However, the pre-Russified (classical) standard version was and still is actively used by intellectuals and the Belarusian diaspora and is informally referred to as Taraškievica, named after Branislaw Tarashkyevich.

Tarashkyevich was a member of the underground Communist Party of Western Belorussia (KPZB) in Poland and was imprisoned for two years (1928–1930).

Among others, he translated Pan Tadeusz into Belarusian, and in 1969 a Belarusian-language high school in Bielsk Podlaski was named after him.

In 1933 he was set free due to a Polish-Soviet prisoner release in exchange for Frantsishak Alyakhnovich, a Belarusian journalist and playwright imprisoned in a Gulag, and lived in Soviet exile since then.

He was shot at the Kommunarka shooting ground outside Moscow in 1938 during the Great Purge[5] and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.