Grocholski Włodzimierz (1857-1914), politician. Son of Mieczysław and Stefania from the Giżycki family, born in Hryców in Volhynia on September 1. He completed his secondary education in Vienna, then passed the matriculation exam again in Mitau. He studied law at the universities of Dorpat and Kiev. Settling in the Hryców estates, he engaged in organizing agricultural industry and thus joined the Kiev Agricultural Society, initially as a board member, later from 1905 as vice president of the Society. In 1903, together with landowners Tomasz Michałowski, Wilhelm Kulikowski, and Szczęsny Poniatowski, he founded the Polish underground organization Zrzeszenie, which aimed to defend the moral and material interests of Poles in Ukraine. Since Russia received a constitution and Electoral Committees to the Duma and the State Council were formed, Zrzeszenie renounced its political tasks, focusing on organizing underground Polish education in villages. In 1907, Grocholski made an unsuccessful attempt to legalize this organization. Only in 1917 did the schools of Zrzeszenie come under the management of the legally existing Educational Society in Ukraine.
In 1905, Grocholski obtained a concession to publish the Polish “Kiev Daily” in Kiev. It was to gather people of various shades of the right, standing on a national-Christian basis. Grocholski based the finances of the new paper on shares paid by people of various shades of the right. Leonard Jankowski became the head of the main board of this joint-stock company. He engaged G. Joachim Bartoszewicz, Witold Lewicki, Wilhelm Kulikowski, Edward Paszkowski, and Stanisław Zieliński for the editorial team. In the face of the 1905/07 Revolution, the conservative program of the newspaper provoked sharp criticism from Polish democratic and radical circles. At the end of 1905, congresses of Polish Electoral Committees to the Duma and the State Council were held in Kiev. Grocholski took the position that Polish deputies from the Borderlands should join the Polish Circle together with deputies from the Kingdom. Lithuanian committees opposed this. As a compromise, it was decided that the Borderland deputies would form a second Polish Circle, which would communicate with the Kingdom’s Circle. After the elections, deputies from Lithuania and Ukraine leaned towards the “territorial” concept represented by deputy Czesław Jankowski and formed the Territorial-Program Group. Then Grocholski refused to sign the Group’s appeal to voters and on the pages of the “Daily” he firmly opposed the territorial concept, professing nationalist views in the national field. Equally firmly, Grocholski opposed in the autumn of 1906 the attempt to involve Poles in Ukraine in a conciliation-counterrevolutionary action, as this could strengthen the forces of the tsarist regime. At a congress of large landowners held in Zhytomyr, Russians proposed an appeal to the throne, asking for the abolition of constitutional reforms and the restoration of absolutism. Most Poles left the congress in protest, but people with historical names and great fortunes remained in the hall. Grocholski did not hesitate to condemn the entire sphere, and his position taken in the “Daily” ensured that the majority of landowners did not join the Russian right-wing initiative.
In December 1907, at a Kiev congress initiated by Burzyński, the Szaszkiewicz brothers, the Pruszyński family, Łychowski, Aleksander Bydłowski, and Bohdan Kutyłowski, co-editor of the “Kraj” from Petersburg, the idea of creating a national right-wing party was born. Roman Sanguszko, Józef Potocki, the Sobański family, and a number of other Borderland magnates were won over for this initiative. The congress was to adopt the statute of the National Party. It was to be a political group loyal to the government, distancing itself from any form of cooperation with political groups from other Polish regions, especially democratic-revolutionary ones. Grocholski’s situation was all the more difficult because among the initiators were many people from the landowners, and worse, several shareholders of the “Daily”. Despite this, Grocholski did not shy away from the fight. Although articles by supporters of the new Party appeared in the “Daily”, they were only in the “free voices” section, and each of these authors, regardless of their position in the Borderland society hierarchy, received a retort in the “Daily”.
After a year of such a struggle, G. managed to ensure that the new party did not manage to start its activities or create its own press organ. Now the tsarist administration opposed Grocholski. The “Daily”, at odds with the wealthiest shareholders, was hit with administrative penalties undermining its financial viability. At the end of 1908, Grocholski was advised to go abroad. He handed over the “Kiev Daily”, i.e., the editorial office and publishing house, to Antoni Czerwiński and Tomasz Michałowski, who supported him in the struggle over the paper’s direction and at the same time represented much greater financial possibilities for supporting the newspaper.
Grocholski went for treatment to Neuheim. He died in Frankfurt am Main on July 3, 1914. He was buried in his family estate in Hryców.
“Polish Biographical Dictionary” volume VIII National Institute of Ossoliński, PAN Publishing House Wrocław – Kraków – Warsaw, 1959-1960
auth. Stanisław Zieliński, pp. 590-591
Article – Kiev Daily, August 2004
https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Грохольский,_Владимир_Мечиславович