Paval Zhauryd

Who was Paval Zhauryd?

Paval Zhauryd was a Belarusian military commander.

Zhauryd was born in the village Cieciarouka near Slutsk and graduated from the Slutsk Gymnasium in 1909. As a student of the Gymnasium, Zhauryd created a Belarusian independentionalist club with his classmates. After Gymnasium he studied at the Law faculty of the Warsaw University.

With the outbreak of World War I In 1916 he has been mobilized to the army of the Russian Empire. And after a military training in Poltava, Paval Zhauryd has been sent to Turkestan and later to the Romanian Front. After the Russian February Revolution Paval Zhauryd has been elected his regiment's committee president. He was a delegate at the First All-Belarusian congress in December 1917, where preparations to the declaration of independence of the Belarusian National Republic have been initiated.

Since 1918 Zhauryd has been working as a lawyer in Slutsk. At that time he became a member of the Belarusian Socialist-Revolutionary Party. In the summer of 1919 he was arrested by Bolsheviks and accused of "assisting Denikin" and brought to Smolensk.

Liberated in 1919, Zhauryd came back to Slutsk and was elected president of the Slutsk Belarusian Committee, a local group supporting the Belarusian National Republic.