Rodzianko

Rodzianko [Родзянко]. A family line of Cossack starshyna and nobility of the Poltava region and the Katerynoslav region in the 18th to 20th centuries. It was established by Vasyl Rodzianko (1652–1734), a captain of Khorol company (1701–4) and oboznyi (quartermaster) of Myrhorod regiment (1723–34). The captaincy of Khorol company was passed on to his sons, Stepan and Ivan Rodzianko, and grandsons, Yeremii and Ivan Rodzianko (until 1768). Stepan (1687–1736) and Yeremii Rodzianko were also obozni of Myrhorod regiment (1735–6 and 1767–9 respectively), and Ivan Rodzianko (d 1751) was also colonel of Hadiach regiment. Their descendants maintained estates and official positions in the Poltava region until the 20th century. In the 1780s, though, a branch of the family settled in the Katerynoslav region, where it was Russified and came to control large estates in Novomoskovsk county (eg, Mykhailo Rodzianko).

The Rodzianko family was related to the Lesevych, Domykovsky, Obolonsky, Ostrohradsky, and Starytsky families (including Mykhailo Starytsky and Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska). Semen Rodzianko (1782–1808?) was a poet and a member of the Friendship Literary Society in Moscow (1801–4). Arkadii Rodzianko (1793–1846) belonged to the Society of Lovers of Literature, Scholarship, and the Arts (1825) and wrote verse in Ukrainian and Russian (he was also a friend of Aleksandr Pushkin and Taras Shevchenko). His brother, Platon Rodzianko (1802–?), was representative (predvodytel) of the nobility in Khorol county, Poltava gubernia. Valerian Rodzianko (1846–1904) was a member of the Ukrainian (Little Russian) Hromada in Moscow in the 1860s (he was among those arrested in 1866), and later he worked as a court functionary in Kharkiv. Serhii Rodzianko (b 1866) was commissioner of the Central Rada in the Kholm region in 1917–18, and he kept his position under the Hetman government.

Oleksander Ohloblyn

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]