Branislaw Tarashkyevich

Branislaw Adamavich Tarashkyevich was a Belarusian public figure, politician, and linguist.
He first standardized the modern Belarusian language in the early 20th century. The standard was later Russified by the Soviet authorities. However, the pre-Russified standard version was and still is actively used by intellectuals and the Belarusian diaspora and is informally referred to as Taraškievica.
Tarashkyevich was a member of the underground Communist Party of Western Belorussia in Poland and was imprisoned for two years. Also, as a member of the Belarusian Deputy Club, he was a deputy to the Polish Parliament in 1922–1927. Among others, he translated Pan Tadeusz into Belarusian, and in 1969 a Belarusian-language high school in Bielsk Podlaski was named after him.
In 1933 he was set free due to a Polish-Soviet prisoner release in exchange for Frantsishak Alyakhnovich, a Belarusian journalist and playwright imprisoned in a Gulag, and lived in Soviet exile since then.
He was shot at the Kommunarka shooting ground outside Moscow in 1938 during the Great Purge and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.