Shishmanov, Dimitar

Shishmanov, Dimitar [Шишманов, Димитър; Šišmanov], b 19 November 1889 in Sofia, Bulgaria, d 1 February 1945 in Sofia. Bulgarian writer, literary scholar, and political leader; son of Ivan Shishmanov and Mykhailo Drahomanov’s daughter, Lidiia. Besides contributing short stories, novels, and plays to Bulgarian literature, he acquainted the Bulgarian reader with the history of Ukraine and its literature. He accompanied his father to Kyiv in 1918, where he became familiar with contemporary Ukrainian literature and translated a shortened version of Serhii Yefremov’s history of Ukrainian literature (published in Sofia in 1919). He contributed articles on Ukrainian writers and on Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1935) to Ukrainsko-bolgarski pregled and edited some of the Bulgarian translations of writers such as Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Ivan Franko, Oleksander Oles, and Yurii Fedkovych, which appeared in the journal. He was Bulgaria’s ambassador to Greece in 1935–40 and minister of foreign affairs in 1943–44. In 1945 he was executed by Bulgarian Communists.

[This article was updated in 2020.]