Baran, Stepan
Baran, Stepan [Баран, Степан], b 25 January 1879 in the village of Krukenychi, Mostyska county, Galicia, d 4 June 1953 in Munich, West Germany. A politician, journalist, community leader in Galicia, and a lawyer by profession (practicing mainly in Ternopil). Baran was a distinguished member of the National Democratic party (later Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance); a member of its National Committee in 1913–18; a member of the presidium of the Supreme Ukrainian Council (later the General Ukrainian Council), and, during the First World War, its representative in the Balkans in 1915. From 1918 to 1919 he was a member of the Ukrainian National Rada of the Western Ukrainian National Republic and secretary of agriculture in Kost Levytsky’s first government (see State Secretariat of the Western Ukrainian National Republic). From 1928 to 1939 he was a member of the Polish Sejm. During the Second World War, in 1944, Baran emigrated as a displaced person to Germany. From 1951 to 1953 he was head of the executive of the Ukrainian National Council of the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic.
For many years Baran served as defense counsel in political trials. He defended Ukrainian interests in educational and agrarian matters and advocated the rights of the Ukrainian Orthodox church in the Polish state. In the course of fifty years he wrote articles for newspapers such as Dilo (1902–39); Svoboda (Lviv), of which he was editor in chief from 1914–18; and Krakivs’ki visti (1940–5). He was a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and an author of works on Galician schools and agrarian and religious affairs in Galicia. The more important of these include Statystyka seredn'oho shkil'nytstva u Skhidnii Halychyni v rr. 1848–98 (Statistics on Secondary Schooling in Eastern Galicia 1848–98, 1910); Novyi kraievyi statut i nova vyborcha ordynatsiia do halyts'koho soimu (The New Land Statute and the New Electoral System to the Galician Diet, 1914); Istoriia ukraïns'koï advokatury (History of Ukrainian Law Practice, 1913); Po nevoli—vyzvolennia (After Captivity—Liberation, 1940); Zemel'na sprava v Halychyni (The Land Question in Galicia, 1947); Mytropolyt Andrei Sheptyts'kyi (Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, 1947); and Z moïkh spohadiv pro Ivana Franka (My Reminiscences about Ivan Franko, 1952).
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]