- Georgi Pulevski
Infobox Writer
name = Gjorgjija Pulevski
imagesize =170px
caption =
birthdate =1817
birthplace =Galičnik , present-dayRepublic of Macedonia
deathdate = death date and age|1893|2|13|1817|1|1
deathplace =Sofia ,Bulgaria
occupation =writer andrevolutionary Gjorgjija Pulevski ( _bg. 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 fromSerbs andBulgarians , as well as a separateMacedonian language .Victor A. Friedman: Macedonian language and nationalism during the 19th and early 20th centuries. "Balcanistica" 2 (1975): 83-98. [http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/slavic/papers/Friedman-MacLgNatBalkanistica.pdf] ]Pulevski was born in 1838 in
Galičnik (todayRepublic of Macedonia , then under the rule of theOttoman Empire ) and died in 1895 inSofia , the capital of what was then the newly independentPrincipality of Bulgaria . Trained as a stonemason, he became a self-taught writer in matters relating to Macedonian language and culture.Works
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 localGaličnik dialect The text of the "Rečnik" contains programmatic statements where Pulevski argues for an independent Macedonian nation and language.quotation
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. ["Rečnik od tri jezika", p. 48f.] His next published works were a revolutionary poem, "Samovila Makedonska" ('A Macedonian Fairy') published in 1878 [ [http://www.manu.edu.mk/roots/roots.htm Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences] ] , and a "Macedonian Song Book" in two volumes, published in 1879 inBelgrade , 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. [Published Sofia, 1880. See Victor A. Friedman (1975: 89)] 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", [Victor A. Friedman, Romani standardization in Macedonia. In: Y. Matras (ed.) "Romani in Contact", Amsterdam: Benjamins 1995, 177-189. Page 178.]
Finally, in 1892, Pulevski completed the first "Slavjanomakedonska opšta istorija" ("General History of the Macedonian Slavs"), a large manuscript with over 1700 pages.
Another 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 atBelgrade . Later, during theRusso-Turkish War of 1877-1878, which led to the independence ofBulgaria , he was leader ("voijvod") of a unit of volunteers fighting on the Russian-Bulgarian side, [cite book |title=Болгарское ополчение и земское воиску |location=Санкт-Петербург |year=1904 |pages=p.56-59 |language=Russian ] taking part in theBattle of Shipka Pass . After the war, he went to live in the newly liberated Bulgarian capital Sofia. Also he expressed his regret about the missunification betweenPrincipality of Bulgaria and Macedonia in a request to theBulgarian Parliament . [ЦДпА, София, ф. 708, оп. 1, арх. ед. 397, л. 5-6. и сл.] Later Pulevski received a government pension in recognition of his service as a Bulgarian volunteer, until his death in 1895. It have to be pointed, there were a number of occasions in which Pulevski was regarded as ethnic Bulgarian by Serbian [Архив Србие, МУД, ІІ, Фонд ХІ, № 214, 1880 (In English:Serbian state archive,II, XI fond, № 214, year 1880] , Russian ["A number of Bulgarian volunteers took part in the 1877-1878 war...their voivods were: Ilyo Markov, D Trifonov, G. Pulevski..." a document of a Russian officer in the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish warcite book |title=Болгарское ополчение и земское воиску |location=Санкт-Петербург |year=1904 |pages=p.56-59 |language=Russian ] and Bulgarian authorities. [ЦДПА, София, ф. 708, оп. 1, арх. ед. 397, л. 5-6. и сл.]References
Works
*Blaze Ristovski (ed. ) (1974) "Georgija M. Pulevski: Odbrani stranici" ('Collected Works'), Skopje: Makedonska kniga.
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