Film from the series The Game of Fate.

Part 1: Platon

The former serf Fedir Semerenko, the descendant of the Cossacks, together with the brothers of his wife Anastasiia became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Tsarist Russia in what is now Cherkasy region. The Trade House “Yakhnenko and Semerenko Brothers ” was known throughout the country. His eldest son Platon kept the business of his father and created the progressive capitalist area in the country of serfs. Platon died early, and his young widow Tetiana was left alone with five little children, whom she raised by herself.

Part 2: Vasyl

The former serf Fedir Semerenko was a descendant of the Cossacks. He bought his freedom himself and became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Tsarist Russia in the 19th century. His youngest son, Vasyl, returned from Paris, where he studied engineering in order to restore the company of his father that had fallen into decline after the death of his elder brother Platon. Vasyl and his young wife Sophia, who was a descendant of French nobles who had settled in Ukraine, became not only the successful entrepreneurs, but also the most generous philanthropists supporting Ukrainian culture. But when the Bolsheviks came to power, the property of Vasyl Semerenko was nationalized.

Part 3: Levko

In the end of the 19th century, the grandson of the well-known Ukrainian entrepreneur Fedir Semerenko, Levko, had been through imprisonment and tortures in Siberia. There, he married Aldona Hruzhevska, the revolutionary of Polish origin. When he was released, he came back to Ukraine and established a large fruit tree nursery in his family estate that became well-known in Europe. Levko Platonovych was called a king of gardening. It was he who developed the variety of apple called “Reinette Symyrenko” that is known to everybody today. Find out about how Levko Semerenko went from being a revolutionary to a scientist, how he and his wife Aldona went their separate ways, and how he was killed by the NKVD in 1918, in the third part of the film, “Levko” in the documentary series “The Game of Fate”.

Part 4: Volodymyr

The name of the great-grandson of former serf Fedir Semerenko, Volodymyr Semerenko, was not mentioned in the world of Soviet science for a long time. In the 1920s, he was appointed the director of the Mliiv nursery garden in the former family estate of the Semerenkos nationalized by the Bolsheviks. Together with his wife Mariia, he came to the household ruined by the revolution and the war, and established there the Mliiv Gardening Institute of the all-Union value. Find out about how in the 1930s the world-known scientist Volodymyr Semerenko was arrested and executed, and how his family had to emigrate, in the fourth part, “Volodymyr” of the film “The Semerenkos” in the documentary series “The Game of Fate”.