Bezhenstvo

After the breakthrough at Gorlice the Russian army retreated from the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, using scorched-earth tactics. The authorities evacuated offices, factories and workers, carried off property and either removed the population or drove it to flee with tales of German atrocities. Historians put the number of refugees at 2–3 million. Most were Orthodox Belarusians and Ukrainians, especially from the Grodno province, but Poles, Jews and Latvians left too. In some districts east of Białystok up to 80 per cent of the inhabitants went.

The refugees ended up in towns and villages all over Russia, as far as Siberia. A large share of them died on the way or in exile from disease and hunger. Those who survived returned in 1918–1921, often to ruined farms in the reborn Poland. For a long time the memory of bezhenstvo survived only in families; it was more widely recalled only around its centenary.