Stoianov, Zakhari

Born 1850 (according to other sources, 1851) in Medven, Sliven District; died Sept. 2, 1889, in Paris. Bulgarian writer and public figure.

A participant in the national liberation movement, Stoianov helped organize the Stara Zagora uprising of 1875 and the April uprising of 1876. In the 1880’s, as a publicist and editor of the newspapers Rabotnik (The Worker; founded 1881 in Ruse) and Borba (Struggle; founded 1885 in Plovdiv), he advocated radical democratic policies; however, he later assumed rightist views, supported the reactionary monarchy, and persecuted proponents of rapprochement with Russia.

Stoianov began writing in 1880. He is the author of definitive biographies of V. Levki (1883), L. Karavelov (1885), and Kh. Botev (1889). He also wrote a definitive biography of the leaders of Bulgarian insurrectionist detachments; Character Sketches of Fillip Totiu, Khadzhi Dimitr, and Stefan Karadzha in Bulgaria (1885). In his Notes on the Bulgarian Uprisings (vols. 1–3, 1884–92; Russian translation, 1953), Stoianov interpreted historical events in a manner reminiscent of artistic depictions of the age. Stoianov’s memoirs were an important stage in the development of Bulgarian realist prose.