Nezhyvy, Semen

Nezhyvy, Semen [Неживий, Семен; Nežyvyj] (actual surname: Musiienko), b 1744 in Melnyky, Chyhyryn region, d ? Haidamaka leader. He was a peasant hired hand and a potter by trade. After the outbreak of the Koliivshchyna rebellion in the spring of 1768, he proclaimed himself the Zaporozhian otaman of Uman kurin. He banded local peasants into a rebel detachment and led raids of Polish estates in the Smila, Cherkasy, Krylov, Kaniv, and Medvedivka districts. Nezhyvy's rebel detachment was attacked by Russian troops while he consulted with the hussar colonel Chorba, and later in Kyiv he was sentenced to the lash and to lifelong hard labor in Nerchinsk, Siberia. His subsequent fate is unknown.

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