Introduction
The capital city of the Western Belarus (officially established on 2 November 1939; the name was used in the USSR from 1924) was Białystok. It was fromthere that the new authorities controlled the vast territory, including almostall of the pre-war Białystok region (the Germans kept the Suwałki districtand several municipalities in the Augustów district), the Łomża district sep-arated from the Warsaw province, as well as the provinces of Nowogródek and Polesie. The area was much larger than the territory of the pre-war Polish Northeast Borderlands, which was composed of the following provinces: Vilna, Nowogródek, Polesie (excluding the districts of Kamień Koszyrski and Sarny), and the districts of Grodno and Wołkowysk from Białystok province.
Under the orders of the Belarusian front commander Mikhail Kovalyov, issued on 19 and 21 September 1939, the newly acquired territory was controlled by county provisional administration boards. The latter were also in charge of local revolutionary committees and branches of the People’s Militiaand Workers’ Guard.
On 5 October 1939, the Provisional Administration Board of Białystokbegan organising elections to the People’s Assembly of Western Belarus, whichtook place on 22 October. A total of 926 delegates were elected, 72 of whom were Jewish, thus less than the percentage of Jews in the overall population of the area. On 28 and 29 October, a resolution was passed by delegatesgathered in the Municipal Theatre to incorporate these territories into the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. As a result, the area of the republic wasextended by more than 100,000 square kilometres. The final administrativeform of Western Belarus was defined in the decree of the Presidium of the
BIA ŁY STO K AN D THE WESTERN BE L ARUS [INTRO D U C TION] 29
