Nikola Vaptsarov

Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov (Bulgarian: Никола Йонков Вапцаров; Macedonian: Никола Јонков Вапцаров, romanized: Nikola Jonkov Vapcarov; 7 December 1909 – 23 July 1942) was a Bulgarian poet and Bulgarian Communist Party activist.^[2][3][4] Working most of his life as a machinist, he only wrote in his spare time. Despite the fact that he only ever published one poetry book, he is considered one of the most important Bulgarian poets. In the latter part of his life, as a Macedonian nationalist, he was the driving force of the Macedonian Literary Circle until World War II when it was disbanded, and its attempts to awaken Macedonian identity were abandoned.^[5][6] Vaptsarov joined the resistance movement and because of his subversive activities in favor of the Soviet Union and against the Bulgarian government and the German troops in Bulgaria, he was arrested, tried, sentenced and executed the same night by a firing squad.

Nikola Vaptsarov
Vaptsarov during his time in the Varna Naval Machinery School
Native name	Никола Вапцаров
Born	(1909-12-07)7 December 1909 Bansko, Ottoman Empire
Died	23 July 1942(1942-07-23) (aged 32) Sofia, Bulgaria
Occupation	poet, activist of the communist resistance
Citizenship	Bulgarian[1]
Notable works	Motor Songs

Life

He was born in Bansko, Ottoman Empire, (today in Bulgaria) in 1909 into a mixed Bulgarian Exarchist-Protestant family.^[7][8] His father was a participant in the anti-Ottoman struggles and member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). His mother was educated at the American College of Samokov and worked as a teacher.^[9] Vaptsarov was trained as a machine engineer at the Naval Machinery School in Varna, which was later named after him.^[10] His first service was on the famous Drazki torpedo boat. In this period, he embraced Marxism and spread the communist ideology during the 1930s.^[11] In April and May 1932, Vaptsarov visited Istanbul, Famagusta, Alexandria, Beirut, Port Said, and Haifa as a crew member of the Burgas vessel. In 1934, he joined the Bulgarian Communist Party.^[2]

Later, he went to work in a factory in the village of Kocherinovo – at first as a stoker and eventually as a mechanic. He was elected Chairman of the Association, protecting worker rights in the factory. During this time Vaptsarov was devoted to his talent and spent his free time writing and organizing amateur theater pieces. He got fired after a technical failure in 1936. This forced him to move to Sofia, where he worked for the state railway service and the municipal incinerating furnace.^[12] He continued writing, and a number of newspapers published poems of his. The "Romantika" poem won him a poetry contest.

The cover of Motor Songs.

In the late 1930s, Vaptsarov co-founded and directed the Macedonian Literary Circle, which promoted the idea of a Macedonian nation and language. According to him their aim was to analyse linguistic idioms, folklore, customs in order to stimulate Macedonian literature and to nurture revolutionary romanticism related to the IMRO as part of an artistic realism.^[13] Vaptsarov asserted that they need to affirm the Macedonians as a distinct people in front of the world.^[14] However, he continued writing only in standard Bulgarian.^[7][15] His only published poetry collection is Motor Songs (1940).^[16][17] According to Canadian-Macedonian historian Andrew Rossos, the cycle "Songs for the Fatherland" in the collection attests to his Macedonian national consciousness.^[14] At the end of 1940, he participated in the so-called "Sobolev action," gathering signatures for a pact of friendship between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union. The illegal activity earned him an arrest and an internment in the village of Godech.

In September 1940, he enthusiastically welcomed the news of the return of Southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria, while in the Spring of 1941, after the invasion of Macedonia by Bulgarian troops, he declared himself as a Bulgarian in police investigation papers.^[18][19][20] The Macedonian Literary Circle disbanded itself in the spring of 1941, and its attempts to awaken Macedonian identity were abandoned.^[13] After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the Summer of 1941, Vaptsarov got involved with the Central Military Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party. He contacted the Soviet agent Tsvyatko Radoinov, who had illegally entered the country at the head of several groups of communist saboteurs. Vaptsarov's task was to organize the supply of guns and documents for the Bulgarian resistance. According to the leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization Ivan Mihaylov, at that time Vaptsarov was also his trusted man.^[21] He was arrested in March 1942. On 23 July 1942, he was sentenced to death and shot the same evening along with eleven other men.

Legacy

Post-war Bulgarian communist authorities revered him as an activist and revolutionary poet, presenting his poetry collection as an example of proletarian literature.^[2] His work was also widely published in Soviet-bloc countries. In 1949, the Bulgarian Naval Academy was renamed Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy. In 1953, he received posthumously the International Peace Award.^[22] His Selected Poems was published in London in the 1950s, by Lawrence & Wishart, translated into English with a foreword by British poet Peter Tempest.^[23] Vaptsarov Peak in eastern Livingston Island, Antarctica, is named after the famous Bulgarian poet. Vaptsarov's childhood home in Bansko and residence in Sofia are both museums. In Bulgaria, a prosecution office, journalists and social activists proposed a repeal of his death sentence.^[24]

In SR Macedonia, translations in Macedonian of his poetry were published, and he was claimed as an ethnic Macedonian. The Union of Bulgarian Writers condemned the Macedonian authorities and asserted his Bulgarian ethnicity.^[1] He is still revered in North Macedonia.^[7] On 30 October 2022, an office of a cultural club of ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria was officially opened under the name "Nikola Vapcarov" in Blagoevgrad.^[25] On 7 February 2023, members of the club submitted an application to register as an association with the same name, but the registration was denied by the authorities.^[26] The office was later closed due to rental issues.^[27]

According to slavist Jolanta Sujecka, he is part of Bulgarian literature not just because of the Bulgarian language of his poems, but also because of the Bulgarian dimension of his identity that form his multi-layered ethnic consciousness, together with his Macedonian and universal-international dimensions.^[28][29]