Myrovych

Myrovych [Myrovyč]. A family of Cossack starshyna in Pereiaslav regiment that was significant during the hetmancies of Ivan Mazepa and Pylyp Orlyk. It was established by Ivan M. Myrovych, the colonel of Pereiaslav regiment in 1692–1706. His son, Fedir Myrovych, was Mazepa's general standard-bearer (1708–9) and fled abroad with Mazepa after the Russian victory at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. All of the Myrovych estates were confiscated by the Russian government. Fedir's mother, Pelahiia (née Holub, a relative of Hetman Ivan Samoilovych), was deported to Moscow with other members of the family. She was exiled to Tobolsk in 1716 and was not allowed to return to Ukraine until 1745, and then only on the condition that she not communicate with Fedir or her other renegade son, Ivan I. Myrovych. Her third son, Vasyl (d 1736), who had also been deported to Moscow, was accused in 1715–16 of contacts with the Swedes and his brother Fedir and of attempting to escape abroad. After many tortures he was exiled to forced labor in Siberia, where he died. His sister, Anna, married Andrii Voinarovsky and lived for a time in Bendery. After the Russians captured her husband, she and her children sought refuge in Sweden. Fedir's sons, Yakiv and Petro, were taken to Saint Petersburg for schooling. For contacting their father they were exiled in 1732 to Siberia, where they were both appointed military governors in 1742, Yakiv in Kuznetsk and Petro in Eniseisk. Yakiv's son, Vasyl (1740 to 26 September 1764), was a second lieutenant in the Russian army. He was executed for taking part in a foiled plot to liberate the former tsar Ivan VI from the Schlüsselburg Fortress.

 Oleksander Ohloblyn

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