Mitrofan Viktorovich Dovnar-Zapolsky - Belarusian historian, ethnographer, folklorist, economist, founder of Belarusian national historiography [1]. Doctor of Historical Sciences (1905), Professor (1902). He studied the origins and formation of Belarusian statehood, the national and cultural identity of the Belarusian people, Belarusian ethnography [4]. In a series of articles, "The Belarusian Past" (1888) argued that Belarusians are an independent people and should take an equal place in the family of European peoples.