Shrah, Mykola

Shrah, Mykola [Шраг, Микола; Šrah], b 4 May 1894 in Chernihiv, d 1 February 1970 in Lviv. Economist and political leader; son of Illia Shrah. He studied in Moscow. He was vice-president of the Central Rada from 28 June 1917 to 29 March 1918 and a member of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR). After the 4th congress of his party (May 1918) he joined the ‘center current.’ In 1919 he was a consul for the Ukrainian National Republic’s diplomatic mission in Budapest, and from 1920 to 1924 he was a member of the Foreign Delegation of the UPSR in Vienna and a coeditor of Boritesia – Poborete in which he published ‘Slova i dila sotsiialistiv v natsional'nii spravi’ (Words and Deeds of Socialists in the National Cause, 1920, no. 2) and ‘Vidrodzhennia Zakordonnoï hrupy Ukraïns'koï komunistychnoï partiï’ (The Rebirth of the Foreign Group of the Ukrainian Communist Party, 1920, no. 4). In 1924 he returned to Ukraine with Mykhailo Hrushevsky, where he worked in Kharkiv with the Society of Scientific and Technical Workers for the Promotion of Socialist Construction (1928–31). He was imprisoned during the Stalinist terror. From 1952 he was a lecturer at the Kharkiv Institute of the National Economy, and from 1966 he was a professor at the Lviv Polytechnical Institute. He published various articles on economics and socialist politics, as well as a book of translations of Guy de Maupassant's stories called Na vodi (On Water, 1923).

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