An edition of documents to mark 70 years since the reunification of Western Belarus and the Belarusian SSR
A compendium of documents has been prepared for publication by Belarusian and Russian archivists jointly with the History Institute of the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences to mark seventy years since the reunification of Western Belarus and the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic.
In addition to the texts of historical content, the book presents rare photographs and facsimile copies of documents selected from the Moscow archives, which were not available so far. These include autographs by Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Ponomarev and Khrushchev, as well as documents indicating that in March, 1941, the Communist Party Politbureau abolished the status of the Belovezhskaia Pushcha (Bialowieza) Forest as a natural reserve, permitting for one million cubic meters of wood to be cut there annually. According to the document, only the sites of palaces and museums and the animal nurseries located in the area of ten thousand hectares had retained he status of the national park
Of importance is a document concerning the People’s Assembly of Western Belarus, testifying that the Assembly was initially planned to be held in Bialystok or in Baranovichi.
The book also presents a photograph showing members of the People’s Assembly Plenipotentiary Commission for Western Belarus together with the USSR leadership in the Big Kremlin Palace.
This book is not the first joint work of Belarusian and Russian archivists. Previously they jointly prepared and published the following titles: “…The Western Special Military District, late 1939-1941”, “The USSR State Committee for Defence has decided…” comprising declassified records of the extraordinary higher authority in the USSR in WWII relating to Belarus, “The Grodno Province. 1919-1926”, “Belarus in the first months of the Great Patriotic War”, “…Evacuation of prisoners from Belarus in 1941”, “Liberated Belarus”, “Documents on Belarusian history in the Special File of J. Stalin” etc.