Vilhelm Knorin
Vilgelm Georgiyevich Knorin was the second First secretary of the Central Committee of the Byelorussian SSR from 1920 to 1923 and from 1927 to 1928. He was killed in the Great Purge as a part of the so-called "Latvian Operation".
Being a Moscow-appointed de facto head of state of Belarus, Knorin is known for his notorious quote about the Belarusian independence: "We believe that Belarusians are not a nation, and the ethnographic specifics, which differentiate them from Russians, must be erased. We, communists, in the region that you call Belarus, work without thinking of what tribe we are."
A street in Minsk is named after Knorin.
