Vera Maslovskaya

Vera Ignatyevna Maslovskaya was a Belarusian teacher, poet and nationalist, who worked for an independent Belarus in the interwar period. Founding some of the first schools that taught in the Belarusian language, her teaching career was interrupted with her arrest for her underground activities against the Polish government. When the Soviet Union took control of the area, during World War II, she returned to teaching, establishing schools which taught a Belarusian curriculum in several cities. At the end of the war, she fled to Poland to escape a resurgence in threats against former nationalist activists. She worked in a kindergarten for five years in Silesia and then returned to Supraśl, where she served as the head of the city library and later on the Białystok District Council. She was a socialist and is considered to be one of the founders of the Belarusian women's movement.