Belarusian People's Republic

On the morning of 25 March 1918, in Minsk, occupied by the Germans five weeks earlier, the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic adopted its third legislative charter (the Third Constituent Charter). In it the Rada declared that the Belarusian People’s Republic was an independent and free state, and broke all former state ties with Russia. It was the first act proclaiming an independent Belarusian state. The new state, however, had no army, no recognition and no real power in the lands it claimed.

From congress to republic

In 1917 the Belarusian national movement was weaker than the Ukrainian or Lithuanian one, but after the February Revolution it organised itself quickly. In December 1917 the First All-Belarusian Congress met in Minsk and demanded self-government and democratic authority for Belarus. The Bolsheviks dispersed it after a few days, but its executive committee survived underground. On 21 February 1918, a few hours before the Germans entered Minsk, the committee proclaimed itself, in its first charter, the only legitimate authority in the country, and appointed a government, the People’s Secretariat of Belarus (PL), headed by Jazep Varonka.

The second charter, of 9 March, proclaimed the Belarusian People’s Republic in the lands where Belarusians formed the majority, and promised democratic freedoms, but not yet independence. Meanwhile, on 3 March at Brest, Soviet Russia had signed a peace in which no one had asked the Belarusians for their opinion. The demarcation line cut across their lands, and their fate was henceforth to be decided by Germany and Russia. It was then that the supporters of a complete break with Russia prevailed. In March the executive committee transformed itself into the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic, to which representatives of the national minorities and of local self-government were co-opted. The chairman of the Rada was Ivan Serada.

A night in Minsk

The Rada’s session began on 24 March at eight in the evening and lasted all night. The motion to declare independence was argued by Arkadź Smolič. It was opposed by representatives of Russian and Polish zemstvo activists and of the Jewish Bund, who wanted a union with Russia or autonomy, while some Jewish socialists and Russian Socialist Revolutionaries abstained. The zemstvo faction announced its withdrawal from the Rada. At about eight in the morning of 25 March the majority adopted the charter. “From this moment the Belarusian People’s Republic proclaims itself an independent and free state,” the act declared.

The charter listed the lands to which the republic laid claim: the Mogilev region and the Belarusian parts of the Minsk, Vitebsk, Grodno (with Grodno and Białystok), Vilna, Smolensk and Chernigov regions, as well as adjacent areas inhabited by Belarusians. The Rada also rejected the division of the Belarusian lands agreed at Brest and demanded a revision of the treaty.

A republic under occupation

The Germans had no intention of recognising the new state. Chancellor Georg von Hertling declared that the Reich regarded the occupied Belarusian lands as part of Russia and, in accordance with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, could not recognise any state in them without the consent of the Russian government. The occupation authorities tolerated the Rada and the Secretariat, and in time allowed them to run schools, social welfare and some economic affairs, but did not agree to the creation of a Belarusian army. Soviet Russia did not recognise the republic either.

For the Poles the proclamation was a signal that in the former lands of the Commonwealth yet another national movement was growing up, laying claim to areas they regarded as Polish. The Minsk region had numerous Polish landowners, and not far away, at Bobruisk, stood the I Polish Corps of General Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, recognised by the Germans as neutral. The claims to Grodno, Białystok and the Vilna region put the republic in conflict with Polish aspirations.

The Belarusian People’s Republic survived in Minsk only until the end of the occupation. When the Germans withdrew in December 1918, the city was taken by the Bolsheviks, and the republic’s activists moved to Grodno, then into exile. Their lands were divided in 1921 between Poland and Soviet Russia by the Treaty of Riga. The Rada of the BPR is active in exile to this day, and Belarusians opposed to Lukashenko’s rule celebrate 25 March as Freedom Day.