about the "Macedonian nation".
Page 49 of the "A Dictionary of Three languages" (1875), containing Pulevski's programmatic passage about the "Macedonian nation".

In 1875, he published 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 Slavic, Albanian and Turkish, all three spelled with the Cyrillic alphabet. Pulevski chose to write in the local Macedonian Slavic rather than the Bulgarian standard based on eastern (Sofia) dialects. His language was an attempt at creating a supra-dialectal Macedonian norm, but with a bias towards his own native local Galičnik dialect [1] The text of the Rečnik contains programmatic statements where Pulevski argues for an independent Macedonian nation and language.[1]

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.[2]

His next published works were a revolutionary poem, Samovila Makedonska ('A Macedonian Fairy') published in 1878[3], 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 Macedonian Slavic 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 ("Slavo-Macedonian") with both Serbian and Bulgarian.[4] Records of this book were lost during the early 20th century and only discovered again in the 1950s. 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",[5]

Finally, in 1892, Pulevski completed the first Slavjanomakedonska opšta istorija (General History of the Macedonian Slavs), a large manuscript with over 1700 pages.

[edit] Military activities

Pulevski was also active as a military volunteer in anti-Ottoman insurgencies at various times in his life. In 1862, he fought on the Serbian side as member of the Bulgarian Legion against an Ottoman siege at Belgrade. Later, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, which led to the independence of Bulgaria, he was leader ("voijvod") of a unit of volunteers fighting on the Russian-Bulgarian side,[6] taking part in the Battle of Shipka Pass. After the war, he went to live in the newly liberated Bulgarian capital Sofia, where he received a government pension in recognition of his service as a Bulgarian volunteer, until his death in 1895.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Victor A. Friedman: Macedonian language and nationalism during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Balcanistica 2 (1975): 83-98. [1]
  2. ^ Rečnik od tri jezika, p. 48f.
  3. ^ Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences
  4. ^ Published Sofia, 1880. See Victor A. Friedman (1975: 89)
  5. ^ Victor A. Friedman, Romani standardization in Macedonia. In: Y. Matras (ed.) Romani in Contact, Amsterdam: Benjamins 1995, 177-189. Page 178.
  6. ^ (1904) Болгарское ополчение и земское воиску (in Russian), p.56-59. 

[edit] Works

  • Blaze Ristovski (ed. ) (1974) Georgija M. Pulevski: Odbrani stranici ('Collected Works'), Skopje: Makedonska kniga.