Soviet Belarus (the BSSR)

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

David Marples; Veronica Laputska

Published:

2026

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

This chapter examines the formation of Soviet Belarus after the First World War, beginning with the Red Army’s occupation of Minsk and the proclamation of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1919. It traces the region’s political instability, the brief LitBel experiment, and the contested Polish-Soviet border that ended with the Treaty of Riga. The chapter explores Belarus’s integration into the USSR, its cultural revival in the 1920s, and Stalin’s purges that devastated party leaders, intellectuals, and ethnic minorities. It investigates the mass executions at Kurapaty, the Night of the Murdered Poets, and the manipulation of historical memory across different regimes. Finally, the chapter details the 1939 reunification of Belarusian lands, the Nazi occupation, Belarusian collaboration, and the particularly brutal unfolding of the Holocaust in Belarus.

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