Background
Hrekov was born into a cossack family whose estate was near Glukhov in Sopychi, Chernigov Governorate. Today most of the territory belongs to the village of Sopych, Hlukhiv Raion, right on the border with the Russian Federation. His father Petro Havrylovych Hrekov was a lawyer and a big landowner of the Chernigov Governorate and his mother was Maria Hryhorivna Preobrazhenska. According to family legend, the Hrekov's family were descendants of a Greek who was part of the delegation accompanying Sophia Paleologue as she moved to Muscovy in 1472 when marrying Ivan III of Russia, Grand Prince of Moscow. The Hrekov family attained the status of nobility as a reward for their service to Peter the Great.
On the insistence of his father, Hrekov completed the law school of Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1897. Later, after surprising enrollment into the Moscow military school, he graduated it in 1899 and the Nicholas General Staff Academy in 1905 after three years of study (along with another Ukrainian general Volodymyr Sinclair).
Read more about this topic: Oleksander Hrekov
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