Western Belorussia or Western Belarus is a historical region of modern-day Belarus which belonged to the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period. For twenty years before the 1939 invasion of Poland, it was the northern part of the Polish Kresy macroregion. Following the end of World War II in Europe, most of Western Belorussia was ceded to the Soviet Union by the Allies, while some of it, including Białystok, was given to the Polish People's Republic. Until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Western Belorussia formed the western part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). Today, it constitutes the west of modern Belarus.
Children gathered at the dining hall of the Belarusian Gymnasium of Vilnia, Poland, 1935
Polish families deported to Siberia after the Soviet annexation of the eastern regions of the Second Polish Republic.
Residents of a town in Eastern Poland (now Western Belorussia) assembled to greet the arrival of the Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. The Russian text reads "Long Live the great theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin-Stalin". Such welcomings were organized by the activists of the Communist Party of West Belarus affiliated with the Communist Party of Poland, delegalized in both countries by 1938.
Belarusian is an East Slavic language. It is one of the two official languages in Belarus, alongside Russian. Additionally, it is spoken in some parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine by Belarusian minorities in those countries.
The Casimir's Code of 1468, in Ruthenian
The third Lithuanian statute of 1588, all three written in Ruthenian
Ruthenian Bible by Francysk Skaryna, 1517, first ever book printed in Eastern Europe
The cover of the copy of the Dictionary of the Belarusian Local Tongue by Ivan Nasovič preserved at the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum