Hermaize, Yosyf

Hermaize, Yosyf [Гермайзе, Йосиф; Hermajze, Josyf], b 5 August 1892 in Kyiv, d 22 September 1958 in a GULAG labor camp. Historian and political figure of Karaite origin. He was a member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party and sat on the All-Ukrainian Council of Military Deputies and the Little Rada of the Central Rada. A graduate of, and later professor at, Kyiv University, he specialized in the sociopolitical history of Ukraine. A close associate of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, he was secretary of the Historical Section of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) and director of its Archeographic Commission (see Archeographic commissions). Arrested in 1929 and accused of belonging to the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (SVU), he was sentenced to six years in labor camps, which he served in Yaroslavl and on the Solovets Islands. He then settled in Saratov (see Saratov oblast), but was soon rearrested and sentenced to an additional 10 years. He died in the GULAG.

Hermaize wrote many works, a number of them pioneering studies. His Narysy z istoriï revoliutsiinoho rukhu na Ukraïni (Essays on the History of the Revolutionary Movement in Ukraine, vol 1, 1926) has thus far been the only monograph on the Revolutionary Ukrainian party. He is the author of articles and collections of documents on such topics as the Koliivshchyna rebellion, the Decembrist movement in Ukraine, Mykhailo Drahomanov and Volodymyr Antonovych and Ukrainian historiography, and Ukrainian relations with the Don region in the 17th century, which appeared in the serials of the VUAN and Kyiv University. He also edited the published records of the Polish investigation and trial of Koliivshchyna rebels in Kodnia (Ukraïns’kyi arkhiv, vol 2, 1931) and wrote introductions to Panteleimon Kulish’s Chorna rada (Black Council, 1925), Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s selected works (1927), and Mykola Kostomarov’s Chernihivka (Girl from Chernihiv, 1928).

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