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
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)