Jan Sierada

Jan (Ivan Nikitivich) Sierada (, 13 May 1879 — after 19 November 1943) was a Belarusian statesman, pedagogist and writer, the first president of the Belarusian Democratic Republic.
Sierada was born in the village of Zadźvieji (now in Baranavichy Raion, Brest Region).
In 1905—1906 Sierada served in the Imperial Russian Army in Manchuria 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 the chairman of the First All-Belarusian Congress. In 1918 he was elected president of the Belarusian Democratic Republic.
In the 1920s Sierada worked on different positions in the Agriculture Ministry of the Belarusian SSR, 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. In April 1931 he was sentenced to 5 years of exile in Yaroslavl, Russia. After this, he was again sentenced in 1941 to 10 more years in the gulag. He was set free, on 19 November 1943, from the gulag camp chain (Krasnoyarsk Krai) and his further fate is unknown.
He has been rehabilitated on his cases in 1988 and 1989.