page_title: Zianon Pazniak
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Zianon Pazniak / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Мая Кляшторная і Зянон Пазняк. Дзяды. Курапаты, 1989 год. Фотаздымак Уладзіміра Сапагова.
context_page_description: Zianon Stanislavavich Pazniak is a Belarusian nationalist politician, one of the founders of the Belarusian Popular Front and leader of the Conservative Christian Party – BPF. He was the Belarusian Popular Front nominee for President of Belarus in the 1994 election.
  Zianon Pazniak has lived in the United States since 1996.
context_section_description: Zianon Pazniak was born in the village of Subotniki in Baranavichy Voblast (present-day Hrodna Region).
  He graduated from the Belarusian State Institute of Theatre and Arts in 1967 and completed his postgraduate studies at the Institute of Ethnography, Art and Folklore in 1972. Upon completion of his university studies, Pazniak worked as an arts researcher. After a wave of Soviet political-administrative repressions in 1974 resulting in the loss of his work at the Arts Institute, Pazniak worked as an archaeologist at the Archaeological Division of the History Institute of the Belarusian Science Academy. His specialisation was the Late Middle Ages in Belarus. He was heavily involved in efforts to preserve the remaining section of the historic centre of Minsk, which was considerably damaged by the redevelopment efforts undertaken by the Soviet administration after the end of the Second World War. In 1981 Pazniak successfully defended a doctoral dissertation on the history of the theatre.
  In 1988, Zianon Pazniak made public his researches of NKVD mass executions in the forest of Kurapaty near Minsk. At that time, he became a leader of the Belarusian national movement for freedom and independence. In 1988, along with Vasil Bykau, he was one of the founders of the Belarusian Popular Front and the Belarusian Martyrologue.
  From May 1990 until January 1996, Pazniak was a deputy of the Belarusian parliament. As parliamentary deputy, he was the leader of the fraction of the BPF.
  In 1994, he participated in the 1994 election as the Belarusian Popular Front nominee, gaining 13.1 percent of the vote. Pazniak’s candidacy was supported by the famous Belarusian writer Vasil Bykau and a number of representatives of the Belarusian scientific community.
  In 1996, Zianon Pazniak fled Belarus, citing a potential arrest by the forces of the Belarusian president Aliaksandar Lukashenka. He was granted political asylum in the United States.
  On June 19, 1997, Belarus's prosecutor's office opened a criminal case against Pazniak accusing him of incitement to ethnic hatred against Russian people.
  Following emigration, Zianon Pazniak is still active in leading the CCP-BPF (Christian Conservative Party of the BPF). His endeavour to participate in the presidential elections of 2006 was set back when he refused to forward the requisite number of signatures gathered for his candidacy. Pazniak and the Conservative Christian Party – BPF refused to join elections in the oppositional coalition led by Aliaksandar Milinkevich in 2006 election.
  He is a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism. In 2018, Pazniak received the Belarusian Democratic Republic 100th Jubilee Medal from the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile.
caption: Zianon Pazniak and Maya Kliashtornaya in Kurapaty (1989)
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