About Georgi Markov
Georgi Ivanov Markov (Bulgarian: Георги Иванов Марков [ɟɛˈɔrɟi ˈmarkov]; 1 March 1929 – 11 September 1978) was a Bulgarian dissident writer. He worked as a novelist, screenwriter and playwright in his native country, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, until his defection in 1969. After relocating to London, he worked as a broadcaster and journalist for the BBC World Service, the Radio Free Europe and West Germany's Deutsche Welle. Markov used such forums to conduct a campaign of sarcastic criticism against the incumbent Bulgarian-Soviet regime. Markov was assassinated on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet that might have contained ricin. Contemporary newspaper accounts reported that he had been stabbed in the leg with an umbrella delivering a poisoned pellet, wielded by someone associated with the Bulgarian Secret Service. Annabel Markov recalled her husband's view about the umbrella, telling the BBC's Panorama programme, in April 1979, "He felt a jab in his thigh. He looked around and there was a man behind him who'd apologized and dropped an umbrella. I got the impression as he told the story that the jab hadn't been inflicted by the umbrella but that the man had dropped the umbrella as cover to hide his face." It was reported after the fall of the Soviet Union that the Soviet KGB had assisted the Bulgarian Secret Service. Signed as "Georgi Markov", "The Whiskey Record Holder" (7 July 1951) and "Bolshevik" (12 December 1951) were published. In 1962, Markov published the novel Men which won the annual award of the Union of Bulgarian Writers and he was subsequently accepted as a member of the Union, a prerequisite for a professional career in literature. Markov was one of the authors of the popular TV series Every Kilometer (Всеки километър or At Every Milestone) which created the character of the Second World War detective Velinsky and his nemesis the Resistance fighter Deyanov.
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