Krat, Pavlo

Krat, Pavlo (Крат, Павло; Crath, Paul), b 10 October 1882 in Krasna Luka, Hadiach county, Poltava gubernia, d 25 December 1952 in Toronto, Ontario. Socialist and Protestant leader, writer, poet, journalist, and translator. Active in the Revolutionary Ukrainian party in Poltava gubernia in the years 1901–4, Krat helped to form the Ukrainian Social Democratic Spilka in 1905. He fled to Galicia during the Revolution of 1905 and in 1906 enrolled at Lviv University, where he was arrested while agitating for a Ukrainian university.

In 1907 Krat escaped to Canada. There he became active in the Federation of Ukrainian Social Democrats in Canada (later the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party of Canada) in Winnipeg and Toronto and edited the periodicals Chervonyi prapor (Winnipeg) (1907–8), Robochyi narod (1914–16), Robitnyche slovo, and Kadylo (1913–18). In 1914 he founded the Society for an Independent Ukraine, and in the years 1915–16 he translated for the Office of the Press Censor for Western Canada. Ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1917, Krat became pastor of the Ukrainian Evangelical church in Toronto in 1918. From 1923 to 1938, as a missionary, he helped to organize the Ukrainian Evangelical Reformed church in Western Ukraine. He is the author of Robitnychi pisni (Workers’ Songs, 1911), Vizyta ‘Chervonoï druzhyny’ (Visit of the ‘Red Detachment,’ 1912), Poslidnie khozhdeniie Boha po Zemli (God’s Last Wanderings on Earth, 1915), Ukraïns'ka starodavnist' (Ukrainian Antiquity, 1958), and other stories, satires, poems, translations, and articles. Together with Watson Kirkconnell, Krat translated into English Slovo o polku Ihorevi.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]