Jan Sierada

Ivan Mikitavič Sierada ( — 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 Zadźvieji village in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in the Brest Region of 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.