It is good where we are
Western Byelorussia before and after 1939: feel the difference
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The President of Belarus,
Aleksandr Lukashenko,
“We will remember — we cannot otherwise — and remind everyone that when in alliance with the East Slavic neighbours (Kievan Rus, the Russian Empire, the USSR), the Belarusian lands developed, while in the arms of the West, where we were more than once, we declined and degraded as a nation. We were robbed and destroyed as an ethnic group both in the time of the Rzeczpospolita (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) and during the 20-year period when Poland ruled over our western lands — the lands that even today the Polish elites call their Kresy Wschodnie [Eastern Borderlands].”
From a speech at the patriotic forum This is OUR History!
on September 17th, 2022
Aleksandr Lukashenko,
“We will remember — we cannot otherwise — and remind everyone that when in alliance with the East Slavic neighbours (Kievan Rus, the Russian Empire, the USSR), the Belarusian lands developed, while in the arms of the West, where we were more than once, we declined and degraded as a nation. We were robbed and destroyed as an ethnic group both in the time of the Rzeczpospolita (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) and during the 20-year period when Poland ruled over our western lands — the lands that even today the Polish elites call their Kresy Wschodnie [Eastern Borderlands].”
From a speech at the patriotic forum This is OUR History!
on September 17th, 2022
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.
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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
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issue of the Białystok newspaper to residents
of the Belarusian village of Batyachki, 1939
According to statistics, there were 103 theatres in Poland in 1936. Of those, 67 were Polish, 16 were Russian and Ukrainian, and 15 — Jewish. There were no Lithuanian or Byelorussian theatres at all.
After the liberation of Western Byelorussia, theatrical life was noticeably revived. The Polesie Regional Drama Theatre was established in Pinsk in the autumn of 1939. From 1939 until the beginning of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War, the State Polish Theatre operated in Grodno since a significant part of the local population understood the Polish language better.
In 1939-1941, 100 cinemas, 92 cultural centres, and 220 libraries were opened in Western Byelorussia. Byelorussian-language periodicals appeared in all regional cities and district centres.
After the liberation of Western Byelorussia, theatrical life was noticeably revived. The Polesie Regional Drama Theatre was established in Pinsk in the autumn of 1939. From 1939 until the beginning of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War, the State Polish Theatre operated in Grodno since a significant part of the local population understood the Polish language better.
In 1939-1941, 100 cinemas, 92 cultural centres, and 220 libraries were opened in Western Byelorussia. Byelorussian-language periodicals appeared in all regional cities and district centres.
Agricultural industry
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Increase in potato acreage, 1913-1940
BSSR (east) — +89 %
Western Byelorussia — +13 %
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Collective farmers of the BSSR, 1940 — 24kg
Poland, 1938 — 22.4kg
Peasants of Poland, 1938 — 15kg
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Well-to-do peasants — 5%
Middle-class peasants — 15%
Poor peasants — 80%
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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.
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Medicine
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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
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Western Byelorussia, 1939
Medical assistance to the population was provided mainly by paramedics and its accessibility to the villagers was extremely low. In the Polesie Voivodeship, one site was responsible for 46,000 inhabitants and 1,675 sq.km; in Novogrudok — 47,000 inhabitants and 1,235 sq.km. There was no sanitary service at all and its functions were assigned to district and neighbourhood doctors. There were no anti-tuberculosis, anti-venereal, or children’s clinics.
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.
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By Aleksandr Nesterov