Kanstantsin Mitskievich was born in in a village
Akinchytsy of
Minsk Governorate,
Russian Empire, in a family of a forester. He graduated from Nesvizh Teachers' Seminary in 1902, and was sent as a teacher to a village in
Palesse region. He took part in an illegal teachers convention in 1906, was fired and jailed for three years in Minsk. After jail he became a journalist for
Nasha dolya newspaper, there he first used the name "Yakub Kolas". In 1915 he was mobilized into the army. In 1916, after graduating from the Moscow Alexander Military School with the rank of warrant officer, he served in a reserve regiment in Perm. In the summer of 1917 he was sent to the Romanian front, but for health reasons he was demobilized. In 1921 Kolas returned to Minsk to work in the newly established Institute of Belarusian Culture. In 1928 Institute was transformed into the Academy of Sciences, Kolas became an academician there, and later a vice president. In 1926 he was named a "People's Poet of Belarus". During the World War 2 Kolas was in evacuation in Russia. He died in Minsk, on 13 August 1956. In his honor, the
Yakub Kolas Square and the
Yakub Kolas Street in the center of
Minsk bear his name. ==Bibliography==