Semen Hryzlo

Semen Hryhorovych Hryzlo (Ukrainian: Семен Григорович Гризло; 1887? – 3 March 1921) was a Ukrainian military and civil activist, one of the organizers of the Free Cossacks military formations, and a participant in the uprising on the battleship Potemkin (Borets za Svobodu).

Biography

Semen Hryzlo was born sometime in the late 1880s in the town of Katerynopil, Zvenigorod uyezd, in the Kiev Governorate, and worked as a scribe and teacher at a local rural school.

Later Hryzlo was drafted into the Black Sea Fleet, where he served on the battleship Potemkin. For his participation in the Potemkin mutiny of 1905, Hryzlo was exiled to Siberia. At the start of 1917 he returned home and became a member of the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionary Party. Hryzlo was an active participant in the cultural life of the village of Husakove in the Zvenigorod uyezd.

He was one of the first who military organisers of the Free Cossacks, becoming the otaman (military commander) of the Kaniboloto Kurin in March 1917. At the first Congress of the Free Cossacks of Zvenigorod uyezd in April 1917 Hryzlo was elected the Kosh Otaman. In June 1917 he was delegated to Kiev for the 2nd All-Ukrainian Military Congress representing Zvenigorod uyezd.