Lisovyk, Oleksander

Lisovyk, Oleksander [Лісовик, Олександер; pseud of Олександер Гнида; Oleksander Hnyda], 22 December 1897 in Horby, Hlobyne county, Poltava gubernia, d 24 October 1937 in Kyiv. Revolutionary figure. A member of the underground Socialist Revolutionary Youth Association (1915–16), after the Revolution of 1917 he joined the Borotbists and became a leading organizer of the partisan struggle in the Poltava region, against the Germans, the Hetman government, and Anton Denikin’s army (see Partisan movement in Ukraine, 1918–22). He took part in negotiations with Nestro Makhno to form an independent Ukrainian Red Army. In 1919 he headed the Soviet Department of Education in Poltava gubernia, and from December 1919 he edited the Borotbist paper Ukraïns'kyi proletar in Katerynoslav. After the Borotbists merged with the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine in 1920, he chaired the okruha executive committee in Bakhmut and sat on the Presidium of the All-Union Central Executive Committee. In the early 1930s he directed the Chief Administration of Automobile Transportation in Soviet Ukraine. He was arrested with other former Borotbists during the Stalinist terror, and executed.

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