Avhustyn Shtefan was a Ukrainian and Ukrainian American educator, politician, and social activist, known for his role as speaker of the Carpatho-Ukrainian Soim (legislature) during the region's autonomy and brief independence in 1938-1939. He was born in the village of Poroshkovo, now part of Perechyn raion in Zakarpats'ka oblast', Ukraine, into a family of Greek Catholic clergy. His father, Omelian Shtefan, and maternal grandfather, Ievhenii Fentsyk, were both priests and notable social activists.

Shtefan studied at the University of Budapest from 1914 to 1918 and went on to teach mathematics and physics at the Uzhhorod Teachers College. After the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic, he taught at the Uzhhorod Gymnasium from 1920 to 1922 and subsequently served as director of the Commercial Academies in Uzhhorod and Mukachevo from 1922 to 1938.

During this period, Shtefan became increasingly active in politics, culminating in his appointment as Minister of Education and Religion for the autonomous government of Carpatho-Ukraine. He was elected to the Soim and served as its speaker. Following Hungary’s annexation of Carpatho-Ukraine in March 1939, Shtefan became a political refugee, first residing in Bratislava, where he served as director of the Ukrainian Academy of Commerce, and later in Prague as director of the Ukrainian Gymnasium in Modřany.

At the end of World War II, Shtefan, along with his colleagues from Modřany, became a displaced person in Augsburg, Germany. In 1949, he resettled in the United States, where he taught at the Mother of God Academy, a Catholic girls' high school in Stamford, Connecticut, until his retirement in 1969. He remained active in Ukrainian and Transcarpathian social and political organizations throughout his life.