Khanenko, Mykola
Khanenko, Mykola [Ханенко, Микола; Xanenko], b 6 December 1693 in Lokhvytsia, Lubny regiment, d 27 January 1760 in Hlukhiv. Noted political figure and statesman of the Hetman state of the Khanenko Cossack starshyna family; general flag-bearer, diplomat, memoirist. The son of Col Danylo Khanenko, he was educated at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy and then at the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood School. In 1710 he entered military service. In 1717 he was appointed military secretary, and in 1721 assistant general chancellor.
He enjoyed the confidence of hetmans Ivan Skoropadsky and Pavlo Polubotok. In May 1723 Polubotok sent him to Saint Petersburg as a member of a delegation requesting permission to elect a new hetman. In response, both Khanenko and Polubotok were imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
On Khanenko’s return to Ukraine in 1726, he was appointed judge (1727–38) and then quartermaster of the Starodub regiment. During the Russo-Turkish War (1735–9), he saw action in the Crimea and was rewarded for his service with the office of general standard-bearer in 1738. Two years later he became a member of the General Military Court, and then in 1741 he received the office of general flag-bearer, which he held until shortly before his death.
Khanenko was a member of the Commission for Translating and Codifying Little-Russian Law Books, which produced the Code of Laws of 1743. Under Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky, Khanenko was one of the leading officials of the General Military Chancellery. His correspondence with his son, Vasyl, which was published in part in Chernigovskie gubernskie vedomosti (1852) and in his Dnevniki (Diaries; from 1719 to 1754), is a valuable source for the history of Ukraine. Dnevnik for 1727–52 was published in Kievskaia starina, vols 8–16 (1884–6); Dnevnik for 1719–21 and Partikuliarnii zhurnal (Journal of Particulars) for 1754 were also published in Kievskaia starina (1896); Dnevnik for 1732–3 appeared in Chernigovskie eparkhial’nye izvestiia (1865); and Diariush, ili zhurnal (Diary or Journal) for 1722 was published by Osyp Bodiansky in Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, bk 1 (1858). Khanenko left a rich archive of valuable historical materials: Ukrainian–Russian treaties (known as Hetman articles), Polish Sejm constitutions, 17th–18th-century tsarist ukases, official and Khanenko family records, the Constitution of Bendery, and a manuscript, ‘Kratkoe opisanie Malorossiiskogo kraia’ (A Brief Description of the Little-Russian Land).
Arkadii Zhukovsky
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]