Belarusization in Russian Regions in the 1920s in Modern Russian Historiography

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The article presents a historiographical review of publications on the policy of Belarusization carried out in the Russian regions in the 1920s. This work does not address the publications of Belarusian and foreign researchers on the practice of implementing the new Soviet national policy within the territorial borders of the Belarusian Republic. The main attention is paid to the three Russian provinces bordering Belarus – Pskov, Smolensk and Bryansk. At the same time, the eastern territories of the RSFSR – the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East, where Belarusians found themselves as a result of the resettlement policy, especially at the beginning of the 20th century during the Stolypin agrarian reform, were not ignored. Belarusization, as part of the general policy of Korenization, proclaimed in 1923 at the XII Congress of the Russian Communist Party (b), in modern research is closely linked to the need to show new principles and directions of Soviet national policy for the development of Belarusian statehood and culture in contrast to the all-out polonization carried out by the Pilsudski government in Western Ukrainian and Belarusian lands ceded to Poland by the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921. A significant role in this process was assigned to the expansion of the state borders of the BSSR at the expense of Russian territories, especially in 1924 and 1926. However, Belarusization did not find any real support from the local authorities, who considered Belarusians to be part of the Russian population until the end of the 1920s, as well as due to the significant self-Russification of the Belarusian population in the Russian regions that had already taken place by the middle of the decade. Formally, these tasks were constantly on the agenda of the party and Soviet authorities in the second half of the 1920s. But they have not received any significant practical implementation.