Fund Prof. Lilyana Minkova
Lilyana Todorova Minkova was born in Sofia on August 29, 1932. In 1952 she graduated from highschool in her hometown, and in 1956 with a degree in Russian Philology from the Sofia University, where she defended her thesis on "The Language of Maxim Gorky's Early Narratives." In 1958-1960 she was a part-time Assistant Professor of Russian Classical Literature at Sofia University. From 1961 Lilyana Minkova began her research work as a PHD student in the Russian Literature Section at the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where she later held various academic positions. She defended her doctoral dissertation on the topic "Lyuben Karavelov and Ukrainian Literature" in 1969. From 1982 she is an Associate Professor after the habilitation of her work on the topic "Reception of Western European Prose during the Bulgarian Revival". From October 1992 she worked for one year as an Associate at the Bulgarian Cultural Center "Wittgenstein" in Vienna, and in 1994 she became an Full Professor with a habilitation work "Western European prose in the translation literature of the Bulgarian Revival."
Her areas of interest are literature and culture of the Bulgarian Renaissance, Bulgarian-Russian literary links from the Bulgarian Revival period to the 20th century, comparative study of individual French and German authors and works, theory and history of translation. Lilyana Minkova studies the fate and creative path of Bulgarians who studied in Moscow during the Bulgarian Revival.
She is the author of the books "O. M. Bodiansky and the Bulgarian National Revival” (1978), “Bulgarian National Revivalists in Russia” (2005), “The Konstantin Miladinov's Manuscript in the Archive of Izmail Sreznevsky” (2008; co-author: Lucia Antonova-Vasileva) and “Zachary Knyazhesky - one of the first”(2012).
She has published articles in the specialized press on Luben Karavelov, Prizhov, E. Labule, Prof. N. Murzakevich, Prof. Nil Popov, Ivan Denkoglu, Sava Filaretov and Zachary Knyazhesky, as well as texts on Bulgarian-Russian relations during the Bulgarian Revival.
She is a translator of classic Russian works such as "The Master and Margarita", "Theatrical Novel", "The Life of Mr. de Moliere", "Zoikina’s Quarter" and other works of Mikhail Bulgakov, as well as texts by Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Kuprin, Babel , Bunin, Shukshin, Ilf and Petrov, Nabokov and others. She translates fiction from Ukrainian (Vasil Stefanik, Eugene Gutzalo, Yuri Yanovsky), French (Moliere, Robert Escarpi, Danel Penak, Nicola Werth, Sidoni Colette, Rohus Mish) and German (Krista Schröder).
In 1988 she was awarded the St. St. Cyril and Methodius 1st degree Bulgarian National Award. For achievements in translation art and for the promotion of Russian writers in Bulgaria, he received the Friendship of People Russian Award, and in 2005 she received the National Hr. G. Danov Award for the translation of the novel "Twelve Chairs" by Ilf and Petrov.
Lilyana Minkova died in Sofia on April 29, 2016.
In January 2016, Prof. Lilyana Minkova personally donated to the New Bulgarian University her archives - personal documents, manuscripts of her scientific works and numerous translations, as well as working materials from her many years of research.