Jazep Losik

Jazep Losik (also known as Jazep (Yazep) Liosik; ; 18 November 1884 – 1 April 1940) was a Belarusian academic, leading figure of the independence movement and a victim of Stalin's purges.

Early years Losik was born into a large farming family in the village of Mikalajeŭščyna, Minsk province of the Russian Empire (nowadays Stoŭbcy district, Minsk region of Belarus). His parents were tenants on land belonging to the Radziwill family.

He was an uncle of Belarusian poet and writer Jakub Kolas.

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

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

In June 1938, Losik was arrested in connection with the case of the "Counter-Revolutionary Organisation of Political Forces in Saratov” and on 31 March 1940 was sentenced to five years in the Gulag.

Death and memory Losik died on the following day after his sentence in the Saratov prison. The official cause of his death was tuberculosis but according to some sources he was executed immediately after the verdict. His burial place is unknown.

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.

There is no place of Losik's commemoration in present-day Belarus.