Shelukhyn, Serhii

Shelukhyn, Serhii [Шелухин, Сергій; Šeluxyn, Serhij] (Šeluchyn; pseud: S. Pavlenko), b 6 October 1864 in Denhy, Poltava gubernia, d 25 December 1938 in Prague. Lawyer, civic activist, and state figure. A judge in various centers, he was active in the Ukrainian movement from the Revolution of 1905, as head of the Revolutionary Committee in Odesa and a member of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists. In 1917–18 he was a member of the Central Rada, a general judge in the Ukrainian National Republic, minister of justice in the governments of Vsevolod Holubovych and Volodymyr Chekhivsky, and a state senator in the Hetman government. He also headed the Ukrainian State delegation in peace negotiations with the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (1918) and participated in the Paris Peace Conference (1919) as a legal adviser. He emigrated to Czechoslovakia (via Vienna) in 1921 and taught criminal law at the Ukrainian Free University and the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute (1924–5), headed the Ukrainian Law Society and the Ukrainian Committee in Czechoslovakia, was vice-president of the People's Ukrainian Council, and wrote about the law code Ruskaia Pravda, the Celtic origin of Rus’, the history of Ukrainian law, and international politics in Ukraine.

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