People of the Revolution and the USSR

Belarus state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1879–1943 이후 Fate unknown

Veterinarian who chaired the First All-Belarusian Congress and, as chairman of the Rada, presided over the declaration of independence

Born in Zadzvieja in the Minsk Governorate in 1879, he graduated from the veterinary school in Warsaw in 1903 and worked as a veterinarian and as a teacher at the agricultural college in Marjina Horka. He served in the Russo-Japanese War and was active in the Belarusian Socialist Hramada. Elected chairman of the First All-Belarusian Congress in December 1917, he was arrested when it was dispersed. In February 1918 he was a Belarusian delegate at the Brest-Litovsk peace talks; as chairman of the Rada from March he presided over the session of 24–25 March that proclaimed independence, and from July to November he headed the People’s Secretariat. In the 1920s he worked in agriculture in Soviet Byelorussia; arrested in 1930 in the case of the “Union of Liberation of Belarus”, he passed through exile and the Gulag, and his fate after his release in 1943 is unknown.

Belarus state institutions Non-Bolshevik socialists 1884–1942 ○ Died in prisoner transit

Founder of the Hramada who, as prime minister of the Belarusian People’s Republic, sought its recognition at the Paris Peace Conference

Born into an impoverished noble family in Šiauliai in 1884, he founded the Belarusian Revolutionary Hramada (later the Belarusian Socialist Hramada) with his brother Ivan and others in 1903. In Vilnius he brought out the first Belarusian newspapers, Nasha Niva among them, and under German occupation in 1915 he led the clandestine Belarusian People’s Committee. As president of the Belarusian Council of Vilnius he took part in the declaration of independence in 1918, and in October he became prime minister and then foreign minister. In 1919 he led the delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and negotiated a union with Poland, but with no result he resigned in February 1920. He devoted himself to publishing and education in Western Belarus until the Soviet authorities arrested him in 1939, and he died in 1942 while being transferred to a prison camp.