Abstract

The article examines the evolution of the image of K. Kalinoŭski and other figures of the 1863-1864 uprising in Soviet historiography, the main problems discussed in the works of historians, and evaluations of January Uprising’s leaders. Philologist and historian Vacłaŭ Łastoŭski was the first who presented K. Kalinoŭski as a figure of the Belarusian national movement in his article in 1916. This tradition was adopted by Soviet historiography through Usevalad Ignatoŭski, who created a nationallyoriented conception of Belarusian history in the 1920s. the At the end of the 1920s, Samuil Agurski argued that the 1863 uprising was rather a manifestation of Polish chauvinism. During the postwar years, the focus of the study of the uprising of 1863-1864 changed: instead of emphasizing the antiPolish features of the Lithuanian “Reds”, the Soviet scholars emphasized the RussianPolish revolutionary alliance against the autocracy and common approaches of Polish insurgents and Russian revolutionary democrats. Changes in the interpretation of Kalinoŭski’s image are examined through the works of V.N. Pertsev. By the beginning of the 1960s, Kalinoŭski was assigned to the group of 1863 heroes. Finally, this pantheon was formed by the 1963 jubilee year in the works by V.A. D’yakov, A.F. Smirnov, I.S. Miller and others. As early as in 1954, this pantheon included Z. Sierakowski, K. Kalinoŭski, Z. Padlewski, J. Dąbrowski, A. Potebnia, W. Wróblewski and R. Traugutt in his work “Heroes of 1863”. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet historiography again loses interest in the study of the 1863 uprising, and the research on Kalinoŭski’s activity comes to the foreground within the strictly established ideological framework. However, the late 1980s laid the foundation for a new surge of interest in K. Kalinoŭski’s activity, which was caused by a change in the general political situation and the removal of a number of the clichés inherent in Soviet historiography.