Hryb Tamaš (also spelled Hryb Tamash; Грыб Тамаш), historian and political leader. Tamaš Hryb was born into a poor peasant family in the village of Palany, near the town of Śvianciany, March 7, 1895. He completed his elementary education in the local schools, then went to study in St. Petersburg. Hryb served in the Navy, then became a student at the Psycho-Neurological Institute and was absorbed into Belarusian political life. His scholarly mentor was Professor Epimach-Šypiła, a well-known and respected Belarusian scholar in the Russian capital. Belarusian organizational work became Hryb's full-time occupation after the February Revolution. He organized soldiers and workers all over the western region of Russia. Hryb was at the same time an important political columnist, popularizing Belarusian ideas in the West. He contributed to numerous journals and newspapers, and was one of the first to formulate the needs of statehood in the programs of Belarusian political parties. Hryb worked very hard to convene the first conference of Belarusian Parties and Groups in March 1917, and advocated the immediate need to consolidate the Belarusian political movement. Tamaš Hryb was one of the organizers of the First All-Belarusian Congress, December 1917, and was elected one of the secretaries of that Congress. It was Tamaš Hryb who proposed and moved the resolution which established the Executive Council of the Congress (Rada Kanhresu). He became a member of that Council. Hryb was one of the coauthors of the Constituent Charters which, according to the wishes of the Congress, proclaimed the Belarusian Democratic Republic with subsequent declaration of its independence on March 25, 1918. Tamaš Hryb was elected to the First People's Secretariat by whose authority the policies of the Belarusian Democratic Republic were outlined. Hryb was one of the founders of the Belarusian Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1918. (The others were P.Badunova and J.Mamońka). Tamaš Hryb also pursued diplomatic activities: he attended numerous international conferences and attended the Third All-Russian Convention of Soviets, Moscow, January 1918, at which he protested against the betrayal of democratic norms by the ploys and policies of the Bolshevik Party. After 1921, Tamaš Hryb settled in Prague where he received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Charles University. He founded and edited numerous journals, including the magazine Iskry Skaryny, Prague — a powerful anti-Communist publication in which Hryb analyzed the problems of the Belarusian National Movement and the impossibility of cooperating with the Soviets. Tamaš Hryb founded and expanded the Belarusian collection at the Czechoslovak National Library and was also one of the co-founders, and a long-time director of the Belarusian Archives in Prague. Tamaš Hryb died in Prague on January 21, 1938 and was cremated on January 25, 1938.
References: Kałośsie, Vilna, no. 1(14), 1938, pp. 52-57; Belarusian Institute of Arts and Sciences, New York, Archives.
