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Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic

The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, or Byelorussian SSR;[d] Belarusian: Беларуская Савецкая Сацыялістычная Рэспубліка;[e] Russian: Белорусская Советская Социалистическая Республика),[f] also known as Byelorussia, Belarusian SSR, Soviet Belarus, or simply Belarus, was a republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1991 as one of fifteen constituent republics of the USSR, with its legislation from 1990 to 1991. The republic was ruled by the Communist Party of Byelorussia and was also referred to as Soviet Byelorussia or Soviet Belarus by some historians.[3] Other names for Byelorussia included White Russia or White Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.[4]

Not to be confused with the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia that existed in 1919.

Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic[a]
Беларуская Савецкая Сацыялістычная Рэспубліка (Belarusian)
Белорусская Советская Социалистическая Республика (Russian)

1920–1922:
Nominally independent state
1922–1990:
Union Republic
1990–1991:
Union Republic with priority of Byelorussian legislation

Smolensk (1—6 January 1919),
Minsk (since 7 January 1919)

State atheism

Byelorussian, Soviet

 

Vilgelm Knorin

Yefrem Sokolov

 

Alexander Chervyakov

Stanislav Shushkevich

 

Alexander Chervyakov

Vyacheslav Kebich

Congress of Soviets (1920–1938)
Supreme Soviet (1938–1991)

 

1 January 1919

31 July 1920

30 December 1922

15 November 1939

24 October 1945

27 July 1990

25 August 1991

19 September 1991

10 December 1991

26 December 1991

15 March 1994

207,600 km2 (80,200 sq mi)

10,199,709

Soviet rouble (Rbl) (SUR)

+7 015/016/017/02

Belarus
Lithuania[c]
Poland
Russia

To the west it bordered Poland. Within the Soviet Union, it bordered the Lithuanian SSR and the Latvian SSR to the north, the Russian SFSR to the east, and the Ukrainian SSR to the south.


The Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia (SSRB) was declared by the Bolsheviks on 1 January 1919 following the declaration of independence by the Belarusian Democratic Republic in March 1918. In 1922, the BSSR was one of the four founding members of the Soviet Union, together with the Ukrainian SSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Byelorussia was one of several Soviet republics occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II.


Towards the final years of the Soviet Union's existence, the Supreme Soviet of Byelorussian SSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty in 1990. On 25 August 1991, the Byelorussian SSR declared independence, and on 19 September it was renamed the Republic of Belarus. The Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991.

Terminology[edit]

The term Byelorussia (Russian: Белору́ссия), derives from the term Belaya Rus' , i.e., White Rus'. There are several claims to the origin of the name White Rus'.[5] An ethno-religious theory suggests that the name used to describe the part of old Ruthenian lands within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that had been populated mostly by early Christianized Slavs, as opposed to Black Ruthenia, which was predominantly inhabited by pagan Balts.[6]


The latter part similar but spelled and stressed differently from Росси́я (Russia), first rose in the days of the Russian Empire, and the Russian Tsar was usually styled "the Tsar of All the Russias", as Russia or the Russian Empire was formed by three parts of Russia—the Great, Little, and White.[7] This asserted that the territories are all Russian and all the peoples are also Russian; in the case of the Belarusians, that they were variants of the Russian people.[8]


Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the term "White Russia" caused some confusion as it became the name of the so-called White military force that opposed the Red Bolsheviks.[9] During the period of the Byelorussian SSR, the term Byelorussia was embraced as part of a national consciousness. In western Belarus, under Polish control until World War II, Byelorussia became commonly used in the regions of Białystok and Grodno.[10] Upon the establishment of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1920, the term Byelorussia (its names in other languages such as English being based on the Russian form) was only used officially. In 1936, with the proclamation of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, the republic was renamed to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.


On 19 September 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR renamed the Soviet republic to the Republic of Belarus, with the short form "Belarus". Conservative forces in the newly independent Belarus did not support the name change and opposed its inclusion in the 1991 draft of the Constitution of Belarus.[11]

– 81%

Belarusians

– 16%

Poles

– 5%

Lithuanians

– about 1%

Ukrainians

Jews – about 1%

– <1%

Russians

According to the 1959 Soviet Census, the population of the republic were made up as follows:


Ethnicities (1959):


The largest cities were:

Captive Nations

Belarusization

Russification of Belarus

Baranova, Olga (2008). "Nationalism, anti-Bolshevism or the will to survive? Collaboration in Belarus under the Nazi occupation of 1941–1944". European Review of History. 15 (2): 113–128. :10.1080/13507480801931044. S2CID 144785016.

doi

Bekus, Nelly. Struggle over Identity: The Official and the Alternative "Belarussianness" (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010);

Bemporad, Elissa. Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Indiana UP, 2013).

Epstein, Barbara. The Minsk Ghetto 1941–1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism (U of California Press, 2008).

Guthier, Steven L. (1977). "The Belorussians: National identification and assimilation, 1897–1970: Part 1, 1897–1939". Soviet Studies. 29 (1): 37–61. :10.1080/09668137708411105.

doi

Horak, Stephan M. (1974). "Belorussia: Modernization, Human Rights, Nationalism". Canadian Slavonic Papers. 16 (3): 403–423. :10.1080/00085006.1974.11091370.

doi

Lubachko, Ivan (1972). . University Press of Kentucky.

Belorussia under Soviet Rule, 1917–1957

Marples, David R. (1985). (PDF). Canadian Slavonic Papers. 27 (2): 158–177. doi:10.1080/00085006.1985.11091799.

"Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia Under Soviet Occupation: The Development of Socialist Farming, 1939–1941"

Marples, David (2014). 'Our Glorious Past': Lukashenka's Belarus and the Great Patriotic War. Columbia University Press.  978-3838205748.

ISBN

Olson, James Stuart; Pappas, Lee Brigance; Pappas, Nicholas C.J. (1994). Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires. Greenwood Press.  0-313-27497-5.

ISBN

Plokhy, Serhii (2001). . Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924739-0.

The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine

Richmond, Yale (1995). . Intercultural Press. ISBN 1-877864-30-7.

From Da to Yes: Understanding the East Europeans

Rudling, Pers Anders. The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906–1931 (University of Pittsburgh Press; 2014) 436pp

online review

Silitski, Vitali & Jan Zaprudnik (2010). . Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9781461731740.

The A to Z of Belarus

Smilovitsky, Leonid (1997). "Righteous Gentiles, the Partisans, and Jewish Survival in Belorussia, 1941–1944". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 11 (3): 301–329. :10.1093/hgs/11.3.301.

doi

Snyder, Timothy (1 December 2004). The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (1 ed.). Yale University Press.  978-0300105865.

ISBN

Szporluk, Roman (1979). (PDF). Soviet Studies. 31 (1): 76–98. doi:10.1080/09668137908411225.

"West Ukraine and west Belorussia: Historical tradition, social communication, and linguistic assimilation"

Szporluk, Roman (1967). "The press in Belorussia, 1955–65". Soviet Studies. 18 (4): 482–493. :10.1080/09668136708410553.

doi

Urban, Michael E. (1989). An Algebra of Soviet Power: Elite Circulation in the Belorussian Republic 1966-86. Cambridge University Press.  978-0521372565.

ISBN

Vakar, Nicholas Platonovich. Belorussia: the making of a nation: a case study (Harvard UP, 1956).

Vakar, Nicholas Platonovich. A bibliographical guide to Belorussia (Harvard UP, 1956).

Wexler, Paul (1985). "Belorussification, Russification and Polonization Trends in the Belorussian Language 1890–1982". In Kreindler, Isabelle T. (ed.). Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Soviet National Languages: Their Past, Present and Future. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 37–56. :10.1515/9783110864380. ISBN 9783110864380.

doi

Zaprudnik, Jan (1993). . Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-1794-0. Archived from the original on 2 May 2016.

Belarus: At A Crossroads In History

Zejmis, Jakub (1997). "Belarus in the 1920s: Ambiguities of National Formation". Nationalities Papers. 25 (2): 243–254. :10.1080/00905999708408501. S2CID 153635749.

doi

by Tikhon Kiselev.

Byelorussia : speeding towards abundance

54°00′00″N 29°00′00″E / 54.0000°N 29.0000°E / 54.0000; 29.0000