Byelorussian Rada

(council), a counterrevolutionary bourgeois-nationalistic organization in Byelorussia during 1917–18. It was established in July 1917 in Minsk at a congress of Byelorussian bourgeois-nationalist organizations and formed a bloc with the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, and Bundists. The rada attempted to wreck the preparations for the socialist revolution in Byelorussia. After the victory of the October Revolution, the Byelorussian Rada opposed Soviet power. In an appeal to the people, which it published jointly with other counterrevolutionary groups on Nov. 9 (22), 1917, it called for the overthrow of Soviet power. On Dec. 15, 1917, the rada convened the so-called Byelorussian Congress in Minsk, which adopted a resolution on the nonrecognition of local organs of Soviet power. The Council of People’s Commissars of the Western Region, carrying out the will of the working people, dissolved the “congress.” After this, the rada embarked on the path of armed struggle against Soviet power. Screened by General I. R. Dovbor-Musnitskii’s corps of Polish legionnaires, which was on Byelorussian territory, the rada formed its own armed forces. On the night of Feb. 19–20, 1918, the corps of Polish legionnaires captured Minsk with the aid of the rada’s detachments and handed it over to the German interventionists. With the permission of the German command, the Byelorussian Rada established the puppet “government of the Byelorussian People’s Republic” headed by the landlord Skirmunt. In March 1918 the rada announced the separation of Byelorussia from Russia and the annulment of the decrees of the Soviet regime. After the emancipation of Byelorussia by the Red Army in January 1919, the rada ceased to exist.