Sulyma [Сулима]. A line of Cossack starshyna in Left-Bank Ukraine. The family name was established by Mykhailo, who lived in the 16th century. His son was Hetman Ivan Sulyma (d 1635). The hetman's sons included Stepan (d 1659), a captain of Boryspil company, and Fedir (d 1691), a colonel of Pereiaslav regiment. Fedir's son, Ivan (d 1721), was a captain of Voronkiv company (1687) and general flag-bearer under Ivan Mazepa and Ivan Skoropadsky (1708–21). Ivan's son, Semen (d 27 May 1766), was colonel of Pereiaslav regiment (1739–66). Semen's sons included Yakym (b 1737, d 1818), a general judge in Chernihiv (1797–1818), and Khrystofor (d 18 May 1813 in the Transfiguration Monastery in Kharkiv), the bishop of Teodosiia and Mariupol (1791–9) and then of Kharkiv (1799–1813). Their nephew, Mykola (b 12 December 1777, d 21 October 1840), was colonel of the Izmail regiment (1803), a major general (1812–16), governor-general of eastern, then western, Siberia (1834–6), and a member of the Military Council (1836). The Russian revolutionary and anarchist theoretician P. Kropotkin (b 1842, d 1921) was related to the family through the female line. The family archive was published in part by Oleksander Lazarevsky in Sulimovskii arkhiv: Famil’nye bumagi Sulim, Skorup, i Voitsekhovichei XVII–XVIII vv. (The Sulyma Archive: The Family Papers of the Sulymas, Skorupas, and Voichekhovyches in the 17th–18th centuries, 1884).

Arkadii Zhukovsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]