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Levko Symyrenko

Levko Platonovych Symyrenko (18 February 1855, Mliiv — 6 January 1920) was a world-renowned Ukrainian pomologist and horticultural scientist, whom the scientific community called the "king of horticulture" and the father of Crimean commercial fruit growing. He is the author of the fundamental monograph "Crimean Commercial Fruit Growing" and the initiator of the founding of the first pomology-horticultural research station in the russian empire, the Salhyr Research Station.

Overview

Levko Symyrenko was born on 18 February 1855 on the khutor (farmstead) of Mliiv (Cherkasy region). After studying at the Novorossiysk (Odesa) University, for his civic and political activities he endured exile to Siberia, where he shared the road with the outstanding writer Volodymyr Korolenko, with whom he remained friends throughout his life.

For more than a quarter of a century (25 years) of his life, Levko Platonovych devoted himself to the research and development of horticulture in Crimea. During his annual multi-month expeditions, he visited every Crimean orchard in the Foothills and the Southern Coast. Together with his colleagues Vasyl Pashkevych and Mykola Kichunov, he secured the opening of a horticulture school and the Salhyr Horticultural Research Station in Simferopol (1913).

On 6 January 1920, Levko Symyrenko was killed by Chekists during the first waves of Bolshevik terror against the Ukrainian intelligentsia. In 1933, after the arrest of his son — Professor Volodymyr Symyrenko — the scholarly works of the Symyrenko dynasty were seized from libraries and destroyed by the Bolshevik regime, and their names were erased from science until their rehabilitation in the mid-1960s.

Key Details / Subtopics

  • Biographical data and repressions:
  • Born 18 February 1855 on the khutor of Mliiv (Cherkasy region).
  • During his exile to Siberia he befriended Volodymyr Korolenko.
  • On 6 January 1920 he was treacherously murdered by Chekists.
  • After the arrest of his son Volodymyr in 1933, the works of Levko and Volodymyr Symyrenko were seized by Chekists/NKVD from libraries and burned.
  • 25 years of researching Crimea and data on fruit exports:
  • Over a quarter of a century he carried out multi-month expeditions to every orchard of the Southern Coast and the Foothills of Crimea.
  • According to Symyrenko's data, already at the end of the 1870s, in favorable years, up to 7,000 tonnes of apples and pears, 2,000 tonnes of nuts, and 70,000 barrels of table grape varieties were shipped from Crimea to the mainland (mainly to St. Petersburg and Moscow), and these volumes grew until 1917.
  • He collaborated with the Nikitsky Botanical Garden and made use of the collections of the scientific library of the Novorossiysk University and the Crimean-studies library "Tavrika" in Simferopol.
  • He regularly participated as an expert in provincial agricultural exhibitions at the invitation of local gardeners and the Taurida Zemstvo Board.
  • The main work "Crimean Commercial Fruit Growing":
  • He published his first works in 1891–1892 ("An Attempt at a Study of Crimean Commercial Fruit Growing" and "Materials on the Question of Crimean Commercial Fruit Growing").
  • At the end of 1907 he completed a substantial manuscript (over 2,000 pages), which won the Grand Gold Medal and awards from the imperial family in the competition marking the 50th anniversary of the russian imperial Horticultural Society.
  • The Simferopol branch of the society, on the initiative of the physician V. V. Taiursky, unanimously decided to publish the book. The publishing committee met in the premises of the Taurida Provincial Zemstvo Board (17 Karl Marx Street, in Simferopol).
  • Volume 1 was published at the end of 1911 — in 1912 by the Moscow publishing house of Mykola Kushnariov (print run of 10,000 copies). For the illustrations, Symyrenko engaged artists (Hryhorii Miasoiedov, Kseniia Ivanova, T. Safronov) and photographers (K. Kniazkov, Vasyl Sokornov). Most of the drawings were made in Yalta at Miasoiedov's dacha "Villa Olena".
  • The fate of the manuscripts of Volumes 2 and 3: During World War I, Volume 3 ("Atlas of Fruits") disappeared at the Munich publishing house of Bruckmann, while Volume 2 was lost at Kushnariov's printing house in Moscow. Most copies of Volume 1 were destroyed by the Bolsheviks in the 1930s.
  • Rehabilitation and republication thanks to Petro Volvach:
    • In 1996, Petro Volvach compiled and translated Symyrenko's works in the collection "Local Ancient Varieties of Fruit Crops of Crimea" (Tavriia publishing house).
    • In 2001, for the 150th anniversary of the scientist's birth, on the initiative of Petro Volvach, a reprint of Volume 1 of "Crimean Commercial Fruit Growing" was produced.
    • In 2008, after 10 years of painstaking searches for scattered fragments in archives and the Symyrenko Family Museum in the Cherkasy region, Petro Volvach published a reconstructed Volume 2 under the "Ukrainian Book" program.
  • The Salhyr pomology-horticultural research station:
  • In 1913 in Simferopol, with the active participation of Symyrenko, the first horticultural research station in the Empire was founded on the basis of the "Salhyrka" estate.
  • Response of General Vasyl Homilevsky (1912):
  • Secretary of the russian imperial Horticultural Society, General Vasyl Homilevsky, wrote about "Crimean Commercial Fruit Growing": "In the hands not only of Crimean but of Southern fruit growing in general, this publication will serve as both a guide and a reference book and, finally, a source of enjoyment... Happy is the country in which such toilers live and work as L. P. Symyrenko is..."
  • Sayings and love for Crimea:
  • Levko Symyrenko left touching memories of Crimea: "I am more than indifferent to Crimea, to its picturesque scenes of nature, to its mountains and air... Unforgettable memories are bound up with it for me, and at every new encounter with this charming land I again and again find myself in the grip of some aching, intoxicating feelings..."
  • Following Yevhen Markov, he used to repeat: "He who breathes Crimea breathes the joy of life, of poetry, and of longevity. Hasten to Crimea, all who can, while there is still time."