The Transformations of Georgi Kulishev from a Revolutionary and Publicist to a Politician and Diplomat

The article offers an overview of certain aspects from the biography of Georgi Kulishev, the last President of the Macedonian Scientific Institute before its closure in 1947. His life and deeds can be provisionally divided into three stages. In the first stage, from the beginning of the 20th century until 1944, he changed several vocations – a teacher, a publicist, a member of Parliament, a public figure, and last, but not least – an active member of IMARO and the Macedonian legal organizations.

 Over these years, despite the place or nature of his work, he defended through fighting and writing the Bulgarian character of Macedonia.   As a politician and diplomat in the years following the Second World War, Kulishev “forgot” the struggles of his compatriots who held on to the Bulgarian name, language and culture for centuries. He instigated a repudiating campaign against the Macedonian Bulgarians in the country and in People’s Republic of Macedonia. In this period a crackdown on Macedonian organizations and their leaders was set off. Among the eliminated organizations was also the MSI.  

In the 60’s of the 20th century G. Kulishev wrote extensive memoirs in which he returned to his previous views regarding the Bulgarian national liberation movement in Macedonia. He also dwelled on Skopje and Belgrade’s ambitions to falsify history and impose the idea of a “Macedonian nation”. In the third stage of his life the memoirist Kulishev shared his pain that after 1944 the Macedonian Bulgarians were deprived of their most precious national, cultural and human rights; of the right to bear their Bulgarian names, to have their Bulgarian schools, books, newspapers, and to maintain alongside their brothers their spiritual and cultural unity.