You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Belarusian. (May 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Belarusian article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Belarusian Wikipedia article at [[:be:Усевалад Макаравіч Ігнатоўскі]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|be|Усевалад Макаравіч Ігнатоўскі}} to the talk page.
Usievalad Makaravich Ihnatoŭski (Belarusian: Усевалад Макаравіч Ігнатоўскі, romanized: Usyevalad Makaravich Ihnatowski; Russian: Все́волод Мака́рович Игнато́вский, romanized: Vsevolod Makarovich Ignatovsky; 19 April 1881 — 4 February 1931) was a Belarusian politician, scholar and the first president of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
After finishing local schools, he studied history and philology at St. Petersburg University, but was expelled for revolutionary activities and was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party from 1901. He spent some time in various prisons and in exile in the North of Russia but ultimately graduated from Dorpat (Tartu) University in 1911. In 1912-14 he worked as a teacher in Vilnia and in 1914 became a teacher at the Minsk Teachers' Institute.[1][2][3]
Involvement in the Belarusian independence movement
Ihnatoŭski established close ties with various Belarusian activists and became actively involved in the Belarusian independence movement during World War I. In 1915 he created the cultural and educational organisation "Our Homeland" (Belarusian: Наш Край) which in 1917 became the socialist revolutionary organisation "Young Belarus" (Belarusian: Маладая Беларусь).[1][2]
Ihnatoŭski joined the Communist Party in 1920 and held numerous important party and government posts in Soviet Belarus. He actively participated in the implementation of the policy of Belarusisation in the 1920s and significantly influenced it.[1][2][3]
Ihnatoŭski authored over 30 academic works, the best known of which is A Short Outline of the History of Belarus (1919) - which became the standard textbook for nearly a decade in Soviet Belarus and formed the basis of the concept of the national history of Belarus.[3][4]
He is also known as the author of the first Belarusian study of the January Uprising of 1863-1864 - the monograph "The year of 1863 in Belarus: an account of events" (1930).[3][4]
Persecution and death
When the Soviets began their campaign against the so-called Belarusian National Democrats in 1929, Ihnatoŭski came under strong attack for his convictions and efforts to maintain the independent development of Belarusian research and keep his close ties with the Belarusian national leadership of the revolutionary years. In December 1930, he was removed as President of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the following month expelled from the Communist Party as "a leader of the national-democratic counterrevolution."[1][2]
Ihnatoŭski was buried in the Minsk Military Cemetery the following morning, secretly from friends and colleagues.[4][5]
His family was also persecuted by the Soviet authorities in 1937 “as family members of a traitor”. His wife was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag prison camps and his two sons were executed.[2][4]
