Shakh, Stepan

Shakh, Stepan [Шах, Степан; Šax], b 3 January 1891 in Kulykiv, Zhovkva county, Galicia, d 16 September 1978 in Sydney, Australia. Teacher, civic leader, and writer; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1954. After graduating from Lviv University (1915) he served in the Austrian army and the Ukrainian Galician Army. He taught at the Academic Gymnasium of Lviv (1920–5 and 1929–32) and served as secretary of the Prosvita society’s main branch (1920–32, with interruptions) in Lviv, and directed the Peremyshl State Gymnasium (from 1932). A postwar displaced person in Germany, he taught in Bavaria (1946–56) and retired before moving to Australia (1978), where he died after his arrival. He wrote a popular history of the Prosvita society (1932), the memoirs Lviv, misto moieï molodosty (Lviv, the City of My Youth, 3 vols, 1955–6) and Mizh Sianom i Dunaitsem (Between the Sian and the Dunajec, 1960), and three studies about Markiian Shashkevych.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]