Konstanty Kalinowski

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Leader of the January Uprising Kalinowski coat of arms

Wincenty Konstanty Kalinowski, also known as Kastuś Kalinoŭski (Belarusian: Касту́сь Каліно́ўскі also Belarusian: Вінцэ́нт Канстанці́н Каліно́ўскі, lit. 'Vincent Kanstancin Kalinoŭski', Lithuanian: Konstantinas Kalinauskas) (2 February::1838 – 22 March::1864), was a 19th-century Belarusian writer, journalist, lawyer and revolutionary. He was one of the leaders of the Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian national revival and the leader of the January Uprising in lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

One of several participants in the failed January Uprisings, Kalinowski is especially revered in Belarus where he is seen as a forefather and icon of Belarusian nationalism.

1 Early life and education
2 Career
- 2.1 Literary work
3 Last months, interment and execution
4 Legacy
5 See also
6 Related reading
7 References
8 External links

Early life and education

Konstanty Kalinowski, 1863 A sheet with a fragment of Kalinowski's "Letters from under the gallows" in Belarusian Łacinka

Kalinoŭski was born in Mastaŭliany, in Grodnensky Uyezd of the Russian Empire (now Mostowlany, Poland) to a szlachta family. The Kalinowski family hailed from the Polish region of Mazovia and bore the Kalinowa coat of arms. His father, Szymon, was a manager of the Mastaŭliany farm and manor. His older brother, Victor Otan Kalinowski: would become a historian. In 1849 his father, Szymon bought a folwark near Świsłocz (now Svislach, Belarus) where Kastuś grew up.

After graduating from a local school in Świsłocz in 1855, Kalinowski entered the faculty of Medicine of the University of Moscow as an external student. After one semester he moved to St. Petersburg, where his brother was and joined the faculty of Law at the University of St. Petersburg. Along with his brother Victor, he got himself involved in Polish students' conspiracies and secret cultural societies, headed by Zygmunt Sierakowski and Jarosław Dąbrowski. After graduating in 1860, Konstanty traveled to Vilnius where he unsuccessfully applied to join the civil service under Vladimir Ivanovich National Socialist German Workers' Partymov:.

Career

Literary work

Konstanty then returned to the Grodno area in 1861. Konstanty started publishing Mużyckaja prauda: (Peasants' Truth), the first newspaper in Belarusian, written in Łacinka, first published in June 1862. The Peasants' Truth was issued seven times until 1863. Konstanty also published two other Polish language newspapers. Konstanty was more aligned with the Reds which represented a democratic movement uniting peasants, workers, and some clergy rather than the more moderate Whites.

In his literary work, Kalinoŭski underlined the need to liberate all people of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from Russia's occupation and to conserve and promote the Greek-Catholic faith and Belarusian language. He also promoted the idea of activisation of peasants for the cause of national liberation, the idea that was until then dominated by the gentry. He favored the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's traditions of democracy, tolerance and freedom, as opposed to national oppression of cultures dominated by Imperial Russia:

While the Polish Council gives all fraternal peoples self-help, the Muscovite not only does not do so, but even where Poles, Lithuanians and Belarusians lived, he opens Muscovite schools, and in these schools they teach in Muscovite language, where you will never hear a word in Polish, in Lithuanian or in Belarusian, as the people want

There is some academic debate about which texts to attribute to Konstanty. Konstanty was unhappy with the timing and objectives of the January Uprising, which broke out on 23 January 1863. There had been a growing rift between him and other leaders of the uprising in Warsaw.

After the outbreak of the January Uprising, he was involved in the secret Provincial Lithuanian Committee: in Vilnius. Soon he was promoted to the commissar of the Polish National Government for the Grodno Governorate. His writings made him popular both among the peasants and the gentry, which enabled the partisan units under his command to grow rapidly. Because of his successes he was promoted to the rank of Plenipotentiary Commissar of the Government for Lithuania (Polish: Komisarz Pełnomocny Rządu na Litwę), which made him the commander-in-chief of all partisan units fighting in the areas of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which are in modern Lithuania, Belarus, eastern Poland and Ukraine.

A tablet marking the Kalinowski's execution site, Lukiškės Square, Vilnius

Last months, interment and execution

However, after initial successes against the Russian armies, the Russians moved a 120,000 men strong army to the area and the revolutionaries started to lose most of the skirmishes. Finally Kalinowski was betrayed by one of his soldiers and handed over to the Russians.

He was imprisoned in Vilnius, where he wrote one of his most notable works - the Letter from Beneath the Gallows (Pismo z-pad szybienicy), a p*ionate credo for his compatriots. He was tried by a court-martial for leading the revolt against Russia and sentenced to death. On 22 March 1864, at the age 26, he was publicly executed on Lukiškės Square in Vilnius.

Kalinowski's remains, along with others, were clandestinely buried by the Tsarist authorities on the site of a military fortress on top of the Gediminas Hill in Vilnius. In 2017, Kalinowski's remains were excavated and identified, and solemnly reinterred in the Rasos Cemetery on 22 November 2019.

Legacy

Kalinowski's legacy is somewhat controversial. During the so-called Jeans Revolution, protesters who disputed the 2006 Belarusian presidential election symbolically renamed October Square, after the Bolshevik revolution, into Kalinovski Square. Kalinovski Square was also the *le of a do*entary film about these events. In Uladzimir Karatkievich's King Stakh's Wild Hunt, one of the principal characters, Andrey Svetsilovich, had a portrait of Kalinowski above his writing desk.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Belarusian volunteers fighting on the side of Ukraine formed a batallion named Kastuś Kalinoŭski.

Kastuś Kalinoŭski Battalion 2022
Belarusian commemorative stamp in honor of Kalinowski (1993)
Memorial at the place of Kalinouski's execution in Vilnius, Lithuania
Monument in Šalčininkai, Lithuania
Monument in Mostowlany, Poland

References

External links

:Belarusian Wikiquote has quotations related to: Kastuś Kalinoŭski

Website about Kalinowski (in Belarusian)
Biography of Konstanty Kalinowski, belarusguide.com
Archival do*ents and materials - 1863-4 uprising in Belarus
Why have Belarusan authorities forgotten Kastuś Kalinoŭski uprising?
Konstanty Kalinowksi biography, belarus-misc.org
Каліноўскі як далакоп беларускай мовы, 03 December 2013, in Belarusian