of the Zagreb (Croatia), Belgrade (Serbia), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Łódź (Poland) Academies of Sciences and Arts, and an honorary doctor of the Universities of Chicago, United States, and Kraków in Poland. The American Slavist Victor Friedman would mention Koneski as one of his mentors. Blaže Koneski died in Skopje on December 7, 1993. He received a state funeral for his distinguished literary career, and for his contributions to the codification of standard Macedonian. Literary works Koneski wrote poetry and prose. His most famous collections of poetry are: Mostot, Pesni, Zemjata i ljubovta, Vezilka, Zapisi, Cesmite, Stari i novi pesni, Seizmograf, among others. His collection of short stories Vineyard is also famous. Koneski was a distinguished translator of poetry from German, Russian, Slovenian, Serbian and Polish; he translated the works of Njegos, Prešeren, Heine, Blok, Neruda, and others. Awards and recognitions Blaze Koneski won a number of literary prizes such as: the AVNOJ prize, the Njegoš prize, the Golden Wreath ("Zlaten Venec") of the Struga Poetry Evenings (in 1981), the Award of the Writer's Union of the USSR, Herder Prize (in 1971) and others. The Faculty of Philology at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje is named after Blaze Koneski. Work on standard Macedonian Koneski is remembered for his work on codifying the Macedonian standard language. He is the author of On Standard Macedonian (), Grammar of Standard Macedonian (), History of Macedonian (), among other works. He was one of the editors of Macedonian Dictionary (). Criticism Bulgarian linguists such as Iliya Talev, in his History of the Macedonian Language, have accused Koneski of plagiarizing Kiril Mirchev's Historical Grammar of the Bulgarian Language because both authors analyzed the same corpus of texts. In Bulgaria, he has also been accused of manipulating historical facts for political goals. There has been also claimed the Macedonian standard was Serbianized with the help of Koneski. As a young boy Koneski himself spoke a heavily Serbianized language and was ridiculed for this. According to Christian Voss the turning point in the Serbianization of Macedonian took place in the late 1950s, that coincided with the preparation period for the dictionary of Koneski published between 1961 and 1966. Voss argues that it contains a consistent pro-Serbian bias. When he visited Chicago in 1969 and received the title of "Doctor Honoris Causa" from a local university, letters of protest were sent to the rector by two