23 Facts About Vatslaw Lastowski

In 1902, Vatslaw Lastowski joined the Polish Socialist Party which was active in Lithuania.

In 1906, Vatslaw Lastowski relocated to Riga to work as a railway clerk.

Vatslaw Lastowski attempted to pass examinations to receive a secondary school qualification but, despite good results in the main subjects, failed due to his poor knowledge of the Russian language.

In Riga, Vatslaw Lastowski became actively involved in the Belarusian national movement.

Vatslaw Lastowski was a member of the Belarusian Socialist Assembly between 1906 and 1908 and was imprisoned for socialist propaganda for several months in 1906.

Vatslaw Lastowski was a secretary of the editorial board of the Belarusian newspaper Nasha Niva.

At that time Vatslaw Lastowski headed the Belarusian Publishing Society and a Belarusian bookstore in Vilnius.

Vatslaw Lastowski was involved in writing and publishing school textbooks by a private publishing house.

Vatslaw Lastowski was one of the leaders of the party Christian Unity in 1915.

Vatslaw Lastowski co-authored The Memorandum of the Representatives of Belarus which formulated the right of the Belarusian people to national and political development and was presented at an international conference in Lausanne in 1916.

At the beginning of 1918, Vatslaw Lastowski founded the Union of Independence and Indivisibility of Belarus which formulated the guidelines for the creation of an independent Belarusian state.

Vatslaw Lastowski was elected as one of the representatives of this council to participate in the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic that, on 25 March 1918, accepted the Third Constituent Charter and proclaimed the independence of the Belarusian Democratic Republic.

In November 1918 Vatslaw Lastowski became a member of the Council of Lithuania.

In December 1919 Vatslaw Lastowski was appointed Prime Minister of the Belarusian Democratic Republic.

Vatslaw Lastowski initiated the creation of the Union of Belarusian Parties for the Struggle for an Independent and Unified Belarus against Soviet Rule and against Polish Occupation at a Belarusian conference in Riga on 20 October 1920.

From 1920 to 1923 Vatslaw Lastowski went on diplomatic missions to Belgium, Germany, the Vatican, Italy, Czechoslovakia, France, Switzerland, and other countries.

Between 1923 and 1927 Vatslaw Lastowski edited the journal Kryvich in Kaunas and published several textbooks.

The refusal of the Lithuanian government to finance Kryvich and the coup d'etat of 17 December 1926 prompted Vatslaw Lastowski to relocate to Soviet Belarus in April 1927.

Vatslaw Lastowski was appointed Director of the Belarusian State Museum, worked at the Inbelkult, and was head of the ethnographic department of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences.

In October 1929 Vatslaw Lastowski was dismissed as secretary of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences.

On 10 April 1931 Vatslaw Lastowski was sentenced to be exiled for five years to Saratov, where he directed the department of old prints and manuscripts of the university library.

Per Order No 33 of the Head Department of Literature and Publishing Houses on June 3rd, 1937, all books by Vatslaw Lastowski were mandated to be burned.

Vatslaw Lastowski was posthumously exonerated in 1958 and 1988.