Jan Sierada
Belarusian scientist and politician (1879-1943)
Ivan Mikitavič Sierada (13 May [O.S. 1 May] 1879 – after 19 November 1943), better known by the pseudonyms of Jan or Janka was a Belarusian statesman, pedagogist and writer who served as the first president of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic.
Biography
Ivan Mikitavič Sierada was born in the village of Zadzvieja in Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Brest Region, Belarus).
From 1905 to 1906, Sierada served in the Imperial Russian Army in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War, and was also mobilized during World War I.
He graduated from a veterinary school in Warsaw in 1903 and worked as a veterinarian in the Minsk Governorate in 1907–1911. At the same time he was a teacher at an agricultural college in Marjina Horka.
Jan Sierada was an active member of the Belarusian Socialist Assembly. In 1917, he was elected the chairman of the First All-Belarusian Congress. In 1918, he was elected president of the short-lived Belarusian Democratic Republic. In February 1918, he was a member of the Belarusian delegation (together with Simon Rak-Mikhailovsky and Alaksandar Ćvikievič) at the peace talks in Brest-Litovsk.
In the 1920s, Sierada worked on different positions in the Agriculture Ministry of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and was also a teacher at several colleges and published several works on agriculture.
On 4 July 1930, Sierada was arrested by the NKVD as part of the so-called Case of the Union of Liberation of Belarus.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jan Sierada” is belarusian scientist and politician (1879-1943). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Sierada, Belarusian and scientist, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q627867. VIAF identifies the subject as 6130159613662941030009. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1943, 1905 and 1906.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jan Sierada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.