32 Facts About Raman Skirmunt

Raman Skirmunt was a Belarusian and Polesian statesman, aristocrat and landlord.

Raman Skirmunt's cousin Konstanty Skirmunt was a notable Polish diplomat and minister of foreign affairs.

Raman Skirmunt was born in the village Parechcha in the Pinsky Uyezd of the Minsk Governorate in the family of Alexander Alexandrovich-Izidorovich Skirmunt, the representative of into the local noble family of the Catholic Lithuanian noble family of the Skirmunts.

Raman Skirmunt's father was the son of Alexander Aliaksandrawicz Skirmunt, a prominent landowner of Pinsk District, and his mother was the daughter of Zyanon Janovich Lubanski, Viley District Marshall, from his wife Marta Lyavkovich.

Raman Skirmunt was the seventh child in the family, Teofila and Alexander were born in Albrechtov, and Branislava, Yusuf, Wanda and Vaclav were born in Parechcha.

Raman Skirmunt graduated from three classes of the Riga City Gymnasium, but did not receive a diploma of secondary education, because according to the will of Alexander's parents, he was taken away from the gymnasium at age 15.

Raman Skirmunt took over the responsibilities of managing the estate in order to provide financially for the whole family in the future.

In early 20th century Raman Skirmunt was among the leaders of the local krajowcy movement and advocated the creation of the Krajowcy Party of Lithuania and White Ruthenia as a common Polish-Belarusian-Lithuanian political organization.

Raman Skirmunt was a member of the Minsk Agricultural Society, and in 1904 he was elected a member of the Council of this society.

Raman Skirmunt became a faithful friend, associate and, according to Count Ippolit Korvin-Milewski, "favorite student" of Edward Vainilovich in terms of economic work in the Moscow State University of Technology and political activity.

Raman Skirmunt was the vice-chairman of the Minsk Society of Agriculture and one of its leaders.

In 1906, under the patronage of Edward Vainilovich, Raman Skirmunt was elected a deputy from Minsk province of the First Russian State Duma.

The newspaper "Nowy Kurier Litewski" reported that in 1906, in one of the backroom conversations in the State Duma, Raman Skirmunt once called himself a "Belarusian".

On 25 March 1907 Roman Raman Skirmunt became a member of the Supervisory Board of the Polish Society "Enlightenment" in Minsk.

Raman Skirmunt helped found a Polish-Belarusian fraction, the so-called Western Borderlands Group, which united with deputies from Polish provinces and formed the core of the parliamentary group "Union of Autonomists".

Raman Skirmunt called for the creation of a regional party, the "Regional Party of Belarus and Lithuania".

Raman Skirmunt envisioned the "regional party" project as an international bloc of Polish, Belarusian and Lithuanian political organizations.

Raman Skirmunt advocated instead the sale of the state land fund to peasants.

However, Raman Skirmunt himself did not join the party, as he was unhappy with the fact that the "regional party" emerged as exclusively "Polish", and Raman Skirmunt sought to create a party that would have three factions - Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian.

From October 1910 to January 1911, Raman Skirmunt was a senator-deputy of the State Council of the Russian Empire, where he was elected for a three-year term from the Minsk province under the patronage of Edward Vainilovich.

However, because he could not document his claim that he received a gymnasium education and because it was necessary to have at least a high school education to qualify as a deputy of the State Council of the Russian Empire, Raman Skirmunt was forced to leave the State Council in January 1911, to be replaced by Karol Nezabytovsky.

Raman Skirmunt was the head of the Minsk Provincial Food Committee.

When, in connection with the elections to the Constituent Assembly of Russia, the Main Polish Election Committee of the Minsk District was established in Minsk on 8 October 1917, Raman Skirmunt became a member of this committee.

Raman Skirmunt took part in the elections of deputies from the Minsk province to the Constituent Assembly of Russia in Minsk as the first candidate from the list "Bloc of landowners" of the Minsk province, but lost.

Raman Skirmunt was one of the founders of the Polish-Belarusian Society in Warsaw.

Raman Skirmunt took an active part in the social and cultural life of the Poleski Voivodeship.

Raman Skirmunt devoted himself to literary studies and was engaged in the local history of Polesia, taking part in the creation of the Polesia Museum in Pinsk and supporting the idea of inter-ethnic and inter-religious tolerance in the region.

Raman Skirmunt was killed by local residents on the orders of the Soviet commissar Kholadov.

However, at the same time, Raman Skirmunt regularly helped the peasants of Porec, including giving them pieces of land as a gift.

Raman Skirmunt was kind to his servants and helped more than one elderly peasant by bringing, cutting and chopping firewood in the winter, or pouring grain into their granary in the spring.

Raman Skirmunt permanently lived in the palace in the Poreccha estate.

Undoubtedly, a man with great spiritual culture and a broad worldview, Raman Skirmunt belonged to the group of those rare Belarusians for whom a Belarusian peasant was closer than a peasant.