Gouvernement Mogiljow
Born as the sixth child of a peasant family of Belarusian ethnicity in the Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus), he was employed in their village and graduated from a rural school. From 1930 he worked as section-secretary on the Makaryevsky village council, then at a plant. He graduated from two courses at the Orsha School in 1932.