Vacłaŭ Ivanoŭski

Vacłaŭ Leanardavič Ivanoŭski (, also known as Vatslaw Ivanowski or Wacław Iwanowski; 25 May 1880 – 7 December 1943) was a Belarusian political and public figure of the first half of the 20th century.

Early years Ivanoŭski was born into an upper middle class family on the Liabiodka estate in the Vilnius Governorate of the Russian Empire (now within the village of Halavičpolie, in Belarus' Grodno Region). One of his brothers was Tadas Ivanauskas.

In 1898 he graduated from the 5th Warsaw Gymnasium and entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology in the Department of Chemistry, which he finished in 1904. He went on to study abroad in Denmark and Germany. In 1909 he received a doctorate from the Technical University of Munich.

On return to the Russian Empire in 1910, he embarked upon a career in the area of microbiology and worked at the Ministry of Agriculture in St. Petersburg and the Vilnius Society of Agriculture. He was engaged in publishing, setting up several Belarusian publishing houses, edited the first primer of the modern Belarusian language and collaborated with the first Belarusian newspapers "Nasha Dolya" and "Nasha Niva". In June 1943 German governor Wilhelm Kube set up a Council of Elders led by Ivanoŭski.

Ivanoŭski's wife Sabina and daughter Anna are awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" for rescuing two Jewish women, Ivanoŭski's friends, in 1941 during the Nazi occupation.

Death and burial

On 6 December 1943, Ivanoŭski was mortally wounded by unknown gunmen and died the following day. The identity of his assassins has never been definitively established.