West Belarus - History

History

Pursuant to the Treaty of Riga signed in March 1921 between Poland, Soviet Russia and the Soviet Ukraine (thus ending the Polish-Soviet War), the territories of modern Belarus (part of the Russian Empire) were divided between Poland and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The area that became part of Poland formed the central part of Kresy. In Soviet times, it was called West Belarus as oppose to East Belarus. The new borders established between the two countries remained in force throughout the interwar period, up until the outbreak of World War II. They were later redrawn during the Yalta Conference and Potsdam Conference.

Thousands of Poles settled in the area in the years that followed the Peace of Riga. In the elections of November 1922, a Belarusian party (in the Blok Mniejszości Narodowych coalition) obtained 14 seats in the Polish parliament (11 of them in the lower chamber, Sejm). In the spring of 1923, Polish prime minister Władysław Sikorski ordered a report on the situation of the Belarusian minority in Poland. That summer, a new regulation was passed allowing for the Belarusian language to be used officially both in courts and in schools. Obligatory teaching of the Belarusian language was introduced in all Polish gymnasia in areas inhabited by Belarusians in 1927.

Compared to the (larger) Ukrainian minority living in Poland, Belarusians were much less politically aware and active. The largest Belarusian political organization, the Belarusian Peasants' and Workers' Union, was banned in 1927, and further opposition to the Polish government was met with state-imposed sanctions. In 1935, after the death of Józef Piłsudski, a new wave of repressions was released upon the minorities, with many Orthodox churches and Belarusian schools closed. After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 – portrayed by Soviet propaganda as 'liberation of West Belarus and Ukraine' – some Belarusians welcomed unification with the Belorussian SSR, although attitudes of many changed after experiencing the Soviet terror. From 1939 on, with the exception of a brief period of Nazi occupation, almost all Belarusians previously living in Poland would live in the Belorussian SSR.

After an early period of liberalization, tensions between increasingly nationalistic Polish government and various increasingly separatist ethnic minorities started to grow, and Belarusian minority was no exception. The Soviets were also constantly trying to escalate this conflict, promoting the formally autonomous Soviet-controlled East Belarus to attract sympathies of Belarusians living in Poland. This image was attractive to many West Belarusian national leaders and some of them, like Francišak Alachnovič or Uładzimir Žyłka emigrated from West Belarus to East Belarus, but very soon became victims of Soviet repressions. In 1937–1938 the Soviet NKVD and the Communist Party attempted to eradicate Poles as a minority group in East Belarus during the largest ethnic shooting and deportation action of the Great Terror.

The area of West Belarus was annexed into the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic following staged elections soon after the Nazi-Soviet Invasion of Poland in September of 1939. The corresponding terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed earlier in Moscow were broken, when the German army entered the Soviet occupation zone on June 22, 1941. Two years later, at the insistence of Joseph Stalin during the Tehran Conference of 1943, West Belarus was formally ceded by the Allies to the Belorussian SSR following the end of World War II in Europe.

The Polish population was soon forcibly resettled. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of it belongs to the sovereign Republic of Belarus.