Mogilev, Vitebsk, and Gomel were successfully annexed to the BSSR only because Moscow thus wanted to tempt Western Belarus — published documents
Moscow made concessions for a game against Poland. The modern borders of Belarus were determined by the geopolitical calculations of the Bolsheviks.
«Micro-Belarus» and the Kremlin Opposition
Materials from the Secretariat of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and documents from the collection «State Borders of Belarus», covering the period from spring 1923 to March 1924, record the mechanics of the first enlargement of the BSSR without later Soviet retouching.
As we wrote earlier, after Moscow took Vitebsk, Mogilev, and Smolensk governorates from the newly proclaimed Soviet Belarus in January 1919, and then ceded Western Belarus to Poland according to the Treaty of Riga in 1921, the republic became a territorial remnant.
In an area of just over 52 thousand square kilometers — in the Bobruysk, Borisov, Igumen, Mozyr, Minsk, and Slutsk districts — lived about 1.5 million people. This was a mini-Belarus the size of Estonia.
In 1923, the leadership of the BSSR, headed by Alexander Cherviakov, Vsevolod Ignatovsky, Vaclav Bagutsky, Osip Nodel, and Adolf Hetner, sent a detailed memorandum to the Central Committee of the RCP(b). The Minsk communists wrote the plain truth about how their state looked in the eyes of the population and neighbors:
«In the current state of affairs, when Soviet Belarus exists within the boundaries of six incomplete districts of the former Minsk Governorate, an unnecessary, incomprehensible, and harmful duality is created. Growing youth learn in schools that there are three Belarusias — one occupied by Poland, the second Soviet, which by its existence, as it were, casts suspicion on the party's policy on the national question, and the third — annexed to Russia for unclear reasons. Further postponement of the resolution of this question regarding Belarus is politically harmful, compromises the party, the authority of Belarusian party and Soviet workers, develops chauvinism, creates fertile ground for political adventures, giving rise to Balakhovichs, Lastovskys, and similar rulers of Belarus.»
The authors of another analytical document from the case — «Report on the Expansion of the BSSR» — called the republic of that time «almost a caricature of an Autonomous Republic due to its meager size.»
Referring to the works of ethnographer and linguist Yevfim Karsky, the compilers of the report reminded that the ethnographic boundary of the settlement of the Belarusian tribe and language extended to the meridian Bryansk — Rzhev, covering, in addition to Vitebsk and Gomel, almost the entire Smolensk Governorate.
Initially, Minsk's position found support at the very top of the party hierarchy. On November 21, 1923, the commission of the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) under the leadership of Alexander Asatkin-Vladimirsky, fulfilling a directive of the Politburo, decided to annex to the BSSR the Gorki and Mstislavl districts of the Smolensk Governorate, all districts of the Vitebsk Governorate along with the northern Sebezh, Nevel, and Velizh districts, as well as eight districts of the Gomel Governorate — including Gomel and Rechytsa.
Point 3 of this resolution contained a radical proposal: to liquidate the provincial centers in Gomel and Vitebsk within three months and to suggest that the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belarus present an opinion on the advisability of transferring the capital of the enlarged republic from border Minsk to Mogilev.
In the «Report on the Expansion of the BSSR», this idea was explained by both strategic military considerations (Minsk was located a few tens of kilometers from the Polish border) and the need to take into account the economic primacy of the eastern part of the region.
However, as soon as the decision became known in the provincial centers of the RSFSR, a large-scale bureaucratic revolt began. For the final delimitation, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR established a commission chaired by Central Executive Committee Secretary Abel Yenukidze, which included VTsIK Secretary Timofey Sapronov, People's Commissar of Agriculture of the RSFSR Alexander Smirnov, Ukrainian SSR representative Felix Kon, representatives of the BSSR, and heads of the interested Russian governorates. At the meetings of this commission on December 11 and 18, 1923, the Politburo's resolution was effectively revised.
Why the Soviet commission dared to go against the Politburo's decision is explained in a secret letter from Alexander Cherviakov and Vaclav Bagutsky dated December 16, 1923, to Belarusian emissaries in Vitebsk. In addition to People's Commissar Smirnov being «as a Russian communist, generally against the separation of any part of the RSFSR, regardless of who that part is joined to,» big Kremlin politics intervened.
VTsIK Secretary Timofey Sapronov was one of the leaders of the then-left («Trotskyist») opposition to the Central Committee. In the autumn and winter of 1923, the intra-party discussion in Moscow took on extremely sharp forms. Since Sapronov was accused of attempting to remove Soviet bodies from party control, he used the Belarusian question as a main trump card against the Politburo at meetings in Moscow party cells.
Sapronov was indignant: the party leadership, he said, had swept all power under itself and decided to redraw Russia's borders, and he, the VTsIK Secretary and Chairman of the Commission for the Zoning of the RSFSR, knew nothing about it, «and if he did hear occasional conversations on this matter, he considered them merely jokes about Great Belarus.»
The protest of the provincial organizations gave Sapronov a legal reason to demand a reconsideration of the case, and the ruling group of the Central Committee, in the context of the power struggle, feared giving the opposition further pretexts for attacks.
How the 1920 Census Was Falsified: Statistical Equilibristics
The main weapon of provincial officials and the Russian People's Commissariat of Agriculture became the figures of the 1920 population census. Relying on them, the leaders of Vitebsk, Gomel, and Smolensk argued that there was no Belarusian majority in the disputed districts, and those who were recorded as Belarusians in the imperial census of 1897 had allegedly become completely Russified or «self-determined» in favor of the Russian nation within a quarter-century.
The case materials contain unique evidence of how exactly this statistics was created. The authors of the «Report on the Expansion of the BSSR» and the conclusion of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belarus caught opponents on the physical impossibility of such demographic metamorphoses.
According to the 1897 census, Belarusians constituted 89% of the population in Gomel district (or 74% including cities), but in 1920, their number suddenly dropped to 20% (or 17% according to the provincial committee); in Rechytsa district, the share of Belarusians fell from 98% to 45% (in the tables of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the RSFSR — to 39%); in Rogachev — from 98% to 13% (or 11%).
An even more absurd picture emerged when comparing with the 1917 agricultural census, conducted after the February Revolution: at that time, 94% of Belarusians were recorded in Gomel district, and 85% in Rechytsa district (6% more than in 1897!).
It turned out that hundreds of thousands of Belarusians disappeared not over 23 years, but in just three years of civil war. An identical picture was observed in the north of Vitebsk Governorate: in Sebezh district, the percentage of Belarusians decreased from 50% to 32%, in Nevel district — from 91% to 31%, in Velizh district — from 98% to 34%.
The reason for this statistical trick was political, and it was openly discussed in the commission's report:
«The fact is that at the moment of the end of the Polish war, when the border with Poland was not yet clearly defined, efforts were made to deliberately underestimate the number of Belarusians in neighboring districts due to a prospective plebiscite. In addition, in the frontline zone, the census could have other defects, explained by the influence of military operations (such as haste, nervous work, abnormal attitude of the population, etc.).»
At the commission meeting on December 18, 1923, BSSR representative Osip Nodel and the authors of the Minsk notes explained the mechanism of this falsification: in August 1920, when the census was conducted, peace with Poland had not yet been concluded, a neutral zone existed, and persistent rumors circulated about the creation of Belarus under Polish protectorate through a plebiscite. It was precisely such an ultimatum regarding a plebiscite in all ethnographic Belarus, including the Vitebsk, Mogilev, and Smolensk governorates, that Polish diplomat Jan Dąbski presented to Adolf Ioffe in Riga in October 1920. Therefore, local Soviet authorities deliberately recorded peasants as Great Russians to prevent Warsaw from claiming those lands, and the Orthodox peasants themselves, frightened by the prospect of falling under the rule of Polish landowners, concealed their Belarusian origin.
Even Bryling, a representative of the Smolensk Provincial Executive Committee, testified to the unsuitability of the census, admitting at the meeting that in their province, according to these data, «one volost yields 97% Belarusians, and another, neighboring one — 90% Russians, which indicates that national characteristics were introduced here.»
Modern historiography fully confirms these assessments. As Russian researchers Yevgeny Kodin and Olga Kobets note, census manipulations became a systemic practice in the western governorates of the RSFSR in the 1920s. While in 1897, 100.7 thousand Belarusians were recorded in the Smolensk Governorate, and in 1920 — 57 thousand, during the All-Union Census of 1926, the Smolensk authorities reduced this figure to 20,408 people (0.89%).
Later, officials of the Smolensk Provincial Department of Public Education themselves admitted in closed reports that census takers in the Monastyrshchinsky and Lyubavichsky volosts mechanically recorded Belarusians as Great Russians or divided residents of two neighboring villages with identical lifestyles and language into two different nationalities.
Vitebsk Rebellion: «If Belarusian is introduced, I'll have to learn to speak even with my wife»
The most aggressive resistance to the enlargement of the BSSR was offered by the leadership of the Vitebsk Governorate. On December 8, 1923, the plenum of the Vitebsk Provincial Committee of the RCP(b) adopted Protocol No. 7 and sent a special memorandum to Moscow, in which it categorically refused to obey the Politburo's decision to transfer the governorate to Belarus. At the commission meeting in Moscow on December 18, Vitebsk's position was voiced by Zelikson, a representative of the Provincial Executive Committee.
Vitebsk functionaries referred to a household census and a survey by the People's Commissariat of Education, which allegedly revealed that although Belarusians demographically constituted 56.95% of the governorate's population (and 63.96% in villages), only 17.4% of household owners named Belarusian as their native language.
The provincial committee's protocol stated that «the population of Vitebsk Governorate has lost its everyday Belarusian traits and the Belarusian language, unknown to the majority of the governorate's population, with the exception of isolated old people.»
Zelikson declared that if someone called themselves Belarusian during the census, they did so «rather out of tradition, but in no case was it a product of national self-awareness.» The memorandum cited a curious case in Velizh district, where one peasant, when asked about his nationality, replied: «Old Believer.»
To prove to Moscow that the people were against joining Minsk, the Vitebsk Provincial Committee urgently sent its agitators to the districts, who themselves, according to the provincial committee's memorandum, «are ardent opponents of the Belarusianization of our province.»
The statements they collected at volost meetings were compiled into a special dossier for the Central Committee. For example, in the Ostrovno volost of Vitebsk district, peasant Bukshtynov declared: «If the Belarusian language is introduced, then I will have to learn to speak even with my wife.»
At the Congress of Soviets of the Kalininskaya volost of Polotsk district, delegate Shirkevich first said: «If any of us attempts to read Belarusian literature, it seems like Chinese alphabet to him.» However, in his second speech at the same meeting, he changed his mind and declared: «All nations self-determine, and we also wish to self-determine and study the Belarusian language; it is necessary to introduce Belarus into history.»
In Orsha district, at meetings in Staroselskaya and Tolochinskaya volosts, peasants, according to the provincial committee's report, laughed: «Perhaps you'll suggest we elect a king?»
And in Nevel district, people seriously thought that joining the BSSR was another stage in the transition to Poland.
Teachers who spoke in defense of the language and said that Belarusian culture was experiencing a «Lomonosov period» (like teachers Sukharukov, Vasilevsky, or Pankevich in Vitebsk and Gorodok) were openly branded as «nationalists» by the provincial committee in its report.
The maximum that the Vitebsk leaders agreed to was to cede to Minsk a part of Lepel district and several border volosts of Orsha and Vitebsk districts.
In response, the Central Bureau of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belarus and Vsevolod Ignatovsky personally left no stone unturned in refuting Vitebsk's arguments.
The Minsk communists pointed out that in all western governorates of the RSFSR, the heads of the Soviet and party apparatus were people from central Russia, not local natives. The presence of these governorates within the RSFSR was perceived by the incoming officials as a mandate to preserve the «Russian purity» of the region.
Ignatovsky cited a shocking document: already in April 1921, the board of the Lepel District Union of Education Workers sent an official request to Minsk asking for clarification on whether staging plays in Belarusian and collecting Belarusian songs in Vitebsk Governorate was a crime, as local authorities considered all work on studying the region's culture to be counter-revolution and organized political surveillance of teachers.
And when the population «survey» began in December 1923, Vitebsk agitators used intimidation tactics: they did not at all ask the peasants about economic unification with Minsk, but instead turned the Belarusian language into «some kind of bogeyman», scaring illiterate people by claiming that in the BSSR all Russian schools would be closed within two weeks and all life would be forcibly switched to an incomprehensible dialect, even though four state languages were legally equal in the BSSR itself.
Against Vitebsk separatism, Ukraine's representative Felix Kon spoke at the commission meeting. His sharp remark was recorded in the transcript:
«We want to make a certain enlargement and in the end, we annex barely two or three volosts. This will create an unfavorable impression. We must proceed from what we aspire to... We must approach it from a political point of view. I myself am Ukrainian, and we know how they shy away from Central Committee decisions.»
As a result, Yenukidze's commission and the Politburo (by resolution of December 29, 1923, to which Vitebsk representatives failed to appear twice when summoned) rejected the protests of the Vitebsk Provincial Committee regarding the main part of the governorate, but made a concession to the Russian People's Commissariat of Agriculture in the north.
Despite the fact that in the initial Politburo project, the Sebezh, Nevel, and Velizh districts were to go to the BSSR, on December 18, the commission voted three to two, with one abstention, to keep these three districts within the RSFSR.
In March 1924, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee transferred these lands to the Pskov Governorate. As studies by A. Filimonov and V. Kobets showed, detached from the Belarusian center and oriented towards seasonal work in Leningrad (to which 16 thousand peasants annually traveled from Nevel district alone), local Belarusians underwent rapid assimilation within a few years: in 1927, at a meeting in Nevel district, peasants were already shouting to visiting Belarusian inspector Khaikov that «the Belarusian language had long rotted away,» and when he spoke Belarusian, he resembled «a real crocodile.»
Gomel Gambit: Corrupted School, Match Syndicate, and the Jewish Question
An even more complex intrigue unfolded around the Gomel Governorate, created in 1919 on the basis of the liquidated Mogilev Governorate with the annexation of Rechytsa district of Minsk and four northern districts of Chernihiv Governorate.
As in Vitebsk, the Gomel party apparatus, led by Brakhman and Goldstein, sent a report to the Central Committee in autumn 1923, claiming that the Belarusian language was struggling to take root, and the population supposedly opposed Belarusian schools.
Minsk, in its response (conclusion of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belarus for October 1923), demonstrated exactly how Gomel officials formed this «popular will.»
In September 1922, peasants of the large village of Perelyovka in Gomel district (which the provincial committee considered «non-Belarusian») themselves decided at a meeting to open a Belarusian school instead of a Russian one. In October, when the teacher was absent, the head of the volost department of public education, Britov, came to the village and announced to the peasants that their school would have no rights because it taught «in a non-state language.»
In December, officials Britov and Gavrilenko came again and began campaigning for a Russian school, promising to provide children with textbooks and writing supplies at state expense in return. The peasants were tempted and agreed, but the officials deceived them and did not provide the textbooks — then the outraged residents of Perelyovka again switched the school to Belarusian and decided to keep it for the next year.
Moreover, Minsk communists obtained secret correspondence: in September 1923, the Rechytsa District Executive Committee, in response to a provincial questionnaire, officially reported that «by national characteristics, the population of Rechytsa district is entirely Belarusian,» but the Gomel provincial committee simply hid this document from Moscow.
Nevertheless, at the meeting of Yenukidze's commission on December 18, 1923, the chairman of the Gomel Provincial Executive Committee, Ivan Neibakh, with Smirnov's support, managed to defend the southern half of the governorate. The commission agreed to cede to the BSSR only six northern districts (Mogilev, Bykhov, Rogachev, Chausy, Cherikov, and Klimovichi), leaving not only the four former Chernihiv districts (Starodub, Mglin, Novozybkov, and Klintsy) but also the Gomel and Rechytsa districts within the RSFSR.
Votes on Rechytsa in the commission were equally divided — two against two with one abstention, and only on December 29 did the Politburo allow several western Polesie volosts with the Kalinkavichy, Naroulia, and Damanavichy stations to be cut from Rechytsa district in favor of the BSSR.
Immediately after this, the Gomel leadership launched an eager campaign to preserve its truncated governorate as an independent unit, so that its remnants would not be annexed to the neighboring industrial Bryansk Governorate. In January 1924, Neibakh and Presidium Secretary Belkin flooded Moscow with telegrams and sent a multi-page memorandum with dozens of statistical tables to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. They argued that the five southern districts remaining in the RSFSR, even after losing 42% of their territory, had 1,451,073 inhabitants and a non-deficit budget, surpassing in population and economic power the Bryansk Governorate itself and another 57% of all USSR governorates. They categorically refused to hand over their well-established economy, where, after the enlargement of the volosts, the share of communists in the executive committees reached 74%, neither to the «backward» BSSR nor to Bryansk, with which Gomel did not even have direct telephone communication, demanding to preserve the Gomel Governorate until the creation of the large Western Oblast projected by Gosplan.
Matches became an important argument in this dispute. On December 15, 1923, the All-Russian Syndicate of the Match Industry of the Supreme Economic Council sent a special memorandum to the Central Executive Committee commission.
The syndicate's leadership raised the alarm: the project of dividing the Gomel Governorate split in half the largest match trust in the USSR, «Paleski,» which employed about three thousand workers. Of the four active factories of the trust, two — «Vesuvius» in Gomel and «Dnieper» in Rechytsa (with a production capacity of 205,340 matchboxes per year) — could end up on one side of the border, while the other two — «Wave of Revolution» (the largest in Russia, 220,075 matchboxes per year) and «Revolutionary Path» in Novozybkov district — would go to the Bryansk Governorate. At the same time, the central repair workshops for the entire trust were located in Novozybkov district, while auxiliary plywood and starch factories, as well as the forest raw material base, remained on the Belarusian side.
The match syndicate itself proposed to solve the problem in favor of Minsk: to unite all four factories of the Polesie trust within the BSSR together with the Bobruisk factory «Berezina.»
However, the Gomel provincial executive committee and the majority of Yenukidze's commission used the argument about the «indivisibility of industry» in exactly the opposite direction — to keep Novozybkov, Gomel, and Rechytsa together within the RSFSR.
Another telling episode in the struggle for Gomel is related to the position of national minorities. The case contains the conclusion of the consultant of the Organizational Department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Muravyov, dated January 23, 1924.
The document indicates that the Jewish and Polish sections of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) submitted an official petition demanding the transfer of the Gomel, Rechytsa, and even Novozybkov districts to the BSSR.
They argued that the 1920 statistics were falsified, and local Jews and Poles lived in compact masses and were closely connected with Belarus, where Jewish and Polish schools and newspapers already existed. Leaving these districts within a Russian governorate, in the opinion of the sections, «would be a heavy burden on the apparatus and budget of the governorate and would lead to Russification.»
However, Kremlin official Muravyov rejected this petition with a formulation that demonstrated the true attitude of the VTsIK apparatus towards Belarusian culture:
«Roughly taking into account the Russian population of the districts plus a part of the Belarusian population that, due to historical conditions, has assimilated into Russian culture, constitutes a significant majority of the population of Rechytsa and Gomel districts, which gravitates towards the RSFSR.
The annexation of the population of these districts to the comparatively low culture of Belarus is unacceptable from a cultural point of view.»
When in February 1924, the Council of People's Commissars of the BSSR commission, led by Jazep Adamovich, arrived in Gomel to take over the northern districts of the governorate, it escalated into an open economic conflict. Gomel officials refused to divide the property of provincial institutions, the capital of «Paleshandl» (Polesie Trade) and the agricultural bank, stating that due to the Belarusian commission's tendency to seize property, «the governorate would be weakened.»
In response, the district executive committees in Mogilev and Rogachev, which were being transferred to the BSSR, unilaterally seized goods from «Khleboprodukt» (Bread Products) and timber from the «Gomles» (Gomel Forest) trust, to prevent Gomel from exporting them to Russia.
However, the city of Gomel itself and the main part of Rechytsa district returned to the BSSR only during the second enlargement in December 1926.
Smolensk Bargain: How Mstislavl Region Was Divided and the Agricultural Institute's Lands in Gorki Were Almost Seized
In Smolensk Governorate, the BSSR initially claimed only two districts with a predominant majority of Belarusians, even according to the curtailed 1920 census — Gorki (70% Belarusians, or 101,326 out of 144,621 people) and Mstislavl (44% Belarusians, 46% Great Russians, and about 10% Jews out of 117,262 residents), which until 1919 were part of Mogilev Governorate.
At the commission meeting on December 18, Bryling, a representative of the Smolensk Provincial Executive Committee, tried to defend both districts. He stated that Mstislavl district was economically gravitating towards Smolensk through Monastyrshchina and was «painlessly inseparable»,"
and in Gorki district «there are many Catholics who have preserved their noble title, and they classify themselves sometimes as Belarusian, sometimes as some other nationality — depending on the moment,» which Smolensk workers could manage no worse than the BSSR.
However, Yenukidze's commission decided to transfer 18 volosts from these two districts to Belarus, instructing a bilateral commission on site to determine the exact borders.
The protocol of the meeting of this bilateral commission, which took place in Minsk on January 8, 1924, shows how the Smolensk delegation, led by provincial executive committee member Popov, haggled over every village.
The Belarusian side (People's Commissar of Labor Osip Nodel, Chairman of the BSSR State Planning Committee Osip Dyla, and Head of the Central Statistical Bureau Mikhail Shkuber) demanded the transfer of the entire Gorki district and four volosts of Mstislavl district with an absolute Belarusian majority according to the census: Shamovskaya (98% Belarusians), Staroselskaya (97%), Kazimir-Slobodskaya (96%), and Oslyanskaya (54%), with border adjustments along parts of Soyenskaya and Bokhatskaya volosts.
Smolensk representative Popov at the Minsk meeting, and following him the Presidium of the Smolensk Provincial Executive Committee in a protocol dated January 12 and a letter to Yenukidze dated January 29, 1924, presented a counter-ultimatum.
Firstly, they stated that there had been an «error» in the Moscow protocol and that it should refer not to 18, but only to 8 volosts.
Secondly, Smolensk categorically refused to cede any parts of Mstislavl district, arguing that with the departure of four volosts and the city of Mstislavl, the remaining part of the district would lose its economic center, and the national census statistics were «very shaky.»
Thirdly, even in Gorki district, the Smolensk authorities demanded to keep the northeastern volosts — Lyadyanskaya, Leninskaya (formerly Romanovskaya), and the eastern part of Gorskaya volost, citing that they previously belonged to Krasninsky district, and in some other volosts of the district (Maslakovskaya, Dubravlyanskaya, Rasnyanskaya), the percentage of Russians allegedly varied from 62% to 98%.
Smolensk's attempt to cut off the Leninskaya and Drybinskaya volosts from Gorki affected the region's main agrarian scientific center — the Gorki Agricultural Institute (now the Belarusian State Agricultural Academy). Professor Vladislav Kirkor, a representative of the institute present at the Minsk meeting, was forced to ask the commission not to sever these volosts from Gorki, as it was there that the institute's educational farms and estates were located.
To this, the Smolensk Provincial Executive Committee, in its protocol of January 12, responded with another initiative: if Gorki was to be transferred to Belarus, then the Gorki Agricultural Institute should be removed from Minsk's subordination, declared an institution «of inter-republican significance,» and directly subordinated to the Chief Vocational Education Department of the RSFSR in Moscow.
In this dispute, Moscow supported Minsk: according to the agreement in Mstislavl on February 24, 1924, both the entire Gorki district with the institute, and the city of Mstislavl with its adjacent volosts, became part of the BSSR.
However, the border in Mstislavl district was drawn directly through the living body of the surrounding villages. Already on March 24, 1924, the peasants of the Biziuki farmsteads in the Oslyanskaya volost wrote a desperate petition to the Mstislavl Executive Committee: their lands were only four versts from Mstislavl, but the new border cut them off into the Smolensk Governorate and assigned them to the city of Roslavl, which required a journey of 95 versts.
To Spite Poland. Why the Kremlin Decided to «Make a Sacrifice» and Cede Lands to Minsk
The most valuable document in the archival case is the transcript of the closed part of the commission meeting on December 18, 1923, where the commission chairman and secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, Abel Yenukidze, decided to stop disputes about economics and statistics. He proposed that those present speak «completely frankly on the issue at hand, due to the fact that only communists are present at this meeting.»
Yenukidze's speech rips off all propaganda masks from Soviet national policy of the 1920s. The high-ranking Bolshevik openly admitted that the Moscow leadership considered Belarusian language and culture inferior to Russian, saw nothing wrong with the Russification of the East Belarusian governorates, and sincerely believed that the local population would vote in a referendum to remain in Russia.
However, the geopolitical necessity to destabilize Poland, where millions of Western Belarusians lived, outweighed all other arguments.
This fragment of the transcript should be quoted in full:
«Comrade YENUKIDZE: Undoubtedly, the historical size of the Belarusian republic is larger than what we currently have both in the BSSR itself and in its foreign part.
In resolving this issue, we must proceed from the current situation. The vast majority of the population of the departing governorates, although consciously identifying themselves as Belarusians, due to many historical conditions, assimilated into Russian culture, because Russian culture is superior and gradually it displaced the Belarusian language and way of life, and now we have a predominance of Great Russians there. By reassigning them to Belarus, in the absence of a sufficient number of workers in the field of cultural and educational work, we are thereby associating this population with a lower culture. We must speak frankly here. This is a breaking of the population, and I understand the fear of Belarusians: children understand Russian better than Belarusian, and from the point of view of culture and the people's interest, we are making a sacrifice that cannot pass absolutely painlessly.
But in this case, we are guided by political considerations, by which we must enlarge the BSSR — to draw the attention of foreign borderlands. So, based on this, we cede this population to the BSSR, enlarge it, and thereby demonstrate a certain national policy of Soviet power.
There is Polish dominance there, and the government is pursuing it with even greater determination than in tsarist times. We are interested in attracting the attention of millions of Belarusians in Poland. This is what we are doing. The question is settled.»
We cannot resolve this issue on the basis of a plebiscite (and I am confident that if this plebiscite were conducted by impartial persons, the majority, due to consolidation, would express themselves in favor of remaining within the RSFSR), for political reasons.»
These words of Yenukidze explain both the half-hearted nature of the 1924 enlargement process itself, which the émigré Prime Minister of the BNR, Vaclav Lastovsky, then called «the third division of Belarus in half between Muscovy and Minsk» in the Kaunas magazine «Kryvich,» and the subsequent failure of Belarusianization in those districts that remained part of the RSFSR — in the Smolensk, Pskov, and Bryansk governorates.
As soon as foreign policy priorities changed in the Kremlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and instead of courting national movements abroad, accelerated industrialization and the fight against «national democratism» began, the need to «make a sacrifice» for Belarusian culture disappeared.
In 1929, the very Western Oblast with its center in Smolensk, which opponents of the BSSR's enlargement had dreamed of in 1923, was formed from parts of the Smolensk, Bryansk, and Pskov governorates, and all formally opened Belarusian schools and village councils there were liquidated by 1933.
However, the territories that Belarusian communists managed to snatch from the Russian provincial bureaucracy in March 1924 (about 58 thousand square kilometers with a population of over 2.6 million people) and supplement with Gomel and Rechytsa in 1926, formed the eastern edge of modern Belarus.
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Comments
А вы пагаджаліся з пакорлівасцю. Па сённяшні дзень.
1. Адмаўляць самое існаванне беларусаў і права на ўласную дзяржаву.
2. Абагульняць па-расісцкі горшыя паводзіны горшых прадстаўнікоў за нібыта прыроджаныя рысы ўсіх беларусаў.
3. Папракаць беларусаў тым, што іх акупавалі, іх рэпрэсуюць, іх знішчаюць.
Можна параўнаць з аналагічным падыходам расейскіх імперцаў па ўкраінцах: 1. "Украіну прыдумаў Ленін". 2. "Хахлы" і сістэма папрокаў, анекдотаў, дэгуманізацыі. 3. "Самі вінаватыя, што на вас напалі".
Сумна, што нават пад істотнымі факталагічнымі матэрыяламі ў абмеркаваннях усё роўна эмацыйная сметніца, вой, папрокі, прэтэнзіі, базарнае.