It is good where we are

Western Byelorussia before and after 1939: feel the difference

Education

In the territories of Western Byelorussia in 1921-1939, Poland pursued a national assimilation policy and prohibited everything that emphasised the national identity of the local population. At the time of the region’s annexation to Poland, there were about 400 Byelorussian schools, two teachers’ seminaries, and secondary schools in Wilno, Novogrudok, Radoshkovichi, Nesvizh, and Kletsk. By 1924, only 37 schools and four gymnasiums remained. Before reunification with the BSSR (Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic), there were no Byelorussian schools left in Western Byelorussia, and the last gymnasium in Wilno was turned into a branch of the Polish state gymnasium. 

With the advent of Soviet power, they began to raise the general level of education and to open Byelorussian schools in Western Byelorussia. Universal compulsory education was fixed: in the city — 7 years, in rural areas — 4 years. Since January 1940, Soviet curricula were introduced in schools in the western regions. New personnel were needed; therefore, pedagogical institutes were opened in the region. By 1941, five teaching institutes had already operated in the western regions of the republic.

Number of schools in eastern and western regions of the BSSR in 1939/1940 academic year 
Eastern regions: Primary schools — 4,668     Incomplete secondary schools — 1,687       Secondary schools — 737
Western regions: Primary schools — 4,495    Incomplete secondary schools —  1,102      Secondary schools — 88 

Culture

In order to build Great Poland, the authorities of our western neighbour country aimed to educate the entire multinational population in the spirit of universal ‘Polishness’. The national culture of Byelorussians was not taken into account. Thus, the theatre in Grodno, which was opened after renovation, staged mainly plays by Polish authors. 

Agricultural industry

Increase in potato acreage, 1913-1940 
BSSR (east) — +89 %
Western Byelorussia — +13 %

Meat consumption per person per year   
Collective farmers of the BSSR, 1940 — 24kg
Poland, 1938 — 22.4kg
Peasants of Poland, 1938 — 15kg

Peasantry in Western Byelorussian lands (as of mid-1930s)
Well-to-do peasants — 5%
Middle-class peasants — 15%
Poor peasants — 80%


About 80 percent of Western Byelorussia’s residents were employed in agriculture. In 1922, 4,500 landowners (0.9 percent of farms) owned nearly 4.7m hectares of land, which accounted for 58 percent of the land fund that was privately owned. Ninety-nine percent of the villagers accounted for only 42 percent of the land. The peasants suffered not only from lack of land but also from heavy taxes, including land, municipal, road, investment, crisis, emergency, insurance, and other taxes. The rural population of the western Byelorussian lands constantly lived in debt. 
In the first Soviet decades, cultivated areas of the BSSR increased and by 1940 amounted to 127 percent compared to the level of 1913. Meanwhile, in the west, they decreased by 0.3 percent between 1930 and 1939. 
The mechanisation of labour in agriculture in the eastern regions of the republic made a significant number of human resources available. By 1937, there were 8,100 tractors, over 700 combine harvesters and 2,200 trucks in the agriculture of the BSSR. 

By 1939, there were 33 tractors and only nine tractor ploughs in landlords’ farms within the borders of Baranovichi Region. According to researchers, there were only 900 tractors in Poland in 1937. For comparison: at the end of 1940, 101 machine and tractor stations were created in the western regions of the BSSR, including 997 tractors.

Guys in Molodechno greeting the Red Army. Western Byelorussia, 1939
Elections to the People's Assembly of Western Byelorussia in Białystok
Election day of deputies to the People's Assembly of Western Byelorussia at a polling station in Baranovichi

Medicine

Number of hospital beds per 10,000 people in 1937
Białystok Voivodeship (Poland) — 13
Wilno Voivodeship (Poland) — 17.4
Novogrudok Voivodeship (Poland) — 5.5
Polesie Voivodeship (Poland) — 7
Poland — 21.1
Byelorussian SSR — 30.3

Healthcare in the territories of Western Byelorussia after 1921 was represented by state, municipal, public, insurance, military and private medicine.  After joining the BSSR, it was required to inculcate the principles of unified public healthcare, expand the network of medical institutions, staff them, and ensure free and accessible medical care. By the beginning of 1941, four children’s hospitals, six children’s polyclinics, 18 children’s consultation centres, 26 maternity clinics, 69 emergency medical stations, 12 anti-tuberculosis and 15 skin and STD clinics had already functioned in the western regions of Byelorussia. 

FACTS AND FIGURES

• According to the Riga peace treaty of March 18th, 1921, more than 110,000 sq.km with a population of over three million people were ceded to Poland. After reunification, the territory of the BSSR increased to 225,700 sq.km, and the population — to over 10m people. 
• The territory of Western Byelorussia occupied 24 percent of the total area of Poland, and the population accounted for 13 percent of the total population, while only three percent of the country’s industrial products were produced there. 
• After the reunification of the Byelorussian territories in 1939, landless peasants of the western regions received 431,000 hectares of land. 
• Ethnic Byelorussians among the landowners of Western Byelorussia were only 8.7 percent. Most of them were small landowners, while large Byelorussian landowners, who had in possession over 1,000 hectares, made up only four percent.  
• As of September 17th, 1939, there were 66 hospitals with 2,989 beds within the borders of Western Byelorussia, as follows from the internal memo of the People’s Commissar of Health of the BSSR, Ivan Novikov, to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia (Bolsheviks), Panteleimon Ponomarenko, on September 11th, 1940. The provision of beds for the population in the BSSR was 70 percent higher than in pre-war Poland.

Dismantling of fortifications on the Soviet-Polish border in 1939

By Aleksandr Nesterov