A modest statue of Georgi Markov stands on Journalist Square in Sofia, with only a few flowers reminding passersby of the date he was fatally poisoned 40 years ago. Picture: Martin Dimitrov, BIRN.

On September 7, 1978, the Bulgarian journalist, playwright and dissident from the regime of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, Georgi Markov, was poisoned with a ricin-filled pellet shot from a modified umbrella while crossing Waterloo Bridge in London. Four days later, he died.

Forty years on, as Britain remains baffled by the poisoning of exchanged spy Sergey Skripal in Salisbury, allegedly by Russian agents, the Markov case also remains open.

The details of his assassination are shrouded in mystery and the complicated legacy he left still confuses and divides Bulgarian society.

Markov, an industrial chemist by training and teacher by vocation, started working on his first literary attempts at the age of 19, while undergoing tuberculosis treatment.

Initially, his works were acclaimed by the Bulgarian Writers’ Union and he even got close to Communist leader Todor Zhivkov, interviewing him on several occasions and later publishing summaries of their conversations while in exile.

He even contributed to the script of the propaganda partisan epic TV series, Every Kilometer.

With time, however, his works were deemed too bold by the censors and they imposed a number of bans on them.

Initially, he took shelter at his brother’s home in Bologna, Italy, in 1969, ultimately moving to the UK in 1971.

He learned English and joined the BBC World Service, later contributing to Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe as well.

Markov produced a number of award-winning plays and novels during his years in the UK, but the most important – that supposedly led to his demise – was the Zadochni Reportazhi, or Reports In Absentia, one of the few in-depth analyses of social and political life in Bulgaria under Communism.

The 80 Reports, broadcasted by Radio Free Europe over 137 emissions in the span of 32 months, were a sharp critique of “life under the lid of the Party”, in Markov’s own words.

“In full resemblance to the USSR, the regime at home has taken away the right of society, of social groups and of individuals to have their say, their own criteria for right and wrong, their own compass. Instead, the criteria of the regime reigns, and it is mostly directed by political expediency, following a narrow but very flexible doctrine,” Markov summarized Bulgarian Communist ideology in a famous passage.

A historian of the Communist-era National Security apparatus, Hristo Hristov, says what likely caused Markov’s death was his critical representation of Zhivkov in 11 of the Reports.

The Bulgarian state posed an ultimatum to the UK to silence the dissident, then an employee at the BBC, and later took the issue into its own hands.

Hristov writes that, in the early days, after the fall of regime, the State Security apparatus destroyed all the records that might have disclosed how Markov’s assassination was brought about, but says that the Soviet KGB was involved in it.

Although Markov always remained a Bulgarian citizen, the Prosecution never took the investigation of his death seriously, formally closing the case in 2013.

Louisa Slavkova, director of Sofia Platform, an organisation dedicated to promoting teaching about the Communist past in schools, told BIRN that the conversation about Markov has slowly begun to shift.

“If, a few years back, it was entirely focused on the criminal case, in the past few years, and thanks to the efforts of his family and few intellectuals and NGOs, the conversation is evolving more and more around his writings”, she said.

“If you read his essays today, you’d think they were written yesterday. Some of the topics he’s touching upon are more relevant than ever, especially with all the internal and externally imposed challenges to our democracy,” Slavkova added.

Although she refrains from comparing the Markov and Skripal cases, she underlines Sofia’s reluctance to deal with threats coming from Moscow.

“Silence is never an option; sooner or later ghosts from the past come to haunt you. Not taking action or a position is shameful as is not doing any justice to the relatives of both Markov and Skripal in this case,” Slavkova concluded.

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