West Belarus is the name used in reference to the territory of modern Belarus which belonged to the Second Polish Republic between 1919 and 1939.
The territory forming today's western part of Belarus include in particular, Hrodna and Brest voblasts, as well as parts of today's Minsk and Vitsebsk oblasts. The historical population of West Belarus included Belarusians, Poles, Lithuanians, Jews, and Russians. Many peasants in Polesia (the Poleszuks) declared themselves as simply Local people, or Orthodox, rather than Belarusians (also see: Belarusian minority in Poland).
Read more about West Belarus: History, Annexation of West Belarus By The USSR, Polonization
Famous quotes containing the word west:
“The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past,—as it is to some extent a fiction of the present,—the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)