KOSAVA, Belarus — Thomas Jefferson hailed him as the “purest son of liberty I have ever known.” New York named a bridge, a street and swimming pool after him to celebrate his role in the American War of Independence. Poland reveres him as the leader of a late-18th-century revolt against the Russian empire.

So what is Andrej Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a lifelong foe of autocracy, doing at the center of a state-run memorial complex in Belarus — a close ally of Russia that has been ruled for 25 years by the same autocratic leader?

The simple answer is that Kosciuszko — known in Belarus as Kastiushka — was born and raised in the bucolic countryside around Kosava, a small Belarusian town 125 miles southwest of the capital, Minsk.