Chairman of the Conservative Christian Party of the Belarusian Popular Front.

Mr Paznyak was born on April 24, 1944 in the town of Subotniki, Iuye rayon, Hrodna region.

Mr Paznyak’s Father Stanislau was drafted into the Red Army in the summer of 1944, and in December he was killed in the front. Zyanon Paznyak is the grandson of a prominent Belarusian activist of the  interwar Poland and Lithuania – Yanka Pazniak.

An art historian by training, in 1980 he defended his thesis in Leningrad (after a conflict with the leadership of the Belarusian University) on the history of the Belarusian theater. He was a stage worker at the State Opera and Ballet Theatre of Belarus, photographer at the BSSR State Museum  and Museum of Yanka Kupala in Minsk.

Since 1960, he has been fighting against the destruction of historic districts Minsk: Trinity suburb, Rakauskaye suburb and the Upper Town. In 1969 he published an article on this topic in the newspaper Pravda thus saving the Yanka Kupala Theatre. In 1974 due to political situation he lost his job at the Institute of Art, Ethnography and Folklore of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. He joined the Department of Archaeology at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, where he studied the late Middle Ages in Belarus.

In 1988, he opened to the public the truth about the mass graves of people executed by NKVD in Kurapaty. It was followed by a landmark march on Dzyady, dispersed by police and internal troops. These events prompted the national movement. In the same year he founded the Belarusian Popular Front Adradzhenne (Revival).

Mr Paznyak was a Deputy of the Supreme Council of the 12th convocation. Thanks to his efforts, Belarusians learned the truth about the Chernobyl disaster, the Declaration of Independence was adopted and Pahonya (Pursuit) and white-red-white flag became the state symbols. When that happened, Mr Pazniak even lost consciousness.

During the 1994 elections he advocated the creation of the Baltic-Black Sea Union, the introduction of thaler as the Belarusian currency and lustration. He was against the alliance with Russia and rapid privatization.

In 1996, he led the first mass protests against the methods of Lukashenka’s rule, which later became known as Spring 1996. After a wave of political repression, Zyanon Pazniak emigrated to the West.

Mr Paznyak announced his participation in the presidential elections in 2001 and 2006. In the first case there were not enough signatures for registration, in the second, he withdrew his candidacy at the registration stage. Since 2006, he has  supported the idea of ​the election​ boycott.

In 2007 there appeared a satirical lyric caleld Zyanon Hop about the return of Mr Paznyak to the homeland which became very popular in the Bynet.

Zyanon Paznyak lives between Warsaw and New York, he is a member of the Belarusian PEN-center.

Mr Paznyak is married.