Hasan Konopacki (, Hasan Amuratavich Kanapatski) (1879–1953) was a Lipka Tatar politician, journalist and military officer that served in the Imperial Russian, Lithuanian and Polish armies. Hasan Konopacki was closely connected with the Belarusian national movement. He participated in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) as an artillery colonel and in World War I on the Russian side. He was a commander of Belarusian military units in the Lithuanian Army (1918–1919), Polish Army (1919–1920) and a member of the "Belarusian Military Commission". During the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) he worked as a politician and a journalist of the Belarusian minority in Poland, advocating the creation of a Belarusian state in close cooperation with Poland.
Life
Youth and Russian military service
Konopacki was born on February 25, 1879, in Minsk, then in Russian Empire. His noble Muslim family belonged to the Lipka Tatars. His father Amurat Konopacki, worked as a Collegiate assessor. He graduated from the Polotsk Cadet Corps () and transferred in 1897 to Saint Petersburg Artillery School. He spent his military service with the rank of second lieutenant of the Imperial Russian Army.
In 1904, Konopacki was sent to the Transbaikal Oblast, where the First Siberian Artillery Brigade was being formed. There, he was appointed officer of the 1st Battery. From 1904 to 1905, he participated in the Russo-Japanese war, where he was wounded during the Battle of Liaoyang (August 1904). In 1906, his brigade moved to Nerchinsk, east of Lake Baikal.
As a battery officer, he performed various functions: member of the Honorary Court; member of the Officer's Capital Loan Commission; manager of the officers' library. In 1909 he was promoted to the rank of captain. Subsequently, he letf Nerczyńsk to the Chinese border, at Blagoveshchensk, near the Amur river, to set up and command the 2nd Battery of the 10th Siberian Field Artillery Brigade. On September 8, 1912, he was sent further east to Khabarovsk to train recruits. Upon his own request, on October 13, 1912, Hasan moved to the 3rd Field Artillery Brigade in Kaluga, southwest of Moscow. On July 18, 1914, he was appointed Commander of the 5th Battery of the 57th Field Artillery Brigade.
Konopacki took part in World War I in successive positions: on July 30, 1914, commander of the 1st park of the 57th Field Artillery Brigade; on November 10, 1916, commander of the 6th Battery of the 69th Field Artillery Brigade of the Russian front; as a lieutenant colonel, on January 23, 1917, commander of the 69th Field Artillery Brigade. On November 6, 1917, he was promoted to colonel.
On the front, he was struck by combat gases: as such he was transferred to Minsk to a rear evacuation point. On May 10, 1918, in relation with the reform of the 69th Field Artillery Brigade, he handed over documents and finances to the "Moscow Regional Commissariat of Military Affairs".
Belarusian Military Commission
Once in Minsk, Hasan Konopacki became involved with activists of the Belarusian National Movement. He moved to the area under the control of the Republic of Lithuania and started to cooperate with the Belarusian military troops he trained. At the end of December 1918, he was assigned to Vilnius' 1st Belarusian Infantry Regiment. With the invading Red Army approaching the city, Hasan evacuated on December 27, with his unit and most of the activists to Grodno then under German control.
In the middle of 1919, Minsk was recaptured from the Bolsheviks by the Polish forces; Hasan then championed the creation of a Belarusian state alongside the Second Polish Republic. He became a member of the newly established "Belarusian Military Commission" () or "BKW". This short lived body (August 1919–March 1921), initially set up unilaterally by Belarusian activists, aimed at forming a Belarusian national army as an allied force of the Polish Army. A project was developed to build a 20,000-strong Belarusian infantry division consisting of three infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, a cavalry squadron and a sapper company.