Activities of Prominent Representatives of the Symyrenkos

Author

Volvach Petro

a Ph.D. in Biology, an academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Ecological Sciences, a horticultural scientist, agro­ecologist, a head of the Crimean Centre of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

Activities of Prominent Representatives of the Symyrenkos

Abstract

Biography and activities of famous representatives of the Symyrenko family as Ukrainian enterprisers are investigated in the article. Their contribution to the development of the agricultural industry in Ukraine, the establishment of new trends in agrotechnologies, especially in gardening, are analyzed. The patronage of family representatives (the support of Ukrainian editions, theatre and chorus collectives), their contribution to humanitarian and scientific development of the country are revealed.

The former serf Fedir Symyrenko (1790–1867) is a native of Horodyshche, Cherkasy district, Kyiv province. He has got status of a honorary hereditary citizen of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 1830s for the significant contribution to the economic development of Odesa and South of Ukraine. The firm Yakhnenko – Symyrenko Brothers has given uncommonly large material and financial supporting of the army during the Crimean (Russian-Turkish) War. The Ukrainian owners company has saved over ten thousand inhabitants of Cherkasy region from famine in 1830.

Platon Symyrenko (20 December 1820 – 13 January 1863) is known as the most prominent and talented figure among a young generation of enterprisers. He has studied at Paris Polytechnical Institute and got a diploma of the engineer and technologist of sugar production. All sugar plants of the Ukrainian owners firm are known as successful and highly profitable owing to his skilled management. Cottages for the specialists, civilized hostels for the workers have been built on the territory of Symyrenko plants. A canteen, elementary school, technical college, church, shops and dispensary have been situated there. The industrialist has financed the publication of the last Kobzar in Taras Shevchenko lifetime. He has also intended to publish textbooks for Ukrainian-speaking schools.

Vasyl Symyrenko (7 March 1835 – 1 December 1915) has continued the family business successfully. He has been able to optimize the work of sugar plants in the conditions of economic depression, persecution by the Black-Hundred organizations through his Ukrainophilia. Vasyl Symyrenko has assigned annually 10 % of the uncommonly large income of Sydorivskyi plant to support Ukrainian culture. He has established a special fund to espouse Ukrainian scientists, artists, writers and culture figures. Mykhailo Drahomanov, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi, Pavlo Chubynskyi and others are known as its scholarship holders. Financial assistance has been given to the province departments of Prosvita and T. Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv.

Levko Symyrenko (6 February 1855 – 24 December 1919) is an elder son of Platon Symyrenko, a worldwide known Ukrainian scientist, horticulturist and pomologist, an active figure of the Narodniks movement of the 1920s–1930s. In 1879 he has been arrested and exiled to Eastern Siberia for 8 years because of the membership in the antigovernmental revolutionary organization. In 1887 Levko has returned from exile and created own pomological arboretum, known later in the whole scientific world. Essentially L. Symyrenko has become the founder of Ukrainian scientific school of horticulture and nursery gardening.

His son Volodymyr Symyrenko (18 December 1891 – 18 September 1938) has continued the work. He is known as an outstanding Ukrainian scholar-horticulturist and pomologist, Ukrainian science organizer. The scientist has been arrested for three time by the bodies of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, exiled. Though despite this fact his scientific heritage consists of over 200 printed sheets of various scientific articles and monographs (Garden Arboretum (1929, 24 printed sheets), Fruity Assortments of Ukraine (1930, 32 printed sheets), Partial Fruity Variety Studying (it is given over to the printing in the Fall 1932, about 75 printed sheets)). A unique Ukrainian scientific horticultural school created by Levko and Volodymyr Symyrenky has been considered as a leading institution in the world during the ХІХ–ХХ centuries.

Keywords

Symyrenko family, patronage, sugar production, machinery construction, shipbuilding, horticulture, pomology.

References

1. Volvach, P. (2005) L. Symyrenko and Crimea. Simferopol: Tavriya.
2. Volvach, P. (2002, 2003, 2004) L. Symyrenko, A Founder of Ukrainian Industrial Horticulture: A Monograph: in Three Books. Simferopol: Tavriya.
3. Volvach, P., Zayats, V. (1984) L. Symyrenko, His Life and Activities. Moscow: Kolos.
4. (1995) Rodovid, # 1(10).
5. Volvach, P. (compiler) (2008) Origins of Industrial Pomiculture. Simferopol: Tavriya.