Activities of the BSH 1917–1924

The activities of the BSH intensified after the February and October revolutions in Russia. On the initiative of the BSH, the Belarusian People's Republic (BNR) was proclaimed in March 1918 as an independent democratic state.

In the spring of 1918, for ideological and political reasons, the BSH split into three parts.

Marxists created a social-democratic party. It was headed by the Luckievič brothers, Arkadź Smolič, and Branisłaŭ Taraškievič. In 1919, a draft program of the party was developed. The text of this document has not yet been discovered. A popular exposition of the BSDP program has reached us“The Belarusian Social-Democratic Party, its goals and tasks”. The author of this document is Arkadź Smolič.

The Belarusian Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (Tamaš Hryb, Pielahieja Badunova, Jazep Mamońka, later Vacłaŭ Lastoŭski joined the party) united the Narodniks, while the federalists created the Belarusian Party of Socialist-Federalists (Piotr Kračeŭski, Vasil Zacharka, Alaksandr Ćvikievič).

It so happened that social democrats played leading roles in the public life of Belarus. Jazep Losik headed the Rada of the BNR from July 1918, and the actual leader of the BSDP, A. Luckievič, headed the coalition socialist government of the BNR from November 1918 to February 28, 1920, and was the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between the RSFSR and Germany (March 3, 1918), almost the entire territory of Belarus was occupied by German troops. The German government did not recognize the BNR as a state, but did not prevent its leadership from engaging in cultural-educational, informational, and economic work.

The BNR government informed the governments of other states about the will of the Belarusians and rejected attempts by foreign politicians to consider the territory of Belarus as a no-man's land subject to division. A government commission, created by the social democrats, defined the ethnic borders of Belarus. In 1918–1920, a Belarusian theater and a pedagogical institute, several dozen Belarusian schools, a gymnasium, and pro-gymnasiums for girls operated in Minsk. The Rada and the government of the BNR prepared the opening of a university and other educational and cultural institutions, contributing to the development of the national identity of the population of Belarus.

After the capitulation of Germany in World War I, its troops left Belarus. Russian Soviet troops immediately entered the eastern part of the country. At the end of 1918, the BNR leaders left Minsk for Hrodna, where German authority was maintained (in the spring of 1919, at the request of Great Britain and France, the German command allowed the Polish Army to enter the western part of Belarus).

Prime Minister A. Luckievič defended the interests of Belarus at the Peace Conference in Paris, in negotiations with the leadership of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the head of the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic Christian Rakovsky, President of Czechoslovakia Tomáš G. Masaryk, Chief of the Polish State Józef Piłsudski, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia (government of Admiral Alexander Kolchak) Sergey Sazonov, and statesmen of other countries. He also had personal contacts with Karl Kautsky.

The great powers were deaf to the demands of the BNR government. They gave Belarus over to the mercy of Bolshevik and Polish imperialism. The leaders of the BNR protested in vain against the unfair terms of the Treaty of Riga of 1921.

And yet, the fact of the proclamation of the BNR and the active work of its government forced Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership of Russia to abandon the openly Russifying policy of Tsarism and proclaim the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). Former members of the BSH, Zmicier Žylunovič, Jazep Dyła, Alaksandr Čarviakoŭ, and Fabijan Šantyr, joined its government alongside the Bolsheviks. Zmicier Žylunovič headed the government of the republic in 1919, and Alaksandr Čarviakoŭ was the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the BSSR in 1920–1937 (in 1920–1924 also the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars).

Thus, it was the social democrats who stood at the origins of modern Belarusian statehood.

The leaders of Belarusian social democracy (including those who moved to Bolshevik positions) were almost all shot or died in Stalinist camps (Zm. Žylunovič and A. Čarviakoŭ committed suicide).