The brothers Dimităr and Konstantin Miladinov (Struga 1810 and 1832 – Istanbul 1862) were philologists and folklorists who thought of themselves as Bulgarian, but who also have a place in Macedonian literary history; they were probably of part-Vlach descent. They studied at the Greek “central school” in Ohrid and at the Zosimeia college in Iōannina. Dimităr worked as a teacher of Greek in Ohrid and at other schools in Macedonia, introducing new subjects and new didactic methods. His initial identification with the Greek-cultured Orthodox Christian community gave way to an increasing Slavic ethnic awareness in 1845, after a meeting with the Russian traveller and philologist Viktor Grigorovič, who encouraged him to collect folk songs and to compile a Bulgarian grammar. After a stay in the Habsburg South Slavic areas during the Crimean War (1853-56), which strengthened his Slavic consciousness, he joined the Bulgarian national movement as a teacher in several Macedonian cities, working for the introduction of Bulgarian, resp. Church Slavonic in education and worship. In 1861, accused of insubordination by the ecclesiastical authorities, Dimităr was arrested and sent to Istanbul.

After finishing the gymnasium in Iōannina, Konstantin Miladinov studied Greek philology in Athens and, from 1857 onwards, Slavic philology in Russia. In Moscow he participated in the literary life of the Bulgarian students, publishing his first poems – among them the famous Tăga za jug (“Nostalgia for the South”) – in the reviews Bratski trud (“Brotherly work”) and Bălgarski knižici (“Bulgarian booklets”), the latter appearing in Istanbul. Influenced by the Russian Slavophiles, he became interested in Bulgarian oral literature and started collecting folk songs from Macedonia, aided by his brother Dimităr. Initially, they noted down the songs in Greek script. Encouraged by the Croat Bishop Strossmayer, a proponent of South Slav cultural unity whom Konstantin met in Vienna, the brothers produced – now in Cyrillic script – the collection Bulgarian folk songs (“Bălgarski narodni pesni”), which was published in June 1861 in Zagreb. Soon after, Konstantin learned of the arrest of his brother and travelled to Istanbul to obtain his liberation, but he was arrested as well. Both brothers died in prison, Konstantin on 7 January and Dimităr on 11 January 1862, allegedly poisoned by the Greek clergy, but more plausibly of typhus.

The Miladinovs’ fate is often referred to in Bulgarian and Macedonian historiographies as an illustration of the vile nature of the conflict with the Greek clergy. The collection of folk songs, and especially its title, is pointed out by Bulgarian historians as evidence of a Bulgarian national consciousness among the Slavic population in Macedonia. In postwar Yugoslav Macedonia the book was published as “the collection of the Miladinovs”, omitting the original title.