Usievalad Ihnatouski

Usievalad Makaravich Ihnatoŭski (; ; 19 April 1881 — 4 February 1931) was a Belarusian politician, scholar and the first president of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

Early years Ihnatoŭski, the son of a teacher, was born in the village of Takary, Hrodna governorate of the Russian Empire (now Kamianiec district of Brest region in Belarus).

After finishing local schools, he studied history and philology at St. Petersburg University, but was expelled for revolutionary activities and was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party from 1901. He spent some time in various prisons and in exile in the North of Russia but ultimately graduated from Dorpat (Tartu) University in 1911. In 1912-14 he worked as a teacher in Vilnia and in 1914 became a teacher at the Minsk Teachers' Institute.

He is also known as the author of the first Belarusian study of the January Uprising of 1863-1864 - the monograph "The year of 1863 in Belarus: an account of events" (1930).

His family was also persecuted by the Soviet authorities in 1937 “as family members of a traitor”. His wife was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag prison camps and his two sons were executed.