I have known Petro Holitsyn, a fellow with Uzhhorod University, since 1989. He was the first in the Soviet Union to raise playing cards to the official level. Can you imagine? He was the first president of the duplicate bridge federation. The Holitsyn precedent made it possible to open clubs elsewhere in the USSR. In August 2001, Petro Holitsyn was the first to take a Ukrainian team to the eleventh World Sports Bridge Olympiad in Holland, sponsored by the Maastricht bridge masters’ club, as represented by Peter Korving.
The celebrated princely Golitsyn family has branches reaching to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Crimea. Petro Holitsyn [surname spelled the Ukr. way] comes from the St. Petersburg branch. His grandfather Pёtr with his family immigrated to Budapest immediately after the October 1917 Bolshevik coup in St. Petersburg. Petro Holitsyn’s father was born there. He graduated from the Italian art academy, served in the German Army during World War II (he had no choice a citizen of Hungary then allied with the Third Reich), then remained in Stuttgart. In 1951, he was abducted by the KGB, smuggled out of Germany and into the Soviet Union. He was rehabilitated in 1954 [under Khrushchev], but subject to a limited list of places of residence, including Uzhhorod. He chose it, for it was a short way from Budapest, but things turned out much more complicated; even traveling to Mukacheve, 40 kilometers from Uzhhorod, required paperwork involving the All-Union Visa Department. Uzhhorod thus was made a separate country for the Holitsyns.
At present, Petro Holitsyn teaches competitive bridge at the National University of Uzhhorod. This intellectual game has long been subject to special attention in the West and it is part of the curriculum at the military academies and other institutions of higher learning. The game helps develop intuition and team tactics.
Then, all of a sudden, Niva, a production-and-research enterprise in Odesa, started manufacturing the Prince Golitsyn wine, the label portraying the family coat of arms.
“They have violated the law of Ukraine On the Protection of the Title to Trademarks and Brand Names,’” says Petro Holitsyn, “and it reads that symbols used by other persons, first and last names and derivatives thereof cannot be registered as trademarks or brand names without the owner’s knowledge and consent. Our family coat of arms is entered in the General Armorial of Noble Families of the Russian Empire, adopted by Paul I in 1797.
The nobleman Petro Holitsyn claimed damages, bringing action against the Odesa vintner.
