Georgi Pulevski

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]

Georgi Pulevski
Born1817
Galičnik, Ottoman Empire (present-day North Macedonia)
Died13 February 1893(1893-02-13) (aged 76)
Sofia, Principality of Bulgaria
OccupationWriter and revolutionary

Early life

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.

Military activity

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. He died in 1893.[14]

Works
The "A Dictionary of Three languages" (1875).

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.[15]

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.[16]


His next published works were a revolutionary poem, Samovila Makedonska ('A Macedonian Fairy') published in 1878,[17] 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.[18] He also wrote extensively about the places where the Mijaks were concentrated and their migrations.[14] 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",[19] 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.[20][21]

Ancestry and identification
Monument of Gjorgjija M. Pulevski in Skopje

According to one view, his surname is of Vlach origin, as is the case with several other surnames in Mijak territory,[22] pointed out with the Vlach suffix -ul (present in Pulevci, Gugulevci, Tulevci, Gulovci, Čudulovci, etc.), however, those families espoused a Mijak identity, and had no ties to the Aromanian (cincar) community.[23] According to one source, 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]

List of works

References
  1. Блаже Конески; Димитар Башевски (1990). Ликови и теми. Култура. p. 129. ISBN 978-86-317-0013-1.
  2. Papers in Slavic Philology. University of Michigan. 1984. p. 102. ISBN 9780930042592. In 1875, Gorge M. Pulevski, who identifies himself as mijak galicki 'a mijak from Galicnik'
  3. Feliu, Francesc, ed. (2023). Desired Language: Languages as objects of national ideology. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 140. ISBN 9789027254986.
  4. Victor A. Friedman: Macedonian language and nationalism during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Balcanistica 2 (1975): 83–98. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 September 2006. Retrieved 6 August 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. Daskalov & Marinov 2013, p. 444.
  6. Michael Palairet (2016). Macedonia: A Voyage through History (Vol. 1, From Ancient Times to the Ottoman Invasions), Volume 1. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 14. ISBN 9781443888431.
  7. Военна история на българите от древността до наши дни, Том 5 от История на Българите, Автор Георги Бакалов, Издател TRUD Publishers, 2007, ISBN 954-621-235-0, стр. 335.
  8. Македонизмът и съпротивата на Македония срещу него, Коста Църнушанов, Унив. изд. "Св. Климент Охридски", София, 1992, стр. 40–42.
  9. Николов, А. Параисторични сюжети: От български автохтонизъм към „антички“ македонизъм. В „Jubilaeus VIII. Завръщане към изворите. Част I“ (2021), София, 8/1, с. 195–208.
  10. Tanas Vražinovski (2002). Rečnik na narodnata mitologija na Makedoncite. Matica makedonska. p. 463. ISBN 9789989483042.
  11. Болгарское ополчение и земское воиску (in Russian). Санкт-Петербург. 1904. pp. 56–59.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  12. H. Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians?, p. 49. ISBN 1-85065-534-0
  13. Glasnik na Institutot za nacionalna istorija, Volume 30, Institut za nacionalna istorija (Skopje, Macedonia), 1986, STR. 295–296.
  14. Roth, Klaus; Hayden, Robert, eds. (2011). Migration In, From, and to Southeastern Europe: Historical and cultural aspects. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 113. ISBN 9783643108951.
  15. Mark Biondich (2011). The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence Since 1878. Oxford University Press. p. 31. ISBN 9780199299058.
  16. Rečnik od tri jezika, p. 48f.
  17. Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences Archived 15 April 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  18. Published Sofia, 1880. See Victor A. Friedman (1975: 89)
  19. Victor A. Friedman, Romani standardization in Macedonia. In: Y. Matras (ed.) Romani in Contact, Amsterdam: Benjamins 1995, 177–189. Page 178.
  20. Заключението е ясно — за Пулевски македонският говор е „стар български“, а разликата между „болгарски и македонски синове и керки“ е чисто географска: за младежи в княжество България и в поробена Македония. (In English: The conclusion is clear - for Pulevski the Macedonian language is "old Bulgarian", and the difference between "Bulgarian and Macedonian sons and daughters" is purely geographical: for young people in the principality of Bulgaria and in enslaved Macedonia.) Kosta T︠S︡ŭrnushanov (1992). Makedonizmŭt i sŭprotivata na Makedonii︠a︡ sreshtu nego. Universitetsko izd-vo "Sv. Kliment Okhridski,". pp. 41–42.
  21. В последната си граматика, наречена "Язичница. Содержающа староболгарски язик, а уредена ем исправена, дасе учат болгарски и македонски синове и керки." той представя македонския език като наречие на българския език. За повече виж: Александър Николов, От български автохтонизъм към "антички" македонизъм, Jubilaeus VIII, Завръщане към изворите-I, editor/s: П. Делев, Д. Ботева-Боянова, Л. Грозданова, Publisher: УИ "Св. Климент Охридски", 2021, pages: 195-207, ISBN 978-954-07-5282-2.
  22. Karl Kaser (January 1992). Hirten, Kämpfer, Stammeshelden: Ursprünge und Gegenwart des balkanischen Patriarchats. Böhlau Verlag Wien. pp. 101–. ISBN 978-3-205-05545-7.
  23. Josip Matasović (1924). Narodna starina. Vol. 3–6. p. 69.
  24. Daskalov & Marinov 2013, p. 300.
  25. Daskalov & Marinov 2013, p. 316.
  26. Chris Kostov (2010). Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, 1900–1996. Peter Lang. p. 67. ISBN 978-3-0343-0196-1.
  27. Блаже Ристовски, "Портрети и процеси од македонската литературна и национална историја", том 1, Скопје: Култура, 1989 г., стр. 281, 283, 28.
  28. Per Srđan Todorov he began his public work as a Mijak and then became an "Old Serbian" patriot, went later to Bulgarian identity, and finally adopted a Macedonian one. For more see: Срђан Тодоров, О народности Ђорђа Пуљевског. В Етно-културолошки зборник, уредник Сретен Петровић, књига XXIII (2020) Сврљиг, УДК 929.511:821.163 (09); ISBN 978-86-84919-42-9, стр. 133-144.

Sources
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