Myechyslaw Hryb was born on September 25, 1938, in the village of Sawicze, then part of the Second Polish Republic (now the Dyatlovsky District of the Grodno Oblast), into a peasant family. A year later, World War II began, during which his father, Ivan, would die.
He went to school in Dyatlovo and began working from the seventh grade, first digging peat, then as an auxiliary worker at a construction site.[3]
In 1959 he graduated from the Lviv State University of Life Safety, and upon returning to Belarus, he worked as a fire inspector for three years and became interested in the investigation of fires and arson. He entered the Faculty of Law of the Belarusian State University in absentia. He served as a police inspector of the Internal Affairs Department of the Plissky District Executive Committee of the Vitebsk Region. From 1962 to 1981, he served in various law enforcement positions in Vitebsk. In 1967, he graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Belarusian State University.
In 1981, he was made head of the Public Order Protection Department of the MVD of the BSSR. Four years later, in 1985, he was promoted to Head of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee. Immediately after his appointment, he headed the investigation of the so-called "Vitebsk Case" on the serial killer and rapist Gennady Mikhasevich.
In 1990, Hryb took part in the parliamentary elections and won in his area. In the same year, he joined the Democratic Club, created in the Supreme Soviet by deputies who supported the building of democracy in Belarus. In parliament, Hryb headed the permanent Commission on National Security, Defense and Combating Crime, within which he lobbied in every possible way for Belarus to join the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which drew the country into Russia's sphere of influence. In 1993, he was the first in the republic to receive the rank of major general of militia.[4]
