He was born in 1897 in Barysaw, in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire, in a working-class family of Belarusian ethnicity.

[1] He served as a Prime Minister of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1924 to 1927.

In 1916, he was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, where he was organised the Belarusian Bolsheviks.

In 1920, he was commissioner of military affairs of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

From 1924 to 1927, he was the Prime Minister of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.