Josef Girsa

Significance

Josef Girsa (1874–1967) was a Czech estate manager, diplomat and the brother of Václav Girsa (N0025). Born in Shepetivka into a Czech family, he spent a large part of his life in the Russian Empire and after 1917 headed Czechoslovak representations in the Soviet republics. [GRJ01; GRJ02] Czech Wikipedia calls him the de facto first Czechoslovak representative in the USSR. [GRJ02] For the Czech-Ukrainian story he matters as head of the Czechoslovak trade mission in Kharkiv in 1921. [GRJ01; GRJ02]

Life

Girsa was born on 6 October 1874 in Shepetivka and died on 22 November 1967 in Prague. [GRJ01; GRJ02] The dictionary speaks of a Czech family in the Podolia governorate; Czech Wikipedia of a family of Volhynian Czechs. His brother Václav Girsa (N0025) was a physician. [GRJ01; GRJ02] According to the dictionary he studied at a higher economic school in Uman; Czech Wikipedia writes of agronomic training obtained in Russia. [GRJ01; GRJ02]

Czech Wikipedia names, without years, these places of his work: the estates of Count Potocki in Uman (Podolia governorate), the estate and sugar factory of Prince Lopukhin-Demidov in the Kyiv governorate, and work for the Mariinsk joint-stock company in the Voronezh, Kherson and Chernihiv governorates. The dictionary dates to 1912–1918 his work at factories and estates of the Mariinsk company in Voronezh and speaks of managing a factory in the Chernihiv region at the end of 1917. [GRJ01; GRJ02] He was arrested in 1919; in May 1920, according to Czech Wikipedia, he was sent to Poland in a prisoner exchange, worked in Poznań and in May 1921 moved to Prague. [GRJ01; GRJ02]

Ukrainian connection

On 28 June 1921, according to Czech Wikipedia, Girsa was sent to head the Czechoslovak trade mission in Kharkiv; the dictionary says this happened in June and that about two months later he headed the mission in Moscow. In June 1922, after provisional agreements between Czechoslovakia and the Russian and Ukrainian Soviet republics, he was appointed head of the Czechoslovak representation in Moscow, which performed diplomatic functions until official relations with the USSR were established in June 1934. He led it until the end of 1931, when for health reasons he left for Prague and retired. [GRJ01; GRJ02]

The Ukrainian dimension also includes Shepetivka as his birthplace, his studies in Uman, his work in the Podolia, Kyiv and Chernihiv governorates and the Kharkiv mission. [GRJ01; GRJ02] In 1939 Girsa was briefly imprisoned after the creation of the Protectorate and then withdrew from public life. [GRJ01; GRJ02]

Disagreements in the sources

Places of work: the dictionary mentions the Chernihiv region at the end of 1917 and does not name Kyiv; Czech Wikipedia writes of an estate in the Kyiv governorate and of a return there after October 1917, when the estate was Soviet state property. Czech Wikipedia gives no years for the work on the Potocki and Lopukhin-Demidov estates. [GRJ01; GRJ02]

Post: the Czech Wikipedia infobox gives head of the Czechoslovak trade mission in the USSR for 1921–1931, while the text gives appointment as plenipotentiary representative in June 1922; these are two slightly different functions that are not fully reconciled. The title "first ambassador" is qualified as "de facto". The sources give neither the date of the 1939 arrest nor its length. [GRJ01; GRJ02]