Panas Fedenko

Panas Vasyliovych Fedenko (; – 10 September 1981) was a Ukrainian socialist politician, historian, and revolutionary. He was a member of the Ukrainian Central Rada from 1917 to 1918 and led the Ukrainian Social Democratic Labour Party in-exile (as the Ukrainian Socialist Party) as its general secretary from 1950 to 1967.

Early life and career Fedenko was born into a peasant family of eight children, near the village of Veseli Terny (then part of Verkhnedneprovsk uezd, Katerynoslav Governorate, Russian Empire), located today within Kryvyi Rih Raion, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine.

On the advice of a teacher, he was transferred to a grammar school in Oleksandriia before graduating in 1913 and enrolling in the Imperial Institute of History and Philology in Saint Petersburg in 1914. In 1932, he became an associate professor at the Ukrainian Free University and later a reader in 1935. Panas also taught history and Latin at the Ukrainian Gymnasium in Czechoslovakia, presented papers at meetings of the Ukrainian Historical and Philological Society, wrote articles for the Ukrainian General Encyclopaedia published in Lviv (then known as Lwów under Polish rule), and was a member of the Union of Ukrainian Journalists and Writers Abroad.

While in exile, Panas was a member of the Labour and Socialist International's executive community as a representative of the Social Democratic Labour Party.

With the advance of Soviet forces into Prague in 1945, Panas left German-occupied Czechoslovakia for Germany proper, re-settling in the city of Augsburg after the war.

In 1948, he represented the Social Democratic Labour Party at the inaugural session of the Ukrainian National Council (not to be confused with the Nazi-collaborationist Ukrainian National Committee).

In 1950, he became general secretary of the , the result of a merger between Panas' Social Democratic Labour Party, the Ukrainian Radical Party, and Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party.

In 1951, Panas moved to London, United Kingdom, and began publishing Nashe Slovo (Our World), a socialist-leaning periodical from 1952 to 1958, and started a publication company of the same name. During this period, he also contributed to the Institute for the Study of the USSR, located in Munich, and represented the Ukrainian Socialist Party in the National Council as well as the newly-formed Socialist International.

Panas moved to Munich, West Germany, in 1959, bringing with him the Nashe Slovo periodical and publication company. In 1973, he began lecturing on Ukrainian history at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich as a visiting professor and as a full professor from 1977 to 1980.

He died in 1981 and is buried in Paris, France.