EN
The focus of this article is an attempt to present illegal educational activities on the example of school founded in Łukinia landowning estate that belonged to the Polish Kończów family. It’s characterization is possible thanks to the memories left by Teodora Kończów Majowa, which composes a source material basis. Diaries describe not only her life but primarily the local socio-cultural activities, that played an important role in intensively developing, since the late nineteenth century, secret teaching movement on the Lithuanian- -Belarusian lands. Analysis and verification of the information contained in the thesis sources functioning in the literature, confirmed the great importance of the existence of illegal scho¬ols in the western guberniyas of the Russian Empire for the development of rural communi¬ties and to inhibit progressive Russification.