Myklashevsky, Mykhailo P.

Myklashevsky, Mykhailo P. [Миклашевський, Михайло; Myklaševs’kyj, Myxajlo], b ca 1756 in Demenka, Topal company, Starodub regiment, d 26 August 1847 in Ponurivka, Starodub county, Chernihiv gubernia. Military figure and statesman; great-grandson of Mykhailo A. Myklashevsky. He served in a guard regiment in Saint Petersburg (1775–89), was colonel of the Starodub Carabineer Regiment (1789–92), and commanded regiments along the Dnipro Line (1792–7), from 1795 as a brigadier. In 1797 Emperor Paul I appointed him governor of Volhynia gubernia and Little Russia gubernia, but in 1800 he removed him. Alexander I appointed him governor of New Russia gubernia in 1801 and a senator in 1808.

Myklashevsky was a Ukrainian autonomist who defended Ukrainian interests in Saint Petersburg and kept contact with the Novhorod-Siverskyi patriotic circle. In 1812 he submitted a controversial proposal for the reintroduction of Cossack regiments in Left-Bank Ukraine that would include state peasants in their ranks. He was forced to retire in 1818, and settled on his Ponurivka estate. There he created a center of Ukrainian culture, politics, and historical study (Istoriia Rusov was written there) and established a profitable woolens factory. Myklashevsky was opposed to serfdom and drafted a number of proposals aimed at bettering the lot of the peasantry.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]