Shrah, Illia

Shrah, Illia [Шраг, Ілля; Šrah, Illja], b 23 August 1847 in Sedniv, Horodnia county. Chernihiv gubernia, d 11 April 1919 in Chernihiv. Civic and political activist; son of a Saxon German who worked for the Lyzohub family. Shrah studied law at Saint Petersburg University, from which he was expelled in 1869 for participating in a student demonstration. Later he was admitted to Kyiv University. From 1869 he was a councillor in the Chernihiv gubernia zemstvo administration, and in 1906 he was elected to the First Russian State Duma, where he headed the 40-member Ukrainian caucus. He was also vice-president of the Autonomists' Union (1905–6) and the Society of Ukrainian Progressives. He belonged to the Ukrainian Democratic Radical party, and later was a prominent member of the Society of Ukrainian Progressives (from 1908) and the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists (from 1917). He was a representative of Chernihiv gubernia in the Central Rada. Shrah contributed articles to the periodicals Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva im. Shevchenka, the journal Pravda in Lviv, Rada (Kyiv) and Iuzhnye zapiski in Kyiv, Ukrainskii vestnik (Saint Petersburg), and Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk. His autobiography (annotated by Serhii Yefremov) was published in Nashe mynule (1919, nos 1–2).

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