Myrovych, Fedir

Myrovych, Fedir [Мирович, Федір; Myrovyč], b ?, d 1758 in the Crimea. Cossack leader of the Myrovych Cossack starshyna family; son of Ivan M. Myrovych, brother of Ivan I. Myrovych. A graduate of the Kyivan Mohyla Academy, he became a fellow of the standard and served as general standard-bearer of the Hetman state in 1708–9. He fled abroad with Hetman Ivan Mazepa after the Russian victory at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. In 1710–11 he was general osaul to the émigré hetman Pylyp Orlyk. He lived abroad in the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire, Sweden (1715–19), and Poland (1719–54) before returning to the Crimea. He was entrusted with many political tasks by Orlyk, particularly that of maintaining a liaison with the Zaporozhian Sich. The tsarist regime responded to Myrovych’s ‘treasonous’ activities by exiling his mother, brother, and children and confiscating all of their estates and assets. He remained an unrelenting enemy of Moscow and a defender of the Ukrainian right to statehood as set forth in the 1710 Constitution of Bendery.

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