Herasymovych, Sylvestr

Herasymovych, Sylvestr [Герасимович, Сильвестр; Herasymovyč, Syl'vestr], b 1881, d June 1943 in a GULAG labor camp in Kazakh SSR. Co-operative movement organizer, Galician political leader. At the beginning of the 1920s he served as director of the Provincial Union of Farming and Trading Associations and as the Union’s representative on the executive of the Provincial Audit Union. He was a founding member of the Provincial Committee for Organizing Co-operatives (est in Lviv in 1921). When the Provincial Union of Farming and Trading Associations was reorganized into Tsentrosoiuz in 1924, Herasymovych continued as director until 1929. At the same time he sat on the executive board of Silskyi Hospodar. In the 1930s he helped found the Front of National Unity and headed its political council. He also served as an editor in the Front’s publishing house Batkivshchyna. In 1940 he was arrested by Soviet authorities and exiled to Kazakhstan, where he perished.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]