Through his firm civic position Georgi Markov actually showed us what true patriotism is, what duty to the fatherland is. This is what Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev said at the ceremony of unveiling the monument of dissident writer Georgi Markov on Journalist Square in Sofia. During the times of communist regime in Bulgaria, Georgi Markov emigrated to the West and in the 70s started work as a radio host in BBC World Service, the US-funded Radio Free Europe, and Germany's Deutsche Welle. In his radio reports, he brightly criticized the realities of the communist regime in this country. It is believed that this was the reason communist Bulgarian authorities decided to eliminate him. Georgi Markov died from ricin poisoning after on September 7, 1978 on a street in London, a pellet filled with the deadly poison was probably fired against him by an agent of the Bulgarian State Security, who used a device known as the “Bulgarian umbrella.”
