Jazep Losik (also known as Jazep (Yazep) Liosik; ; 18 November 1884 – 1 April 1940) was a

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 ...

ian academic, leading figure of the independence movement and a victim of Stalin's purges.

Early years

Losik was born into a large farming family in the village of Mikalajeŭščyna, Minsk province of the Russian Empire (nowadays Stoŭbcy district, Minsk region of Belarus). His parents were tenants on land belonging to the Radziwill family. He was an uncle of Belarusian poet and writer Jakub Kolas.Арлоў, Уладзімер (2020).
ІМЁНЫ СВАБОДЫ (Бібліятэка Свабоды. ХХІ стагодзьдзе.)
' 'Uładzimir Arłou. The Names of Freedom (The Library of Freedom. ХХІ century.)''">Uładzimir_Arłou.html" ;"title="'Uładzimir Arłou">'Uładzimir Arłou. The Names of Freedom (The Library of Freedom. ХХІ century.)''(PDF) (in Belarusian) (4-е выд., дап. ed.). Радыё Свабодная Эўропа / Радыё Свабода - Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. pp. 196–197. In 1902 Losik graduated from a pedagogical college in Novhorod-Siverskyi (Chernihiv province) and worked as a teacher in Babruysk, Babrujsk and in Chernihiv province. Losik was arrested for participation in demonstrations during the

Russian Revolution of 1905 The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, t ...

but managed to escape and was hiding from persecution for several years. However, in 1911 he was arrested by the

Tsarist Tsarist autocracy (), also called Tsarism, was an autocracy, a form of absolute monarchy in the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its successor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire. In it, the Tsar possessed in principle authority and ...

authorities and sentenced to indefinite deportation to the Irkutsk province in

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. While in Siberia, Losik collaborated with the Belarusian newspaper " Nasha Niva" and corresponded with a number of writers and public figures in Belarus.

Involvement in Belarusian independence movement

After the

February Revolution The February Revolution (), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution or February Coup was the first of Russian Revolution, two revolutions which took place in Russia ...

Losik returned to Belarus and became actively involved in the Belarusian independence movement. In 1917-1918 he edited the newspaper "Free Belarus" (“Вольная Беларусь») and became an active member of the Belarusian Socialist Assembly (Hramada). In December 1917, he participated in the First All-Belarusian Congress and subsequently became a member of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic. He was one of the advocates of the proclamation of independence of the

Belarusian Democratic Republic The Belarusian People's Republic (BNR; , ), also known as the Belarusian Democratic Republic, was a state proclaimed by the Council of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in its Second Constituent Charter on 9 March 1918 during World War I. The ...

on 25 March 1918. Between May 1918 and December 1919, Losik was Chairman of the Belarusian Democratic Republic and sought to achieve the international recognition of the new state and to prevent the partition of Belarus. He communicated with representatives of Germany, Poland, USA and other countries and had a meeting with the leader of Poland

Józef Piłsudski Józef Klemens Piłsudski (; 5 December 1867 – 12 May 1935) was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State (Poland), Chief of State (1918–1922) and first Marshal of Poland (from 1920). In the aftermath of World War I, he beca ...

Academic career in Soviet Belarus

After the re-occupation of Minsk by the

Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

in 1920, Losik withdrew from politics and engaged in cultural, educational and academic work. From July 1921 he taught at the Belarusian State University and the Belarusian Pedagogical College and was involved with the Institute of Belarusian Culture. In 1927 he was appointed a director of the Institute of the Belarusian Language, and in 1928 became a member of the

National Academy of Sciences of Belarus The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NASB; ; , , ) is the national academy of Belarus. History Inbelkult - predecessor to the Academy The Academy has its origins in the Institute of Belarusian Culture (Inbelkult), a Belarusian acade ...

Persecution by Soviet authorities

Losik's frictions with the Soviet authorities began in 1922, when his textbook "Practical Grammar of the Belarusian Language" was badly received and he was briefly arrested. In July 1930, Losik was arrested in connection with the Case of the Union of Liberation of Belarus and was subsequently stripped off his academic titles and deported to the Saratov region of Russia. In June 1938, Losik was arrested in connection with the case of the "Counter-Revolutionary Organisation of Political Forces in Saratov” and on 31 March 1940 was sentenced to five years in the

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 ...

Death and memory

Losik died on the following day after his sentence in the Saratov prison. The official cause of his death was tuberculosis but according to some sources he was executed immediately after the verdict. His burial place is unknown. Losik was posthumously exonerated from all charges in 1958 during the

Khrushchev Thaw The Khrushchev Thaw (, or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when Political repression in the Soviet Union, repression and Censorship in ...

and then in 1988 during Gorbachev's

Perestroika ''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...

and in 1990 his academic titles were reinstated. There is no place of Losik's commemoration in present-day Belarus.

References

External links

Works by Jazep Losik
(in Belarusian) {{DEFAULTSORT:Losik, Jazep 1884 births 1940 deaths Belarusian independence movement Members of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic Belarusian male writers Belarusian Gulag detainees People from Minsk region Great Purge victims from Belarus Soviet rehabilitations