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The Miladinov brothers (Bulgarian: Братя Миладинови, romanized: Bratya Miladinovi, Macedonian: Браќа Миладиновци, romanized: Brakja Miladinovci), Dimitar Miladinov (1810–1862) and Konstantin Miladinov (1830–1862), were Bulgarian poets, folklorists, and activists of the Bulgarian national movement in Ottoman Macedonia. They are best known for their collection of folk songs called Bulgarian Folk Songs, considered a milestone in Bulgarian literature, the greatest literary work in the history of Bulgarian folklore studies and the genesis of folklore studies during the Bulgarian National Revival. They also contributed to Bulgarian ethnography through their collection of folk material. Their third brother Naum (1817–1897) helped compile this collection too. Konstantin Miladinov is also famous for his poem Taga za Yug (Grief for the South) which he wrote during his stay in Russia.

In North Macedonia, the Miladinov brothers are celebrated as Macedonians who laid the foundation of the Macedonian national awakening and literary tradition. Many of the Miladinov brothers' original works have been unavailable to the general public and only censored versions, and redacted copies of them have been published there.

Family and background

The mother of the Miladinov brothers was Sultana Miladinova. Her father was an Aromanian from Magarevo who moved to Ohrid and studied in Moscopole with Daniel Moscopolites. Sultana's mother was a native of Ohrid and the granddaughter of sakellarios Pop Stefan, who was so fond of his pupil Dimitrius of Ioannou that he let him marry her. The brothers' father, Hristo Miladinov, was also from Magarevo. He was a pottery merchant, who moved to Struga in around 1810. The family had eight children, six sons and two daughters.

After the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire, the name Macedonia disappeared as a designation for several centuries. Names such as "Lower Moesia" and "Bulgaria" were used for the northern and central parts of the modern Macedonian region. The name was revived in the early 19th century with the new Greek state and was affirmed in the modern area as a result of Hellenic religious and school propaganda. However, the Bulgarian national revival is considered to have opposed Greek domination of Bulgaria's Slavic language and culture. The Miladinov brothers deliberately avoided using the term Macedonia in reference to the region, arguing that it presents a threat to the Bulgarian people there, and proposed the name Western Bulgaria instead. Miladinov and other educated Macedonian Slavs worried that the use of the designation Macedonian would imply an identification with the Greek nation.

Dimitar Miladinov

Dimitar Miladinov was born around 1810 in the town of Struga in the Ottoman Empire (today North Macedonia), in the family of a potter named Hristo Miladinov and his wife, Sultana. Dimitar was the eldest of eight children, six boys and two girls.

In his youth, Dimitar was sent by his father to the Monastery of Saint Naum on Lake Ohrid, to receive basic education. Having spent four years at the monastery, at the age of twelve he continued his education in a Greek school in the town of Ohrid. Shortly after graduating as an outstanding student around 1830, he was invited by the citizens and spent two years teaching in the same school. Following the death of his father and the birth of his youngest brother Konstantin, Dimitar worked briefly as a bookkeeper in the trade chamber of the town of Durrës, today in Albania. From 1833 to 1836 he studied in Ioannina, in what was considered to be one of the best Greek high schools, where he mastered the Greek language. After graduating, Dimitar returned to Ohrid and continued teaching.

As a teacher, in 1836, Dimitar introduced the Bell-Lancaster method and expanded the school curriculum, adding philosophy, arithmetics, geography, Old Greek, Greek literature, Latin and French. He quickly became popular and respected among his students and peers. After two years, he left Ohrid and returned to Struga. From 1840 to 1842 he was a teacher in Kukush, today in Greece. He became active in the town's social life, strongly opposing the phanariotes. In May 1845, the Russian Slavist Viktor Grigorovich visited him in Ohrid and realised that Miladinov had improper knowledge of Bulgarian language, and under his influence, Miladinov gained interest in Bulgarian. As his interest grew, he developed a Bulgarian national consciousness. Dimitar travelled around the Macedonian region, collecting folk material, which he informed Grigorovich about. In a letter written in Greek on 20 August 1852, he complained that most of the Bulgarians of Macedonia used Greek as the language of education and were considered Greeks. He called for opposition to the hellenisation of the Bulgarians. At the initiative of Dimitar, and with the approval of the city's fathers, in 1858, the Greek language was banished from the churches and substituted with Church Slavonic. During this period, he translated the Acts of the Apostles into Bulgarian to make it available for church usage. In 1859, upon hearing that the town of Ohrid had officially demanded from the Ottoman government the restoration of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, Dimitar left Kukush and went to Ohrid to help. There, he translated Bible texts into Bulgarian. Dimitar tried to introduce the Bulgarian language into the Greek school in Prilep in 1856, causing an angry reaction from the local Grecomans. In a letter to Tsarigradski Vestnik (Tsarigrad Newspaper) on 26 March 1860, he wrote: "In the holy Ohrid district, there is not a single Greek family, except for three or four Vlachs now, and all the others are purely a Bulgarian tribe." Due to his endeavours, the Greek bishop Miletos denounced Miladinov as a Russian agent. He was accused of spreading pan-Slavic ideas and was imprisoned in Istanbul, later to be joined by his supporting brother Konstantin. On 11 January 1862, he died in prison from typhus.

Konstantin Miladinov

Konstantin Miladinov was the youngest son in the family of the potter Hristo Miladinov. He was born in 1830 in Struga. He studied in an elementary school in Ohrid. After his graduation from the Hellenic Institute at Ioannina and the University of Athens, where he studied literature, at the initiative of his brother, Dimitar, In 1856, he went to Russia. He arrived in Odessa and because he was short of money, the Bulgarian Society in that city financed his trip to Moscow. Konstantin enrolled at the Moscow University to study Slavic philology. While at the University of Athens, he was exclusively exposed to the teachings and thinking of ancient and modern Greek scholars. In Moscow, he came in contact with prominent Slavic writers and intellectuals.

While in Moscow he desired to see the river Volga. At the time of his youth, the universal belief was that the Bulgars had camped on the banks of the river, had crossed it on their way to the Balkans and the origin of the name Bulgarians had come from the river's name. After seeing the river, he wrote his impressions down in a letter to a friend: "O, Volga, Volga! What memories you awake in me, how you drive me to bury myself in the past! High are your waters, Volga. I and my friend, also a Bulgarian, we dived and proudly told ourselves that, at this very moment, we received our true baptismal…" While staying in Russia, he wrote his poem called Taga za Yug (Grief for the South), expressing his homesickness. Other poems he wrote include "Bisera" (Pearl), "Zhelanie" (Desire), "Kletva" (An Oath), "Dumane" (A Saying), "Na chuzhdina" (Abroad).

He also helped his older brother Dimitar in editing the materials for the collection of Bulgarian songs, that Dimitar had collected in his field work. Konstantin had to transcribe the collected songs from the Greek alphabet in which they were recorded, into the Cyrillic alphabet. Initially, Konstantin tried to find assistance among Russian scholars to have the collection of folk songs published. After failing to find assistance, he went to Vienna to look for sponsors. The collection was subsequently published in Croatia with the support of the bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, who was one of the patrons of Slavonic literature at that time. In a private letter to Bulgarian National Revival activist Georgi Rakovski on 8 January 1861, Konstantin Miladinov expressed concern over the use of the name Macedonia as it could have been used to justify Greek claims to the region and the local Bulgarian population, so he suggested that the region should be called Western Bulgaria instead. Shortly after the publication of the collection, he found out that his brother was jailed. He went to Istanbul to help him. Denounced by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople as a dangerous Russian agent, he was arrested on 5 August 1861. It is unknown if he was placed in the same cell as his brother or whether he saw him. He died on 7 January 1862 in prison from typhus.

Naum Miladinov

Naum Miladinov was the brother of Dimitar and Konstantin. He was born in 1817 and finished primary school in Struga. Later he went with his brother Dimitar to Duras, where Naum learned to play the violin. After that, together with Dimitar, Naum graduated from the Ioannina Greek High School and worked as his assistant teacher. From 1841 to 1844 he studied at the Halki seminary, where he graduated in music and grammar. In 1843 he wrote a music textbook and prepared a Greek grammar. After returning to Struga, Naum became involved in the activities of his brothers and became a proponent of the Bulgarian National Revival. He assisted in collecting materials for the collection "Bulgarian Folk Songs". The folk songs collected by him are also notated. After 1878 he settled in the newly established Principality of Bulgaria. Naum received a national pension as a Bulgarian educator. He wrote a biography of his brothers, but failed to publish it. He died in 1897 in Sofia.

Legacy

The two brothers are honoured in the history of the Bulgarian National Revival in the 19th century. The collecting of the folk material was well-received by its contemporaries - Lyuben Karavelov, Nesho Bonchev, Ivan Bogorov, Kuzman Shapkarev, Rayko Zhinzifov and others. The Russian scholar Izmail Sreznevsky, in his opinion about the collection, pointed out in 1863: "It can be seen by the published collection that the Bulgarians are far from lagging behind other peoples in poetic abilities and even surpass them with the vitality of their poetry…" Parts of the collection were also translated into Czech, Russian and German. Elias Riggs, an American linguist in Constantinople, translated nine songs into English and sent them to the American Oriental Society in Princeton, New Jersey. In a letter from June 1862, Riggs wrote: "…The whole present an interesting picture of the traditions and fancies prevailing among the mass of the Bulgarian people." The collection also had an impact on the development of modern Bulgarian literature, because its songs inspired the Bulgarian poets – Ivan Vazov, Pencho Slaveikov, Kiril Hristov, Peyo Yavorov, etc. Dimitar's daughter Tsarevna Miladinova continued his Bulgarian nationalist efforts, co-founding the Bulgarian Girls' High School of Thessaloniki in 1882. Her son, Vladislav Aleksiev [bg] (1884-1962) was a prominent Bulgarian jurist and historian, a professor of Bulgarian medieval law, and a specialist in Byzantine law at the Sofia University.

In post-war Yugoslav Macedonia, the Miladinov brothers were appropriated by the historians as part of the Macedonian National Revival and their original works were hidden from the general public. The Macedonian national museum did not display their original works. Their works were claimed to be Macedonian, despite them stating in their works that they were Bulgarians. Per political scientist Alexis Heraclides, the Miladinov brothers were among "the earliest pioneers of a sense of Macedonian identity, as least as conceived by contemporary Macedonian historians and other scholars". The official view in North Macedonia is that the Miladinov brothers were Macedonians who spoke Macedonian and contributed to Macedonian literature. Their ethnicity is disputed between North Macedonia and Bulgaria.

Monuments honouring the brothers are in Blagoevgrad and Pliska, Bulgaria, and Struga, North Macedonia. There are streets, schools and chitalishta named after them in Bulgaria. Today in North Macedonia there are also schools named after the Miladinov brothers, but the pupils there do not have the access to the works of their schools' patrons in original, while redacted copies of them have been available there, without the designation "Bulgarian" in them.

The Miladinov brothers' hometown of Struga hosts the international Struga Poetry Evenings festival in their honour, including a poetry award named after them. The Miladinovi Islets near Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, are named after the brothers.

References

1. In the announcement by the Miladinov Brothers about the subscription for their collection called Bulgarian Folk Songs, published in Belgrade by Konstantin Miladinov on February 7, 1861 in the Bulgarian newspaper Dunavski Lebed, issue № 20, he wrote: "We started collecting folk songs six years ago from all parts of Western Bulgaria, i.e. Macedonia... as well as from Eastern Bulgaria. These folk songs will be supplemented with traditional rites of betrothal and match-making from Struga and Kukush; proverbs, riddles, legends and about 2,000 words which have become obsolete or differ from other dialects". For more see: D. Kossev et al., Macedonia, documents and materials, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, (in English) Sofia, 1978, p. 48.
2. "On 8 January 1861, K. Miladinov wrote to the Bulgarian weakener G. Rakovski to explain his use of the term ‘‘Bulgarian’’ in the title of his and his brother’s collection of Macedonian folk songs: ‘‘In the announcement I called Macedonia West Bulgaria (as it should be called) because in Vienna the Greeks treat us like sheep. They consider Macedonia a Greek land and cannot understand that is not Greek.’’ Miladinov and other educated Macedonians worried that use of the Macedonian name would imply attachment to or identification with the Greek nation." For more see: Andrew Rossos, Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History, Hoover Institution Press, 2008, ISBN 0817948813, p. 84.
3. İpek Yosmaoğlu, Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908, Cornell University Press, 2013, ISBN 0801469791, pp. 72–73.
4. Nationalism, Globalization and Orthodoxy: the social origins of ethnic conflict in the Balkans, Victor Roudometof, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, ISBN 0313319499, p. 144.
5. Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766-1976, Peter Mackridge, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN 019959905X, p. 189.
6. ^ Larry Koroloff, The Miladinov Brothers: A Miscellany, Macedonian Historical Society of Canada, 1982, pp. 4-8; 12.
7. ^ Charles A. Moser, A History of Bulgarian Literature 865–1944, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2019, ISBN 9783110810608, p. 85.
8. Developing Cultural Identity in the Balkans: Convergence Vs Divergence, Raymond Detrez, Pieter Plas, Peter Lang, 2005, ISBN 9052012970, p. 179.
9. ^ Janette Sampimon, Becoming Bulgarian: The articulation of Bulgarian identity in the nineteenth century in its international context: An intellectual history, Pegasus, 2006, ISBN 9061433118, pp. 22; 32-34.
10. Миладинова, М. 140 години "Български народни песни" от братя Миладинови. Отзвук и значение (in Bulgarian). сп. Македонски преглед, 2001, Македонският научен институт, бр. 4, стр. 5-21.
11. "ms0601". www.soros.org.mk. Archived from the original on 2012-04-05. Retrieved 2008-03-18.
12. Todorovski, Gane (1990), Книга нашинска сиреч славјанска (in Macedonian), Makedonska kniga, p. 19.
13. "Izbor" - Konstantin Miladinov (in Macedonian), Gane Todorovski, 1980, Misla Publishing, pp. 366; 395.
14. Литературен збор (in Macedonian), Volume 36 - 1989, p. 29.
15. Михайлов, Крум. Родът на Братя Миладинови. В: Стари български родове. Издателство Отечествен фронт, 1989, стр. 83-133.
16. Koliopoulos, John S.; Veremis, Thanos M. (2009). Modern Greece: A History since 1821. A New History of Modern Europe. John Wiley & Sons. p. 48. ISBN 978-1444314830.
17. James Pettifer, The New Macedonian Question, St. Martin's Press, 1999, ISBN 9780312222406, p. 50.
18. ^ Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, Introduction, pp. V–VIII.
19. ^ "Miladinov suggested that Macedonia should be called “Western Bulgaria”. Obviously, he was aware that the classical designation was received via Greek schooling and culture. As the Macedonian historian Taskovski claims, the Macedonian Slavs initially rejected the Macedonian designation as Greek." For more see: Tchavdar Marinov, Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian identity at the crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian nationalism, p. 285; in Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume One: National Ideologies and Language Policies with Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov as ed., BRILL, 2013, ISBN 900425076X, pp. 273-330.
20. ^ "Dimitar Miladinov's most famous literary achievement was the publishing of a large collection of Bulgarian folk songs in Zagreb in 1861 under the title Bulgarian Folk Songs. He published the volume with his brother Konstantin (1830-1862) and even though most of the songs were from Macedonia, the authors disliked this term as too Hellenic and preferred to refer to Macedonia as the "Western Bulgarian lands"." For more see: Chris Kostov, Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 3034301960, p. 72.
21. ^ "The struggle over the historical legacy of the name “Macedonia” was already under way in the nineteenth century, as the Greeks contested its appropriation by the Slavs. This is reflected in a letter from Konstantin Miladinov, who published Bulgarian folk songs from Macedonia, to Rakovski, dated 31 January 1861: On my order form I have called Macedonia “Western Bulgaria”, as it should be called, because the Greeks in Vienna are ordering us around like sheep. They want Macedonia to be Greek territory and still do not realize that it cannot be Greek. But what are we to do with the more than two million Bulgarians there? Shall the Bulgarians still be sheep and a few Greeks the shepherds? Those days are gone and the Greeks shall be left with no more than their sweet dream. I believe the songs will be distributed among the Bulgarians, and have therefore set a low price for them." For more see: Spyridon Sfetas, The image of the Greeks in the work of the Bulgarian revolutionary and intellectual Georgi Rakovski. Balkan Studies, , volume 42, issue 1, pp. 105-106, January 2001, ISSN 2241-1674.
22. "...In the meantime my efforts concerning our Bulgarian language and the Bulgarian (folk) songs, in compliance with your recommendations are unsurpassed. I have not for one moment ceased to fulfill the pledge which I made to you, Sir, because the Bulgarians are spontaneously striving for the truth. But I hope you will excuse my delay up till now, which is due to the difficulty I had in selecting the best songs and also in my work on the grammar. I hope that, on another convenient occasion, after I have collected more songs and finished the grammar, I will be able to send them to you. Please write where and through whom it would be safe to send them to you (as you so ardently wish)..."
23. ^ Blaže Ristovski, ed. Makedonska enciklopedija: M-Š (in Macedonian), Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2009, ISBN 9786082030241, pp. 948-950.
24. Freedom Or Death: The Life of Gotsé Delchev, Mercia MacDermott, Pluto Press, 1978, ISBN 0904526321, p. 17.
25. ^ Loring Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, Princeton University Press, 1997, ISBN 9780691043562, p. 63.
26. ^ Vemund Aarbakke, Ethnic Rivalry and the Quest for Macedonia, 1870-1913, East European Monographs, 2003, ISBN 9780880335270, pp. 35–36.
27. ^ Poulton, Hugh (2000). Who Are the Macedonians?. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. pp. 38, 117. ISBN 1850655340.
28. Vlado Treneski, Dejan Tančovski, White Book about the Language Dispute Between Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia, Orbel, 2021, ISBN 9789544961497, pp. 89-91.
29. Трайков, Н. Братя Миладинови. Преписка.1964 pp. 43-44.
30. Roudometof, Victor (2002). Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria and the Macedonian question. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 91. ISBN 0275976483.
31. ^ Raymond Detrez, The A to Z of Bulgaria, Scarecrow Press, 2010, ISBN 9780810872028, p. 284.
32. "...But I implore you to publish the foreword I sent you in your newspaper, adding a word or two about the songs and especially about the Western Bulgarians in Macedonia. In the foreword I have called Macedonia - Western Bulgaria (as it should be called), because the Greeks in Vienna are treating us just like sheep. They consider Macedonia a Greek province and they are not even able to understand that it is not a Greek region. But what shall we do with the Bulgarians there who are more than two million people? Surely the Bulgarians will not still be sheep with a few Greeks as their shepherds? That time has irrevocably passed and the Greeks will have to be satisfied merely with their sweet dreams. I think that the songs should be distributed chiefly among the Bulgarians, and this is why I have fixed a low price..."
33. According to Shapkarev himself: "Until then, , everyone acknowledged them to be a Bulgarian."
34. Петър Динеков, Делото на братя Милядинови. (Българска акдемия на науките, 1961 г.)
35. Marcel Cornis-Pope, John Neubauer (eds.) History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Volume 2, John Benjamins Publishing, 2004, ISBN 9789027234537, pp. 359-360.
36. Исторически албум на град Струга, София, 1930, стр. 34 – 35.
37. ^ Bŭlgarski narodni pesni (in Bulgarian), Nauka i izkustvo, 1981, Summary.
38. Люлка на старата и новата българска писменост. Академик Емил Георгиев, (Държавно издателство Народна просвета, София 1980)
39. Петър Динеков. Делото на братя Миладинови.(Българска акдемия на науките, 1961 г.)
40. "Tsarevna Miladinova-Alexieva (1856-1934)". Women and the Transfer of Knowledge in the Black Sea Region. 2018. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
41. Куманов, Милен. Македония. Кратък исторически справочник, Тинапрес, София, 1993, стр. 13 – 14.
42. Phillips, John (2004). Macedonia: Warlords and Rebels in the Balkans. I.B.Tauris. p. 41]. ISBN 186064841X.
43. In their correspondence both brothers self-identified as Bulgarians, see: Братя Миладинови – преписка. Издирил, коментирал и редактирал Никола Трайков (Българска академия на науките, Институт за история. Издателство на БАН, София 1964); in English: Miladinov Brothers - Correspondence. Collected, commented and redacted from Nicola Traykov, (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Historical Institute, Sofia 1964.)
44. Detrez, Raymond (2014). Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria. Historical Dictionaries of Europe. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 323. ISBN 978-1442241800.
45. Alexis Heraclides (2020). The Macedonian Question and the Macedonians. Taylor & Francis. p. 68. ISBN 9781000289404.
46. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, p. 149.
47. North Macedonia’s Blockade on Book Donation Riles Bulgaria Sinisa Jakov Marusic, Balkan Insight (BIRN), 29 March 2021.
48. Откриха паметник на братя Миладинови в Плиска.
49. A monument to the Miladinov brothers unveiled in Bulgaria's Blagoevgrad, Bulgarian National Radio, 11 January 2022.
50. Michael R. Palairet, Macedonia: A Voyage Through History - Volume 2, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, ISBN 9781443878456, p. 114.
51. Регистър на училищата и университетите в България.
52. Daskalov, Roumen; Vezenkov, Alexander, eds. (2015). Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume Three: Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies. BRILL. p. 457. ISBN 9789004290365.
53. "Presently in the Republic of Macedonia we can find schools named: Miladinov Brothers, Rajko Zinzifov, Kuzman Sapkarev etc., while the students who study in them do not have the access to the literary works of the patrons of their schools in original..." Vladimir Paunkovski, Spas Tashev, George Mladenov. 5 Years of Independence - Human Rights in the Republic of Macedonia, 1991- 1996. International Institute for Macedonia, Sofia.

External links

• Original edition of 'Bulgarian Folk Songs' (in Bulgarian)
• Full text of "Bulgarian folk songs" (in Bulgarian)
• Letter bearing the signature of Konstantin Miladinov
• Konstantin Miladinov poetry (in Bulgarian)
• official site of struga.org (English and Macedonian)

• People from Struga
• Bulgarian people of Aromanian descent
• Educators from the Ottoman Empire
• Bulgarian educators
• Bulgarian folklorists
• Bulgarian male poets
• Macedonia under the Ottoman Empire
• 19th-century Bulgarian people
• Brother duos
• Literary families
• Macedonian Bulgarians
• Prisoners who died in Ottoman detention
• Bulgarian people who died in prison custody
• Deaths from typhus
• 19th-century Bulgarian poets
• 19th-century male writers