Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belorussia

Background After the end of World War I in November 1918, Soviet Russia began a westward offensive following the retreating German Army. It attempted to spread the global proletarian revolution and sought to establish Soviet republics in Eastern Europe. By the end of December 1918, Bolshevik forces reached Lithuania. The Bolsheviks saw the Baltic states as a barrier or a bridge into Western Europe, where they could join the German and the Hungarian Revolutions. The Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania was proclaimed on 16 December 1918 and the Socialist Soviet Republic of Belorussia (SSRB) was established on 1 January 1919. On 16 January 1919, as the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) issued two resolutions affecting the two new Soviet republics of the western frontier; one calling for the unification of Soviet Lithuania and Soviet Belorussia and the other calling for the transfer of the Vitebsk Governorate, the Smolensk Governorate and the Mogilev Governorate from the Belorussian Soviet republic to Soviet Russia. On 22 January 1919 Adolph Joffe arrived in Minsk, as the representative of the Moscow centre with a mission to bring order among the infighting Bolshevik leadership in Belorussia. The Central Executive Committee of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR) was represented at the congress by its chairman Yakov Sverdlov. At the congress the delegations from Mogilev, Smolensk, Vitebsk withdrew from the proceedings, demanding that their governorates be re-integrated in the RSFSR. The congress subsequently determined that the territory of the SSRB would be limited to the Minsk Governorate and the Grodno Governorate. A unification congress of the Communist Party of Lithuania and Belorussia (Old Occupation) and the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Belorussia was held in Vilna 4–6 March 1919, merging the two parties under the name of the former. On the agrarian front, the party unification congress decided against the break-up of confiscated estates. Evacuation to Minsk As the Polish army advanced towards Vilna, the Council of People's Commissars set up the Defense Council of the SSR LiB. The Defense Council stayed in Minsk. On 13 July 1919, Joseph Stalin, who had arrived to supervise the Western Front, proposed dissolving the SSR LiB Defense Council and Council of People's Commissars. Fall of Minsk and Bobruisk On 8 August 1919, Polish forces seized Minsk. By September 1919 Polish-Soviet front had stabilized on along the line of the Western Dvina–Ptsich–Berezina rivers. Klishevsky was named as the provisional secretary of the Belorussian Military Revolutionary Committee. Participation of A. Trofimov of the in the Belorussian Military Revolutionary Committee was foreseen. The next day, on 31 July 1920, the foundation of the Belorussian Socialist Soviet Republic (BSSR) was announced at a ceremony in Minsk. The border between the Poland and the BSSR was eventually determined by the 1921 Peace of Riga, which left territories with significant Belorussian populations on the Polish side of the border. ==Government==

used by the Cheka in Lit-Bel, 1919 Formally the SSR LiB was a sovereign state. De facto Russian was the predominant language in public affairs, notably being the language of the Red Army soldiers. 91 out of the 100 members of the Central Executive Committee were communists. The Central Executive Committee elected a Presidium with Kazimierz Cichowski as its chairman and Józef Unszlicht as its deputy chairman. --> • Commissar for Labor: Semyon Dimanstein (Vaclovas Biržiška, who had been the People's Commissar for Education in the Lithuanian soviet government, was named Deputy Commissar for Education) • Commissar for Finance: Yitzhak Weinstein-Branovsky Defense Council The SSR LiB Defense Council formed on 19 April 1919, included Mickevičius-Kapsukas (chairman) Unszlicht and Kalmanovich. The SSR LiB Defense Council worked under the guidance of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania and Belorussia, which had Mickevičius-Kapsukas as its chairman and Knorin as its secretary. Prominent participants in the activities of the SSR LiB Defense Council included Waclaw Bogucki, , , Aleksa-Angarietis, Doletsky and Ivanov. ==Administrative divisions==

is marked in pink. The Rechitsky Uyezd is marked in grey.The republic sought to govern the Vilna Governorate, the Kovno Governorate, the Minsk Governorate, Grodno Governorate (except the Belostoksky Uyezd, the Belsky Uyezd and the Sokolsky Uyezd) and the Suvalsky Governorate (except the and the ) – territories with a total population of about six million. On 16 April 1919 the Rechitsky Uyezd of Minsk Governorate was transferred to the RSFSR. Only the Minsk Governorate had a provincial-level administration. The Minsk Governorate Military Revolutionary Committee (Mingubvoyenrevkom) was set-up as the provincial-level government for Minsk Governorate and Vileysky Uyezd (which had belonged to the Vilna Governorate). Other governorates had only Military Commissariats at provincial level. Mingubvoyenrevkom had its own commissariats. Moreover, the Mingubvoyenrevkom would often by-pass the SSR LiB government and deal directly with the RSFSR Council of People's Commissars. The Mingubvoyenrevkom was abolished once the SSR LiB capital was moved to Minsk. Apart from the areas governed by the Mingubvoyenrevkom during the first weeks of the SSR LiB, uyezd administrations were supervised directly by the SSR LiB government. Local governments functioned along an uyezd-volost-village soviet scheme. After the evacuation of the SSR LiB government to Minsk the supervision of city and uyezd administrations were managed directly by the Defense Council. ==State symbols==

The Council of People's Commissars adopted a plain red cloth as the merchant and military flag of the republic. ==Economy==

The economy of the short-lived republic was in distress. War, German occupation and population displacements had disrupted industrial and agricultural production, in the weeks preceding the foundation of the republic famine prevailed in the area. Seeking to revive production, the SSR LiB government implemented a policy of war communism. Nationalizations had begun with of factories with absentee owners in January–February 1919, eventually all economic activities were nationalized. The local peasantry rejected confiscations and resisted cooperation with the soviet authorities. The Communist Party deployed military and paramilitary forces to seize farm produce to counter the food shortage in the cities, further aggravating hostilities between the government and the agrarian sectors. By June 1919 famine prevailed in the republic. In spite of the local food shortages the SSR LiB was pressured by the RSFSR to provide food supplies to Soviet Russia and the Red Army, which caused tensions between the leaderships of the two soviet republics. ==Army==

The Lithuanian-Belorussian Army, designated as the armed forces of the SSR LiB, was formed on 13 March 1919 on the basis of the Russian Western Army. Filipp Mironov served as acting commander until 9 June 1919. ==Culture==

As the Red Army had seized Vilna, the Moscow centre directed much of the Jewish Commissariat (Evkom) staff to move to the new Litbel capital to win over the Yiddishist intelligentsia there. Daniel Charney, under supervisor of Commissar , was charged with overseeing Yiddish-language cultural activities; attempting to reorganize a central Soviet Yiddish library (gathering materials from expropriated archives), publishing Yiddish language educational and cultural periodicals and absorbing the Vilna Troupe into an SSR LiB Yiddish state theatre. ==Historiography==

Puppet, paper or buffer state? Different historians have provided different explanations as to why the SSR LiB was founded. Jan Zaprudnik emphasized that the creation of the Litbel republic was a move done by Soviet Russia in the view of territorial competition with Poland over Lithuania and Belorussia. Borzęcki argues that there were no ethnic Belorussians in the Litbel government. Nicholas Vakar argued that the Litbel republic represented a compromise between separatists, federalists, and supporters of a Lithuanian-Belorussian state. Smith affirms that as the Vilnius region was ethnically diverse and contested between competing nationalisms, by creating a joint Litbel republic the Soviet leadership could avoid assigning Vilna to neither Lithuania nor Belorussia. Smith (1999) also highlights the possibility of nostalgia over the Grand Duchy of Lithuania having functioned as a rationale for Litbel, noting that as of 1915 the idea of a Lithuanian-Belorussian union had championed by Belorussian nationalists with German backing and that such a union could have been perceived as having a potential to attract support from nationalist trends. Smith argues that the SSR LiB might have been retained as a formality until 1921. ==See also==