1 000 000 Karbovantsiv Mykhaylo Hrushevsky

Hrushevsky was the first president of the Ukrainian People's Republic, serving briefly in 1918 before Bolshevik forces dismantled the government. He later made the catastrophic decision to return to Soviet Ukraine in 1924, was allowed to work as a historian for a time, then arrested in 1931 and died in 1934 under circumstances that remain disputed. This coin was struck just five years after Ukrainian independence, when reclaiming such figures from Soviet-suppressed history carried genuine political weight.

The denomination — one million karbovantsiv — reflects the hyperinflationary collapse of the post-Soviet karbovanets before the hryvnia replaced it in September 1996, the same year this piece was issued.