Kachanovič Michał (other spellings Kakhanovich, Kochanovicz; Кахановіч Міхал), teacher, political leader. Kachanovič was born into a peasant family in the Navahradak region in 1882. He graduated from the historical-philological department of Kharkov University. Kachanovič became a teacher and taught in various schools of Vilna. During World War I he moved to the city of Mahileŭ and became the backbone of the Belarusian political movement there. Kachanovič organized a Belarusian Council and Committee in the city of Mahileŭ, was able to form a sizable group of teachers, workers, and peasants in the city and the region of Mahileŭ, who supported the idea of Belarusian independence, and worked to prepare the All-Belarusian Congress. Kachanovič played a very prominent role in the proceedings of the Congress and later in the organization of the Belarusian administration. In 1918 he moved back to Vilna and, together with Ivan Łuckievič, organized the Belarusian High School, serving as its first director for three years. Kachanovič was a member of numerous boards of Belarusian organizations, including the Belarusian Scholarly Society. He was elected to the Polish Congress. In the middle 1920s he was lured to Soviet Belarus and vanished.
References: Novy Šlach, Miensk-Riga, no. 2(38), January 1944, p. 8; Biełaruski Kalandar, Vilna, 1923, p. 31.
