Bulgaria Remembers Dissident Writer Georgi Markov

Bulgaria will mark with an event at the National Theater the 80th anniversary since the birth of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré broadcaster and a dissident writer, who was poisoned in London in 1978.

The jubilee evening is organized by the Association of Bulgarian Writers, Ciela publishing house and the National Theatre Ivan Vazov.

Georgi Markov was born on 1 March 1929, in Knyazhevo, a Sofia neighbourhood. During 1946 he graduated from high school and began university studies in industrial chemistry.

Initially Markov worked as a chemical engineer and a teacher in a technical school. At the age of 19 years old he became ill with tuberculosis which forced him to attend various hospitals. His first literary attempts occurred during that time.

Markov was one of the authors of the popular TV series “On Every Milestone” which created the character of the Second World War detective Velinsky and his nemesis the Resistance fighter Deyanov.

During that time and despite the ban of some of his works Georgi Markov was an acclaimed author who among other writers and poets that Zhivkov tried to co-opt and coerce into serving the regime with their works. During that period Markov had a "bohemian" lifestyle which was unknown to most Bulgarians.

During 1969 Georgi Markov left for Bologna, Italy where his brother lived. His initial idea was to wait until his reputation in Bulgaria improved, but he gradually changed his mind and decided to stay in the West, especially after September 1971 when the Bulgarian government refused to extend his passport.

Markov moved to London where he learned English and started working for the Bulgarian section of the BBC World Service (1972). He tried to work for the film industry, hoping for help from Peter Uvaliev, but was unsuccessful.

Later he also worked with Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe. During 1972 Markov’s membership in the Union of Bulgarian Writers was suspended and he was sentenced in absentia to six years and six months in prison for his defection.

His works were withdrawn from libraries and bookshops and his name was not mentioned by the official Bulgarian media until 1989. The Bulgarian Secret Service started Markov’s file under the code name “Wanderer.”

During 1974 his play “To Crawl Under the Rainbow” was staged in London, while in Edinburgh the play “Archangel Michael,” written in English, won first prize. The novel "The Right Honourable Chimpanzee," coauthored by David Phillips, was published after his death.

During 1975 Markov married Annabelle Dilk. The couple have a daughter, Alexandra-Raina, born a year later. Between 1975 and 1978 Markov worked on his “In Absentia Reports” analysis of life in Communist Bulgaria. They were broadcast weekly on Radio Free Europe. Their criticism of the Communist government and personally of the Party leader Todor Zhivkov made Markov even more an enemy of the regime.

Markov was murdered with a ricin-coated pellet, fired from an adapted pen; an umbrella was dropped nearby to distract him.

According to Bulgarian secret-service files, an Italian-born Dane Francesco Gullino, code-named Piccadilly, was the agent who assassinated Georgi Markov, code-named “Wanderer”.

Destruction of documents and official obstruction seemed to have left the trail cold, but in a book being published in September last year, Hristo Hristov, a Bulgarian investigative journalist, gave the results of searching 97 previously classified files, obtained after a three-year legal battle.

They show details of training and payments to Piccadilly, and of the close links between the Bulgarian secret services and the Soviet KGB over the murder.

The files show the Bulgarian secret services alerting their KGB colleagues in Moscow to the damage being done by Markov’s broadcasts.

“He insolently mocked the truth about the rights of Bulgarian and Soviet citizens to travel abroad”, says a 1975 letter.

Hristov has also unearthed evidence of the co-operation between the two services on the use of poison for assassination. Two high-level Bulgarian secret-service delegations visited the KGB in Moscow months before the murder.

According to a letter from Mr Kotsev, they discussed “specific joint operations” against “hostile émigrés”. After the murder, Bulgaria handed out medals to the KGB officials at the meetings.

On September 11th, the Bulgarian investigation into the case closed under the country’s statute of limitations.

The main investigator, Andrei Tsvetanov, asserts that Markov died because of a British medical blunder.

Hristov’s revelations suggest that renewed investigations, not another cover-up, are in order.

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