Belarusian: Kastuś Kalinoŭski (Касту́сь Каліноўскі)
Polish: Wincenty Konstanty Kalinowski
Lithuanian: Konstantinas Kalinauskas
On 22 March 1864, aged 26, Kastuś Kalinoŭski was publicly executed by the Russian Tsarist authorities on this place (Lukiškės Square) in Vilnius for being the Leader of the January Uprising 1863 against Russian Tsarist regime. Kalinoŭski was the commander-in-chief of all partisan units fighting in the areas of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which are in modern Belarus, Lithuania, Eastern Poland and Ukraine.
Kalinowski's remains, along with those of other leaders of the January Uprising (Zygmunt Sierakowski / Zyhmunt Sierakoŭski / Zigmantas Sierakauskas, etc), were clandestinely buried by the Tsarist authorities on the site of a military fortress on top of the Gediminas Hill in Vilnius. In 2017, Kalinoŭski's remains were excavated and identified, and solemnly reinterred in the Rasos Cemetery on 22 November 2019
Kalinoŭski is especially revered in Belarus where he is seen as a forefather and icon of Belarusian movement for freedom. In 1862 Kalinoŭski started publishing Mużyckaja prauda (Peasants' Truth), the newspaper in the Belarusian language (written in Belarusian Łacinka). When imprisoned in Vilnius, he wrote one of his most notable works — the Letter from Beneath the Gallows (Pismo z-pad šybienicy / Пісьмо з-пад шыбеніцы), a passionate credo for his compatriots, in the Belarusian language.
Kalinoŭski favoured the Polish–Lithuanian-Belarusian’s traditions of democracy, tolerance and freedom, as opposed to national oppression of cultures dominated by Imperial Russia. This is his quote:
“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..”
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