Worker-poet known as Tsishka Hartny who headed the first Soviet government of Byelorussia
Born into a peasant family in Kapyl in 1887, he worked as a tanner, joined the Hramada in 1904 and wrote for Nasha Niva. From 1913 he worked in Petrograd factories and wrote poetry under the pen name Tsishka Hartny. In 1918, as secretary of the Belarusian National Commissariat, he campaigned for a Belarusian republic against Vilgelm Knorin and Alexander Myasnikov and won the support of Lenin and Stalin. From 1 January to 3 February 1919 he headed the Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia. He later ran publishing and cultural institutions and became an academician, but was expelled from the party in 1931, arrested in 1936 and died in 1937 in a psychiatric hospital in Mogilev; some accounts say he took his own life.
Also known as: Tsishka Hartny · Ciška Hartny · Zmicier Žyłunovič · Dmitri Zhilunovich · Dmitry Zhilunovich
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1913Worker at the Vulkan plant in Petrograd
- 1918Secretary of the Belarusian National Commissariat
- 1919Head of the Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia
- 1920–1931Member of the Central Executive Committee of the BSSR
- 1928Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR