Myrovych, Ivan I.

Myrovych, Ivan I. [Мирович, Іван; Myrovyč], b ?, d 1753. Political prisoner and émigré figure of the Myrovych Cossack starshyna family; son of Ivan M. Myrovych, brother of Fedir Myrovych. Because of the role his brother, Fedir Myrovych, played in Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s revolt against Peter I, Ivan was exiled to Moscow in 1712 and to Siberia in 1716, where he served as a captain in mining factories from 1728 on. In 1730 he was sent to Saint Petersburg with a shipment of iron, but he escaped to the Crimea and served as an interpreter to the Crimean khan. He and his brother served as Hetman Pylyp Orlyk’s liaison officers with the Zaporozhian Cossacks (to 1734) and the Crimean Khanate. In 1735 he was Orlyk’s envoy to the Polish king Stanislaus I Leszczyński in France, and in 1736 he served as Orlyk’s representative at Turkish army headquarters.

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