Kastus Kalinovski was the leader of the January Uprising of 1863-1864 in the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, well-known writer, journalist, lawyer and revolutionary of the 19th century.
Background
Kastus Kalinovski was born on January 21, 1838 in the village Mostowlany, at that time Grodno province, Russian Empire (today’s Poland). His parents, Szymon Kalinowski and Veronika Rybinskaya (died when Kastus was 5 years old), were members of the lesser Belarusian gentry who had lived on the Belarusian territory from time immemorial. A recently discovered document shows that one of their ancestors, Ambrose-Samuel bought the estate Kalinova in 1679 and Ludvig, the grandfather of Kastuś, sold this property in 1774. The father of Kastus owned a weaving atelier at folwark Jakusauka near Swislach, and before long he settled there with all his large family. Kastus spent his childhood there.
Education
Little is known about the youth of Kastus. He studied in the pro-gumnasium of Swislach, and completed this part of his education in 1855, exactly at the time when the claims of his family to nobility were recognised. It should be noted that in the pro-gymnasium of Swislach there was a long-standing tradition among the students of forming groups having as their objects the struggle for freedom and the welfare of their country.
With the aid of his elder brother, Viktar, Kastuś in the space of one year completed the courses prescribed by the gymnasium, and in 1856 entered the faculty of Medicine of the University of Moscow as an external student. After one semester he moved to St. Petersburg where his elder brother was living, and there, after passing the entrance examination, he joined the faculty of Laws.
Kastuś' material position during his years of study was precarious. He lived on a small scholarship and what he was able to earn by giving private lessons. Several times, because of illness, he was obliged to ask the Rector of the University for assistance. During his studies at the University of St. Petersburg, he got involved in several Polish students' conspiracies and secret cultural societies.
Career
Kastus came under the political influence of his elder brother Victor who has nominally matriculated at the University of Moscow, but in fact lived in St. Petersburg and busied himself with the organisation of a revolutionary group. Unfortunately he died of tuberculosis in 1862 and, as we shall see, Kastus took over all his activities.
Having completed his studies at the Faculty of Laws in 1860 with the degree of Candidate of Law, Kastus Kalinovski went to Vilna and tried to enter the civil service. On being refused, he made no more attempts in this field, but devoted all his energies to organising a movement for the liberation of his country and the welfare of his people. In 1861, he went to Grodno and soon founded there a society, whose program was similar to that of the Polish secret organisation which had adopted the name of "the Reds". Similar secret organisations began to spread in the provinces of Grodno, Minsk, Vilna and Kovno. The founders of these groups were mostly students, who purposely infiltrated military positions and notarial offices. The leadership of the organisation was in the hands of Kastuś' friends at the University of St. Petersburg. Its center was located in Vilna. Under the influence of Kalinovski, the leaders of the organisation resolved to devote their whole attention to spreading propaganda among the villagers. In persuance of this policy, the members of the organisation, and especially Kalinovski himself, went frequently to the villages, dressed as peasants, in order to disseminate their ideas among the inhabitants. The villagers gladly listened to them, because their program favoured the handling over of land to the peasants without payment, and the selection from among the villagers themselves of the leaders who were to fulfill their scheme. The Warsaw committee, which even before Kalinovski had been organising a revolt, disagreed with the Belarusian Patriot in the most important points of their program: — namely, national independence for the people, distribution of land among the peasants and readjustment of boundaries. It therefore formed its own organisation in Belarus and Samogitia, principally among the landed gentry. This resulted in the two organisations impeding each other in their activities. To set matters aright, Kalinovski twice sent his representatives to Warsaw for consultations. However, the leadership of the Warsaw Committee was at that time in the hands of right-wing "Whites", who in approaching the problems of the peasant and land boundaries, refused to recognise the proposals of Kalinovski's group. So it was that, on the very eve of the uprising, discord reigned between them. Notwithstanding this, Kalinovski began to set on foot his preparations for the uprising. For the better dissemination of propaganda, he organised with his supporters the publication of the first illegal Belarusian newspaper Mužyckaja Praūda (Peasants' Truth), under the assumed name of "Jaśko, yeoman from near Vilna." The first issue of the paper appeared in June 1862 and in all, seven issues were published. The greatest part of Mužyckaja Praūda is devoted to unveiling the true facts about the plundering of the villages by the Tsarist authorities. The sixth issue is completely consecrated to the defence of the old Byelorussian Uniate faith. Mužyckaja Praūda proved to be very popular among the people and consequently attracted the full fury of the Tsarist regime.
The Imperial authorities were aware of the preparations for an uprising, and in order to forestall it they drafted a levy of recruits for the army in October 1862. The youth of military age at once began to take to the woods and form bands, so hastening the outbreak of the uprising. When on the night of January 23, 1863 an uprising broke out in Poland, Kalinovski at once condemned it as premature and ill-conceived on the grounds of its unsatisfactory program as set out in the Manifesto. But the course of events could not now be checked. The agents of the central Polish Committee were extending their activities to Byelorussia and as a result on the first day of February, Kalinovski together with his supporters joined in the uprising, making themselves known to the temporary provincial office for Samogitia and Belarus. They published an appropriate manifesto, in which they proclaimed that the villagers, townsmen and all good people regardless of faith or origin, should be as free as the former Polish gentry, that the land should be given to the peasants for ever, without interest, tax or purchase, and that the landless were to receive an allotment of three acres of land. Because of insufficient preparation, the uprising spread unevenly, breaking out spasmodically in different places. Nonetheless, the peasant movement in Belarus at once constituted a serious threat to the Tsarist regime. On the 4th of February the Governorgeneral of Vilna, Nazimoff, declared a state of war in the provinces of Vilna and Grodno and called for substantial military reinforcements. At the same time, the Tsar on the 1st of March proposed to the senate the abolition of all compulsory unpaid labour of the peasants for the benefit of their feudal overlords, and the reduction by 20% of the redemption price on land. The insurgent groups stood firm but in the leadership of the uprising there were serious disagreements. From March 1863, in the territories of Belarus and Samogitia there were two poles of attraction: Kalinovski's group and a section of Warsaw officers under the command of Gejsztor. In the middle of March, Gejsztor, supported by the magnates, retreated, leaving Kalinovski completely alone. Kalinovski at once addressed a protest to Warsaw complaining that the leadership of the uprising was split to such a degree that it would lead the revolt to perdition. Kalinovski's prophecy quickly came true. The new leaders failed to achieve anything: they placed their hopes in France and England, who at that time reiterated diplomatic representations on the "Polish question", but they did not get anything more than words.
In the meantime, Kalinovski could not stand idly by, and so he agreed to go as commissar for the Grodno province. There the uprising had reached its highest pitch, whereas in the Vilna region it was almost completely subdued, especially after the arrival in Vilna on the 26th of May, 1863 of the new governor general Muravioff. To give a new impetus to the uprising, in June 1863, the representative of Warsaw in Vilna, Diuleran, summoned Kalinovski to Vilna and appointed him head of internal affairs. Turning his new position to his advantage, Kalinovski quickly assumed supreme command. Whereas previous leaders had hindered him in his work, now in mid-June Kalinovski and his supporters were able to stand firm against "the interference of Warsaw in the affairs of Belarus and Samogitia." They refused to obey orders and formed an independent Committee to lead Lithuania. This act provoked strong misgivings in Warsaw. Quickly Avejde was sent to Vilna for consultations together with two armed divisions as a warning. The consultations resulted in some measure of agreement, but it was already impossible to re-kindle the uprising; the peasant masses had been paralyzed by the activities of the Warsaw agents and the savage repression and propaganda campaigns of Governor Muravioff. Although Kalinovski realised that in Autumn 1863 the uprising was seriously impaired by the overwhelming power of the Russian soldiery and the brutality of Muravioff, he never lost hope of renewing the struggle. Kalinovski reorganised the insurrectional forces so as to be able to renew the armed offensive in the spring of 1864. But it so happened that in January 1864 the Tsarist gendarmes succeeded in arresting in Minsk one Parafianovič, a student who belonged to the insurrection's organisation in Mahileu and had seen Kalinovski. Under duress Parafianovič revealed to the gendarmes that Kalinovski was residing in the Vilna Gymnasium under the assumed name, Ihnat Vitažaniec. The information was quickly transmitted to Vilna, and during the night of the 28th of January, soldiers and gendarmes surrounded the Gymnasium building and took Kastus Kalinovski prisoner. Under interrogation he bore himself courageously, not betraying a single one of his friends. The military court sentenced him to be shot, but Muravioff altered the sentence to death by hanging. While sitting in prison awaiting death, Kalinovski did not give up dreaming about the struggle for a better future of the Belarusian nation.
Kastus Kalinovski was hanged at the age of 26 years. The sentence was carried out on the 22nd of March, 1864 on Lukiski Place in Vilna.
"Pisma z-pad szybienicy" (Letters from Beneath the Gallows)
publication
"Muzhytskaya Prauda" (Peasant's truth)
Religion
He promoted the Greek-Catholic faith (Uniate Church).
Politics
Kalinovski underlined the need to liberate all peoples 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 also referred to the good traditions of democracy, tolerance and freedom of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as opposed to national oppression of cultures dominated by Imperial Russia. In the manifestoes, Kalinovski proclaimed that the villagers, townsmen and all good people regardless of faith or origin, should be as free as the former Polish gentry, that the land should be given to the peasants for ever, without interest, tax or purchase, and that the landless were to receive an allotment of three acres of land.
With his newspaper, as well as with his letters "from beneath the gallows," written in prison, Kalinouski aimed at three categories of audience: first and foremost, the peasants; second, the faithful adherents of the Uniate Church, which had been officially abolished since 1839; and third, those who cherished the Belarusian language (and were being discriminated against by tsarist authorities). The common denominator in all of these appeals was the assertion that life in the historic Commonwealth of Poland was immeasurably better than life under the tsars.
Besides oppressive taxes and corvee, a basic source of grievance underlying the uprising was the recruitment of peasants for a twenty-five-year term of military service. This injustice contrasted sharply with past practices in the Commonwealth, where, as Kalinouski reminded, "whenever peasants wanted to go to war, they were immediately declassified from their peasant status and excused from performing corvee."
Kalinovski's last letter "from beneath the gallows" has become a political credo of Belarusian nationalism.
Views
Reading Kalinovski's harangues today, one cannot help seeing a parallel between the situation of the 1860s and that of the iggos in terms of political designs and results. "Six years have passed since the peasants' freedom began to be talked about," wrote Kalinovski in the first issue of his newspaper. "They have talked, discussed, and written a great deal, but they have done nothing. And this manifesto which the tsar, together with the Senate and the landlords, has written for us, is so stupid that the devil only knows what it resembles-there is no truth in it, there is no benefit whatsoever in it for us".
Quotations:
It was during the second half of the nineteenth century that the Belarusian vernacular emerged as a mobilizing medium, and Kalinovski seized on this trend when he complained that: "In our country, Fellows, they teach you in the schools only to read the Muscovite language for the purpose of turning you completely into Muscovites. ... You'll never hear a word in Polish, Lithuanian, or Belarusian as the people want."
To his friends he would say: "All true sons of the nation must be ready to lay down their all on her altar to prolong the struggle." One of his typical utterances at this time took the form of a rhetorical question: "Whom should we love? — Love Belarus! — and one another." Even before the uprising Kalinovski wrote in the third issue of "Mužyckaja Praūda": "We have nothing to expect from anyone, for only he who sows can reap. So, my friends, when the time comes, let us sow with full hands, not sparing any labour so that the peasant may be free, as men are the whole world over. God will help us!"
In his prison cell in Vilnia, before being hanged on March 22, 1864, Kalinovski wrote an impassioned plea to his people: “Accept, my People, in sincerity my last words for it is as if they were written from the world beyond for your own welfare. There is no greater happiness on this earth, brothers, than if a man has intellect and learning. Only then will he manage to live in counsel and in plenty and only when he has prayed properly to God, will he deserve Heaven, for once he has enriched his intellect with learning, he will develop his affection and sincerely love all his kinsfolk. But just as day and night do not reign together, so also true learning does not go together with Muscovite slavery. As long as this lies over us, we shall have nothing. There will be no truth, no riches, no learning whatsoever. They will only drive us like cattle not to our well-being, but to our perdition.
This is why, my People, as soon as you learn that your brothers from near Warsaw are fighting for truth and freedom, don't you stay behind either, but, grabbing whatever you can-a scythe or an ax-go as an entire nation to fight for your human and national rights, for your faith, for your native country. For I say to you from beneath the gallows, my People, that only - then will you live happily, when no Muscovite remains over you.”
In prison in 1864 he also wrote a profoundly patriotic verse: “O, land of Belarus, o my Love, Where perished both your happiness and fate, All, all is gone, as it had never been, Only the smart still burns within the breast. Do not complain of your sad lot, my people. Should you remember me, say but a prayer, And I shall call you from the world beyond. So I must bid you all farewell, my friends — Live out your lives in freedom and in joy, But do not quite forget your faithful Jaśko, And in that time when words must turn to actions, Then stand up manfully and fight for truth, For only with the truth in common counsel, Shall you in freedom live your length of days.”