Shamrai, Serhii

Shamrai, Serhii [Шамрай, Сергій; Šamraj, Serhij; Шамраев; Shamraiev], b 30 August 1900 in Vladikavkaz, Terek oblast, Russian Empire, d 4 January 1939. Historian; son of Hanna Shamrai. He graduated from the Kyiv Institute of People's Education. From 1924 he worked for the Historical-Geographical Commission of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN), and the Kyiv Scientific Research Chair of Ukraine’s History. He specialized in the socioeconomic history of 18th- and 19th-century Ukraine; his major work was Kyïvs’ka kozachchyna 1855 r. (The Kyiv Cossacks of 1855, 1928). Many of his studies were published in the Zapysky Istorychno-filolohichnoho viddilu VUAN and in the journal Ukraïna (1914–30). He was arrested in 1932 and 1937 for his association with Mykhailo Hrushevsky, his uncle, and died in a GULAG labor camp. A bibliography of Shamrai’s works was compiled by Serhii Bilokin (1985).

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