Tershakovets, Hryn

Tershakovets, Hryn [Тершаковець, Гринь; Teršakovec', Hryn'], b 15 February 1877 in Yakymchytsi, Rudky county, Galicia, d 28 July 1959 in Lviv. Civic and political leader; father of Zinovii Tershakovets. A farmer by vocation, he set up various Ukrainian organizations in his home village and in Rudky county—a Prosvita reading room, Raiffeisen credit co-operatives, dairy co-operatives, a branch of Silskyi Hospodar, and a Sokil society. He was active among the peasants in election campaigns and in 1913, as a candidate of the National Democratic party, won a seat in the Galician Diet. During the First World War he was captured by the Russians and deported to Central Asia. After returning to Lviv in 1918, he became a member of the Ukrainian National Rada and attended the Labor Congress in Kyiv in 1919. After the war he was one of the founders of the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance and a member of its Central Committee. He was repeatedly elected to the Polish Sejm (1928, 1930, 1935). The Silskyi Hospodar and Prosvita societies elected him as an honorary member. In September 1939 he was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to hard labor in GULAG labor camps. He was released in 1947 but arrested again in November 1948 and imprisoned until 1956.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]