Hryhoriiv, Nykyfor

Hryhoriiv, Nykyfor [Григоріїв, Никифор; Hryhorijiv], b 25 February 1883 in Burty, Kaniv county, Kyiv gubernia, d 5 August 1953 in New York. Civic and political figure, publicist, and pedagogue. He was a member of the Society of Ukrainian Progressives and a contributor to the periodicals Rada (Kyiv), Maiak (Kyiv), and Ridnyi krai (under the pseud H. Nash). In 1917 he became an activist of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR) and a member of the Central Rada. As president of the Council of Military Deputies for the Kyiv Military District, he headed the drive to Ukrainianize the army. In 1918 he served as minister of education in Vsevolod Holubovych’s government and then joined the Ukrainian National Union to overthrow the Hetman government. In 1919 he was a deputy of the Labor Congress and the director of the UNR Army press service. As a member of the Central Committee of the UPSR, he headed the party's center faction and opposed the Borotbists. In 1921 Hryhoriiv immigrated to Prague, where he served as vice-president of the Ukrainian Civic Committee in Czechoslovakia and as director of the Ukrainian Sociological Institute, which he helped found. After he immigrated to the United States in 1938, he worked for Narodna volia and in 1949 became director of the Ukrainian service of the Voice of America. He wrote a number of journalistic works, including Osnovy natsioznannia (The Foundations of Nation Studies, 1940), Ukraïns’ka natsional’na vdacha (The Ukrainian National Character, 1941), Derzhavoznavstvo (State Studies, 1936), Spohady ruïnnyka (A Destroyer's Memoirs, 1937), and The War and Ukrainian Democracy (1945).

Vasyl Markus

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