He was born in Veles in 1839 as Xenophon Dzindzif, as son of the teacher Joan Dzindzif. Žinzifov is a leading Macedonian writer and reformer. He has been a teacher in Prilep and assistant of the reformer Dimitrija Miladinov. During his education in Odessa, Russia, he changed his name into Rajko Žinzifov. He has been studying at the College of History and Philology in Moscow. He began with his reformer activity as editor of the literary magazine Bratski Trud (Fraternal Labour). He published articles about Macedonia and 19 songs in Macedonian. He is author of the poem Krvava Košula (Bloody Shirt) and numerous articles dedicated to his idea of Slavonic unification. In his works, he has been using the Veles dialect as a basis of his linguistic expression. Rajko Žinzifov has been collecting folk works. His first prose work was Prošedba which is taken as the first effort for creating Macedonian artistic prose. Žinzifov died in Moscow in 1877.