On 14 January 1926, one hundred years ago, Janka Filistovich was born in the Vileyka district. He would become a Belarusian partisan, a participant in the armed anti-Soviet resistance, and an active figure in the Belarusian émigré community.
The archives of the Francis Skaryna Library preserve several of Filistovich’s personal documents, including identity papers and certificates issued during his service in the Polish Army in 1945, as well as materials from his later years in Parisian exile.
After the war, like thousands of politically active and nationally conscious Belarusians, Filistovich found himself in France. There, he studied history at the Sorbonne and later at the University of Leuven in Belgium. In exile, he became actively involved in Belarusian public life, serving as a publisher of a journal and as one of the leaders of a Belarusian youth organisation in France.
In Paris, Filistovich established contact with Mikola Abramchik, Chairman of the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic. In 1951, he was admitted to the Rada and appointed as an authorised representative of the BNR government on the occupied territory of Belarus.
Deeply committed to the cause of Belarusian independence, Filistovich undertook an extremely dangerous mission: to establish links between Belarusian émigré structures and the underground movement in the BSSR. After three months of training at a base in Kaufbeuren, Bavaria, he was parachuted into Belarus on 9 September 1951.
Through relatives, he managed to connect with a small partisan group operating in what was then the Ilyan district. Filistovich assumed command of the group, attempting to transform it into a more structured military-political organisation by introducing discipline and conducting ideological and underground training.
On 5 September 1952, the Ministry of State Security (MGB) of the BSSR carried out an operation to eliminate the group. Filistovich managed to escape, but a few days later, following a betrayal, he was arrested by Soviet security forces.
The so-called “trial” began on 17 October 1953 in Minsk. The Military Tribunal of the Belarusian Military District sentenced Janka Filistovich to death; according to available information, the sentence was carried out after 11 November 1953. His relatives and associates also became victims of repression.
Extensive research on Janka Filistovich by Alexander Lukashuk — Filistovich: The Return of a Nationalist and its later edition — is available on Kamunikat.