Belarusian national revival

The Belarusian national revival (Belarusian: Беларускае нацыянальнае адраджэнне), otherwise known as the Belarusian National Awakening^[1] is a social, cultural and political movement that advocates the revival of Belarusian culture, language, customs, and the creation of the Belarusian statehood at the national foundation.^{[citation needed]}

In the early and mid 19th century, Jan Czeczot, Wladyslaw Syrokomla, Wincenty Dunin-Marcinkiewicz, Jan Barszczewski and several other writers, most of whom represented the local nobility, created the first literary works in modern Belarusian language.^{[citation needed]} Their works were written in local rural dialects and ignored the traditions of the written Old Belarusian language from the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.^{[citation needed]} For example, the first Belarusian language newspaper, Mužyckaja prauda, was printed in 1862-1863 using Latin script by Kastuś Kalinoŭski, the Father of the Belarusian Nation.^[2]

In the second half of the 19th century, leftist national clubs emerged among Belarusian students in the major universities of the Russian Empire, i.e. in the University of St. Petersburg.^{[citation needed]} These clubs issued several illegal publications, for example, Homan with demands for autonomy or independence for Belarus.^{[citation needed]} Ignacy Hryniewiecki, the assassin of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, according to some historians, was one of the creators of the Belarusian faction in the Russian socialist movement Narodnaya Volya.^[3]