Roman Onisimovich Rakushka-Romanovskii

Rakushka-Romanovskii, Roman Onisimovich

 

(surname also Rakushchenko). Born 1623; died 1703. Probable author of the Samovidets Chronicle (Eyewitness Chronicle).

Rakushka-Romanovskii was a registered cossack who fought in the War for the Liberation of the Ukrainian People (1648–54) against the oppression of the Polish szlachta (nobility). From 1658 to 1663 he was a sotnik (commander of a 100-man unit) in Nezhin, and from 1663 to 1668 the chief treasurer responsible to the hetman. Because of the hetman Mnogogreshnyi’s hostile attitude toward him, Rakushka-Romanovskii had to move to Bratslav, in Right-bank Ukraine, where he became the priest of a city church. In 1672 he became the priest of the St. Nicholas Church in the city of Starodub, in Left-bank Ukraine.