The Battlefields Fall Silent
So do newspapers and theaters
1920
The Communists finally pushed the Poles out of the city on July 11, 1920, an event which would later be celebrated in the first Belarusian film, Forest Story. The following clip is from near the end of the film. It is preceded by an intertitle that says the date is July 12.
Forest Story clip, 1926, Belgoskino.
Historian of Belarusian nationalism, Per Anders Rudling, wrote about the new Belarusian republic, which was established after the Poles were driven from Minsk: “On July 31, 1920, led by Charviyakov, Knorrin, and Adamovich; the Communist Party of Lithuania and Belarus; (Vsevolod) Ihnatouski’s Belarusian Communist Organization; and the Jewish Bund, led by Arn Vaynshteyn, again declared Belarusian statehood, again under the name of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus, or SSRB. The declaration was made at the Minsk city theater. It was this republic that existed for the next seven decades.”1 (The SSRB was re-named the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic when it became part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the end of 1922, but that is getting ahead of ourselves.)
The Communists wasted little time in asserting their control. The Belarusian Gazette, which was the source of many of the theater advertisements we have previously shown you, disappears from the record. Presumably, it was shut down.
The theaters, too, appear to have been shut down. At least, they did not run ads in the new newsaper. That paper was Zveyazda. On August 24, 1920, it published a notive by Charviyakov requisitioning some, presumably what remained, of the Belarusian cinema establishment.
Minsk, Zvyazda, 24 August 1920.
Source: National Library of Belarus.
The Military Revolution Committee of the S.S.R.B.
All cinematographs on the territory of the Republic of Belarus are nationalized and are the property of the state.
The Department of Public Education is ordered to take over all photographic and cinematic property and all cinematography. Wherever such property is located.
Any transaction with the property mentioned in Clause 2 is prohibited, such as buying, selling, renting, etc.
Former owners of cinemas are obliged to immediately make full payments to all employees and repay all debt obligations of enterprises upon the entry into force of this order.
All employees of cinematographs remain in their positions on the day of publication of this and have no right either to leave the service without permission, or to move to another cinema until the order of the Department of Public Education.
Note: the present does not apply to former owners of film enterprises.
This order will come into force in Minsk from August 24, and locally from the moment of publication.
Those guilty of not carrying out this order or of deviating from its exact discharge will be brought to justice.
Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the S.S.R.B. Charviyakov.
Even as the Belarusian government was taking over the cinemas, the Border War with the Poles and the Civil Wars with the Tsar-supporting White Army continued.
Following the liberation of Minsk, the Red Army chased the Poles to the gates of Warsaw, where on August 16-18, the Polish Army turned the tables and the Poles went back on the offensive. By the time the two sides decided between themselves to stop fighting, Poland occupied the western half of today's Belausian state.2
Defense of Warsaw, 120 mm battery, 1920.
Source: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
General Stanislaw Bulak-Balachovich was not officially associated with either the Poles or the Russians. He claimed he was fighting on behalf of the Belarusian National Republic, which had formed under the German occupation in 1918, and departed when the Germans left after the Armistice.
He drove the Communists out of Pinsk in September 1920. From there, Bulak-Balachovich tried to organize a national, all-Belarusian uprising. He fought from the summer of 1920 through the autumn of 1921, well after the Suwalki Agreement, which ended the fighting between the Communists and the Poles, was signed in October of 1920. In November of 1920, Bulak-Balachovich declared a new Belarusian state. It did not last long. By December 1920, he and his forces had retreated to Poland.3 Bulak-Balachovich is one of the characters in the Belgoskino film Born in Flames, which takes place in the area known as the Polesie, along the Belarusian border with Ukraine.
General Bulak-Balachovich with his dog Wright,
October – November 1919.
Source: http://www.esm.ee/ Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Boris Feodosyev played Bulak-Balachovicz in the Belgoskino film Born in Flames (1930).
The Communists in Belarus continued to consolidate their power. From September 24-27, they held First All-Belarusian Congress of the Komsomol (The Russian Communist Union of Youth). Belarus-born historian Olga Khabibulina writes that, because the Komsomol did not actually take young people, the First All-Belarusian Plenary founded the organization as the KSMD, or the Communist Union of Belarus Youth.4 Below is a tag a delegate would have worn at the Congress.
Архивы Беларуси/Archives of Belarus
Source: See footnote 5.
Peace finally returned to Belarusian territory at the end of 1920. There was still turbulence over the shape and size of the new Belarusian state. Neither Poland nor Soviet Russia had yet signed the 1921 Treaty of Riga, which officially ended their war. But they had agreed that the land that makes up today’s Belarus was to be split between them.5
All that was left of the SSRB in 1920 was only a tiny, arrowhead shaped land of few square miles that contained only Minsk as a major city. The cinemas were under control of the Belarusian government but there was still no separate Belarusian cinematic organization. The growth in size of the Belarusian state and the establishment of a state cinema organization would both have to wait several more years.
Belarus
Boundaries _______ Present Day
Boundaries -------------- Former country
The SSRB after it’s “restoration” on July 30, 1920, and the signing of the Riga treaty on March 20, 1921. Map by Bill Nelson
“Map SSRB 1921 (pg. 120)” from The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931, by Per Anders Rudling. © 2014, Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
(Vitsebsk, Mahieleu, Homel, and Hrodna are alternate spellings for Vitebsk, Mogilev, Gomel and Grodno).
1 Lubachko, Ivan S. *Belorussia Under Soviet Ruls 1917-1957* University Press of Kentucky 1972 p. 45
2 Rudling, Per Anders The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014, pp. 112-113.
3 Rudling, pp. 114-118.
4 Khabibulina, Olga. "History of the Komsomol and Youth Organisations in Belarus" *Council of Europe*, 3 Oct. 2018, https://pjp-eu.coe.int/documents/42128013/47262565/komsomol+histpory+olga+.pdf/f8a99b3f-c604-e242-315b-a288c5120596. Accessed 15 September 2025.
5 The full citation is Государственный архив Минской области. Становление комсомола Беларуси: 1920–1925/Formation of Komsomol of Belarus: 1920–1925 Архивы Беларуси/Archives of Belarus, 23 Sept. 2020, https://archives.gov.by/blog/news/1020669 Accessed 15 September 2025.