“I don’t want to harm anyone!”: Evgeny Ladnov and his Life Paths

Abstract

The article studies the biography of Yevgeny Ladnov, one of the activists of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR), who held high positions in its government and headed the Belarusian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. It is commonly believed that the changes brought by the 1917 revolution in Russia actively contributed to the formation of new life trajectories for low-ranking officials now occupying positions of authority, those of ministers and generals. In a number of cases, new identities emerged (in particular, the transition from Russian to Belarusian self-consciousness), but sometimes such changes were purely instrumental in nature and were merely a reaction to the times changing drastically. Using the case of Ladnov’s family history, it could be shown that the last scenario found its implementation long before the revolution, and the events of 1917 were just the next stage in the same process. Being an ethnic Pole and an inhabitant of the western borderlands of the Russian Empire, Ladnov, went through a series of situational changes from “Polishness” through “Russianness” to “Belarusianness”. At the same time, his personal energy contributed to the fact that he sincerely perceived the patterns inherent in each of the identities. The paper is based on previously unknown documents relating to Ladnov and his family.