Author, Playwright. His best known work is his published memoirs “In the Claws of the GPU,” which detailed his seven years as an inmate in the Soviet Russian Special Camp of Solovki, located on the Solovetsky Islands, a remote area in the White Sea. While at Solovki, he was a director of the theatre as there were many actors and artists at the camp. He was exchanged in 1933 for Branislaw Tarashkyevich, a West Belarusian politician held in Polish prison. His childhood was difficult as he was expelled from public schools in the fifth grade and later, failed to finish his attempt at a chemical-technical school. He finally graduated from Drama School in Warsaw, Poland in 1909. At first he was employed as an actor, then newspaper reporter and journalist for a humor magazine, "Perkunas". By 1918 he was the director of the First Belarusian Society of Drama and Comedy and the Soviet Belarusian Theatre. In 1926, he returned to his home in East Belarus and within a short time, arrested and sentenced to Camp Solovki. During his lifetime, he published eighteen plays; several novels including his memoirs and “Theatre in the Solvik Prison Camp” in 1924; and studies including a study of art from ancient times to the 20th Century. For political reasons, his plays were banned from Belarusian theaters until 1994. He was editor of the Nazi newspaper “Belarusian Voice” published in Vilnius, Lithuania during World War II. For his collaboration with the German Nazi army, he was murdered by a Soviet terrorist for publishing the names of Belarusians who were killed by the Polish Army. The “Frantsishak Alyakhnovich Award” was founded in 2013 by Belarusian PEN Centre in cooperation with Radio Freedom. On December 10th the International Human Rights Day, the award is given for the best book written in prison.