Symonovsky, Petro

Symonovsky, Petro [Симоновський, Петро; Symonovs'kyj], b 1717, d 30 June 1809 in Kyiv. Historian, jurist, and government official. After being educated at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy (1746–7) and the universities of Halle, Wittenberg, and Königsberg (1748–51) he served as translator at the General Military Chancellery (1753), captain in Kyiv regiment (1757–64), a judge of the land court of Oster county (1764), member of the General Military Court (1767–81), and chairman of the First Department of the Kyiv Supreme Land Court (1782–97). One of the most educated figures of his day in Left-Bank Ukraine, he wrote Kratkoe opisanie o kozatskom malorossiiskom narode i o voennykh ego delakh (A Short Description of the Cossack Little Russian People and Their Military Feats, 1765), which outlines the history of the Hetman period to 1750 with respect to Ukrainian statehood (see Hetman state). It was first published by Osyp Bodiansky in 1847. Symonovsky took part in the topographic-economic survey of Left-Bank Ukraine (1770s and 1780s) and was the editor, and perhaps the author, of a survey of the Kyiv vicegerency, Topograficheskoe opisanie Kievskogo namestnichestva (A Topographic Description of Kyiv Vicegerency, 1786), which was published by the Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1991.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]