Blaže Koneski

Blaže Koneski (Macedonian and ; 19 December 1921 – 7 December 1993) was a Macedonian poet, writer, literary translator, and linguistic scholar, who had a major contribution to the codification of the standard Macedonian language, for which he earned the reputation of father of the Macedonian literary language. He is the key figure who shaped Macedonian literature and intellectual life in the country. During his life and after his death, Koneski has been accused of deliberately serbianizing the Macedonian standard.

Biography

Early years Koneski was born on 19 December 1921 in Nebregovo, near Prilep, in the province of South Serbia, part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (current-day North Macedonia), in a pro-Serbian family. He belonged to the Ljamevci family, whose Slava (patron saint) was St. Nicholas Day. His maternal uncle, Serbian Chetnik Gligor Sokolović, was one of the champions of Serbian propaganda in Ottoman Macedonia in the early 20th century. According to Koneski himself, his village became oriented towards the Serbian propaganda in the early 20th century and Sokolović was responsible for this shift. However, per Koneski, this shift was not nationally motivated and his family did not raise him as a Serbian, rather he always felt as a Macedonian. Per the Macedonian Bulgarian authors Dragi Dragnev and Kosta Tsarnushanov, Konevski was born as Blagoje Ordan Ljameski or Ljamević in a family that was strongly pro-Serbian and identified as Serbian. According to historian Chris Kostov, in his youth, he regarded Serbian as his native language. The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization revolutionary Traycho Chundev described him in his diary as a "Serboman" who insists on the Serbian alphabet.

He studied in his native village and Prilep. After receiving a Royal Serbian scholarship, When Koneski returned to his native village, he spoke a Serbianized language and was ridiculed for it by the locals, upon that he felt like he betrayed his people and started to re-learn the local dialect. In 1939, he studied medicine at the University of Belgrade, but switched to Slavic philology there in 1940, studying under Aleksandar Belić and Radovan Košutić, among others. In that period, he wrote his first linguistic work devoted to his native Prilep dialect, which was published in 1949. In 1941, after the defeat of Yugoslavia in Aufmarsch 25, and the subsequent Bulgarian rule of Macedonia, he enrolled in the Faculty of Slavic Studies at the Sofia University under the name Blagoy Konev, graduating in 1944. Koneski also began working in the department for communist agitprop at the Main Headquarters of the Macedonian Partisans. At the age of 22, he was nominated to join the commission. Slavist Victor Friedman has said that Koneski advocated for the adoption of Serbian Cyrillic on purely linguistic and pedagogical grounds. Most members of the commission wanted to create a distinct Macedonian alphabet. Much later, in his memoirs, Markovski will depict this conflict as a national one and that he was trying to save the alphabet from total Serbification. However, the stenographic transcripts of the debates show that this opposition was not nationally based, since Markovski, the future pro-Bulgarian and Bulgarian nationalist, even apprised the historical legacy of Krste Misirkov to the other members of the commission. A personal conflict also arose between Koneski and the teacher and linguist Gjorgji Kiselinov as Kiselinov had already developed a project on the Macedonian alphabet and grammar that was not considered by the commission, largely because of Koneski. Kiselinov later also interpreted this conflict as a national one, as he said that he was marginalized by Koneski because his family was pro-Bulgarian, while Koneski's was pro-Serbian. A number of intellectuals considered the Macedonian alphabet as "too Serbified", such as Markovski, Vasil Ivanovski, Pavel Shatev and Panko Brashnarov. However, Koneski made sure to gradually correct errors, limiting the Serbian influence on Macedonian, by creating new words and an original lexicon. In 1945, he worked as a lector in the Macedonian National Theater. On behalf of the ministry, he was included in a group that was to arrange the establishment of the Faculty of Philosophy. Bulgarian linguists also started claiming that the Macedonian standard was Serbianized in that period. In 1952, Koneski issued the Phonology of his Grammar of the Macedonian Language. In the same year, Bulgarian linguist Kiril Mirchev tried to prove that Macedonian was part of Bulgarian, but regarded its norm and lexicon as Serbified. Koneski issued a rebuttal in an essay. It also contained Serbo-Croatian translations. Voss has also argued that there has been a pro-Serbian bias in the dictionary. have accused Koneski of plagiarizing and falsifying Kiril Mirchev's Historical Grammar of the Bulgarian Language with his History of the Macedonian Language because both authors analyzed the same corpus of texts. Koneski did claim the corpus of texts was linguistically distinct from Bulgarian. Bulgarian philologists also criticized Koneski for ignoring the parallels between Macedonian and Bulgarian. Koneski preferred to compare Macedonian with other Balkan languages, such as Albanian, Modern Greek, Romanian and Aromanian. Koneski and Božidar Vidoeski were also active in international Slavist networks and expanded Macedonian studies abroad. In the 1980s and 1990s, anti-Yugoslav Macedonian nationalists accused Koneski and the communist elite of Serbianizing the Macedonian standard language. In turn, they were accused of Bulgarophilia and Serbophobia. have described the process of codifying Macedonian, to which Koneski was an important contributor, as 'Serbianization'. His 1948 poem Teškoto (named after the dance Teškoto) is taught in Macedonian elementary schools.

Koneski won a number of literary prizes such as the AVNOJ prize, the Njegoš prize, the Golden Wreath ("Zlaten Venec") of the Struga Poetry Evenings (in 1981), the Award of the Writer's Union of the USSR, Herder Prize (in 1971) and others.

Legacy In December 1993, shortly after Koneski's death, the doyen of Macedonian historians Blaže Ristovski criticized Koneski's alphabet and insisted on its reform, demanding changes in the Macedonian letters, with the proposed changes being described as Bulgarophilic. By the late 1990s, writers and journalists, who were close to the VMRO-DPMNE and pro-Bulgarian, made Serbification accusations against him, denouncing the Macedonian national identity in the same way as Bulgaria. They regarded Koneski as a "Serbian agent" and glorified his opponent Markovski.

A Macedonian Historical Dictionary was published, edited by historian Stojan Kiselinovski from Greek Macedonia, which caused a public scandal due to the entry for Koneski, where instead of emphasizing his historical contribution, it simply stated that Koneski "advocated the use of the Serbian alphabet (that of Vuk Karadžić) in Macedonia." According to Bulgarian historian Tchavdar Marinov, it is nearly a taboo topic in North Macedonia to point out the Serbophilia of the Yugoslav Macedonian builders of the Macedonian language and national identity as Koneski, and this is considered there as a pro-Bulgarian act. Regarding Koneski and the codification process, Marinov wrote: