Nationalist political activist and political leader
Radasłaŭ Kazimiravič Astroŭski[a] (25 October 1887 – 17 October 1976) was a Belarusian collaborator with Nazi Germany who served as president of the Belarusian Central Council, a puppet Belarusian administration under German hegemony from 1943–1944, and in exile from 1948-1976.
Early years
Radasłaŭ Astroŭski (1913)
Radasłaŭ Astroŭski was born on 25 October 1887 in the town of Zapolle, Slutsk Uyezd, Minsk Governorate. He studied at the Slutsk gymnasium, but was expelled for participating in the Russian Revolution of 1905–1907. In 1908 he was accepted to the mathematical faculty of Saint Petersburg University. In 1911, he was arrested for taking part in revolutionary riots and was imprisoned at Saint Petersburg and Pskov. After his release in 1912, he re-entered the university and later transferred to the University of Tartu, from where he graduated with a degree in physics and mathematics.
In 1925 and 1926 he was the vice-chairman of the Belarusian Peasants' and Workers' Union,[1] the chairman of the Belarusian School Society, and the principal of the Belarusian Cooperation Bank in Wilno, used to transfer finances to the BPWU.[1] In 1926, Astroŭski joined the Communist Party of West Belarus and was arrested by the Polish police. However, during the trial against the Hramada he was found not guilty.
From 1928, he once again changed his political orientation and started to call for cooperation with Polish officials. For that he was condemned by many leaders of the Western Belarusian national movement. In the mid-1930s he published various works in Belarusian calendar books and in the "Rodny Kraj" newspaper, under the pseudonym "Era". In 1936 he had to leave Wilno and moved to Łódź.
During the German occupation of Belarus, Astroŭski actively cooperated with Nazi officials. In 1941 he moved to Minsk and worked in civil administration. He also created Belarusian administrations in Bryansk, Smolensk and Mahilyow and spent certain time as a Bürgermeister in all of those cities.
In 1943, Radasłaŭ Astroŭski became the president of Belarusian Central Rada, a very limited national government, which the Nazis (who had begun to lose on the Eastern front) allowed to be created in order to gain some sympathy from the Belarusian population and therefore to be able to use them against the Soviet army. Although the Rada did not have much real power, it was allowed to manage certain civil issues.
Astroŭski and his cohorts supported the annihilation of Jews, but had relatively minimal involvement in carrying out the mass murders.[2]
Emigration
After the war, Astroŭski fled the Soviets and ended up in West Germany and lived in the Volksgartenstraße in Langenfeld, Rhineland.[3] In 1956, he moved to the United States and lived in South River, New Jersey by way of Argentina. He actively participated in Belarusian national activism abroad, and was the main ideologist of the BCR as the legitimate Belarusian government in exile, thus not admitting such status for the main Belarusian People's Republic Council. Astroŭski became a member of the central committee of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.[4]
^ abcdHardzijenka, Aleh (2009). Беларускі Кангрэсовы Камітэт Амэрыкі (БККА) [The Belarusian Congress Committee of America (BCCA)] (in Belarusian). Smolensk: BINIM.
^Efraim Zuroff: Occupation, Nazi-hunter: the continuing search for the perpetrators of the Holocaust. KTAV, 1994, p. 40.
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