THE BELARUSIAN PEASANTS’ UNION IN THE INTERWAR WESTERN BELARUS: STRUCTURE AND ACTIVITY

UDC 94(476)1921/1939

  • Gorny Aliaksandr Syargeyevich – PhD (History), Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, the Department of History of Belarus, Archeology and Special Historical Disciplines. Yanka Kupala State University of Grodno (22, Azheshka str., 230023, Grodno, Republic of Belarus). Email: litvin.gorny@gmail.com

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52065/2520-6885-2021-245-1-79-84

Key words: Western Belarus, Poland, the interwar period, the Belarusian national movement, the political party, the Belarusian Peasants’ Union.

For citation: Gorny A. S. The Belarusian Peasants’ Union in the interwar Western Belarus: structure and activity. Proceedings of BSTU, issue 6, History, Philosophy, 2021, no. 1 (245), pp. 79–84 (In Belarusian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.52065/2520-6885-2021-245-1-79-84.

Abstract

The article analyzes the activities of a little-known political structure in interwar Western Belarus – the Belarusian Peasants’ Union, based on the achievements of domestic and foreign historiography, archival sources. The author considers the activities of this organization in the context of European processes of prosperity of agrarian parties and the ideology of agrarianism in the interwar period. The Union was formed in 1925 as a result of a split in the Belarusian Deputates’ Club. The organization united supporters of the national-democracy current of the Belarusian movement and was seen as an alternative to the left-wing Belarusian Peasants’ and Workers’ Hramada. The economic bloc of the program of the Belarusian Peasants’ and Workers’ Union was left-wing political spectrum, but stand up for the formation of an independent Belarusian state on the model of the Belarusian People’s Republic. The article reveals the possible number of its members, the geographical area of its activities, the main political projects in which party activists took a significant part.

In conclusion, it is concluded that the Belarusian Peasants’ Union had a small number of supporters, despite the orientation to the peasant environment of Western Belarus. The Union could not compete with the branched structure of activists of the Belarusian Peasants’ and Workers’ Hramada and its left-wing political spectrum.

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15.02.2021