10 Facts About Jazep Losik

Jazep Losik was a Belarusian academic, leading figure of the independence movement and a victim of Stalin's purges.

Jazep Losik's parents were tenants on land belonging to the Radziwill family.

Jazep Losik was an uncle of Belarusian poet and writer Jakub Kolas.

In 1902 Jazep Losik graduated from a pedagogical college in Novhorod-Siverskyi and worked as a teacher in Babrujsk and in Chernihiv province.

Jazep Losik was arrested for participation in demonstrations during the Russian Revolution of 1905 but managed to escape and was hiding from persecution for several years.

Jazep Losik was one of the advocates of the proclamation of independence of the Belarusian Democratic Republic on 25 March 1918.

Between May 1918 and December 1919, Jazep 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.

In July 1930, Jazep Losik was arrested in connection with the Case of the Union of Liberation of Belarus and was stripped off his academic titles and deported to the Saratov region of Russia.

Jazep Losik died on the following day after his sentence in the Saratov prison.

Jazep Losik was posthumously exonerated from all charges in 1958 during the Khrushchev Thaw and then in 1988 during Gorbachev's Perestroika and in 1990 his academic titles were reinstated.