Alesia Furs (, née Umpirovič; 11 January 1925 - 19 August 2017) was a member of the Belarusian independence movement and Anti-Soviet resistance and a

Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

prisoner.

Early life

Alesia Umpirovič was born into a large peasant family in the village of Aziarava, Vilna Province in the northeast of the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

(now Viciebsk Region of

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

). She went to a Polish and then Belarusian school.

Anti-Soviet resistance and later life

In the autumn of 1945, Furs was actively involved in the establishment of an underground group “For Belarus” (), which later merged into the Union of Belarusian Patriots, UBP (). In February 1947, the

Soviet Secret Police There were a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The Okhrana was abolished by the Provisional government after the first revolution of 1917, and the first secret police after the October Revolution, created by Vladimir Leni ...

managed to infiltrate the underground organisation. Furs was arrested in May 1948 and received a 25-year sentence in the

forced labour camps. In May of that year her father, Lavon Umpirovič, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for ‘failure to alert the authorities’ and died in incarceration. While in the Gulag, Furs became friends with Belarusian poet

Larysa Hienijuš Larysa Hienijuš (Belarusian language, Belarusian: Ларыса Геніюш; August 9, 1910 - April 7, 1983) was a Belarusian poet, writer and active participant of the national movement. Biography Childhood and youth She was born Larysa Miklaš ...

. She was released from the Gulag following the death of Stalin and in June 1956 married , a fellow UBP member. She lived in

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

and returned to Belarus on retirement in 1982. Furs was exonerated in November 1992 and published her memoirs in a number of Belarusian periodicals. She died on 19 August 2017. In the last few years of her life Furs was seriously ill but never regretted the sacrifices she made in her youth. “I would not have changed anything in my life. My life is what was given to me by God. Otherwise, it would have been necessary to betray my friends” - she said in her interview with

TUT.BY Tut.By was an independent news, media and service internet portal, one of the five most popular websites in Belarus, operating predominantly in Russian and partially in Belarusian languages, and the most popular news web portal in the country. A ...

in 2014.

Early life

Anti-Soviet resistance and later life

References

Further reading