[5] An ethno-religious theory suggests that the name used to describe the part of old Ruthenian lands within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that had been populated mostly by early Christianized Slavs, as opposed to Black Ruthenia, which was predominantly inhabited by pagan Balts.

As central authority waned, different political and ethnic groups strived for greater self-determination and even secession from the increasingly ineffective Russian Provisional Government.

The Bolshevik All-Russian Council of Soviets declared the creation of the Western Oblast, which unified the Vilna, Vitebsk, Mogilev and Minsk governorates that were not occupied by the German army, to administer the Belarusian lands in the frontal zone.

However, the German party soon went back on its word and took full advantage of the situation, and the Bolsheviks' demand of a treaty "without annexations or indemnities" was unacceptable to the Central Powers, and on 18 February, hostilities resumed.

The German Operation Faustschlag was of immediate success, and within 11 days, they were able to make a serious advance eastward, taking over Ukraine, the Baltic region, and occupying eastern Belarus.

For the German Empire, Operation Faustschlag achieved one of their strategic plans for World War I, to create a German-centered hegemony of buffer states, called Mitteleuropa.

On the eve of Germany's occupation of Minsk, some members of the disbanded Belarusian National Council emerged from hiding and formed a provisional government, hoping to achieve German recognition.

The Red Army continued its westward advance, capturing the city of Grodno on New Year's Day 1919, Pinsk on 21 January, and Baranovichi on 6 February 1919, thereby enlarging the SSRB.

In the Kresy ("borderland") areas of Lithuania, Belarus and western Ukraine, self-organized militias, the Samoobrona Litwy i Białorusi numbering approximately 2,000 soldiers under General Wejtko, began to fight against the local communist and advancing Bolshevik forces.

The operations in Lithuania brought the front close to East Prussia, and the German units that had withdrawn there began to assist the Lithuanian forces to defeat the Soviets; they repelled the Red offensive against Kaunas in February 1919.

A final Soviet counter-offensive retook Panevėžys and Grodno in early April, but the Western Army was too thinly spread to fight both the Polish and Lithuanian troops, and the German units assisting them.

During the latter half of 1919, the Red Army successfully defeated Denikin in the south, taking over the Don, North Caucasus and eastern Ukraine, and pushed Kolchak from the Volga, beyond the Ural mountains into Siberia.

On the diplomatic front, on 11 September 1919, the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of Soviet Russia, Georgy Chicherin, sent a note to Lithuania with a proposal for a peace treaty.

[17] The Soviet Red Army was much more organised than it was a year earlier, and though Polish troops managed to make several gains in Ukraine, notably the capture of Kiev, in Byelorussia, both of its offensives towards Zhlobin and Orsha were thrown back in May.

This time the leaders were Aleksandr Chervyakov (head of Minsk's milrevcom) and Wilhelm Knorin (as chairmen of the Central Committee of the Belarusian Communist Party).

The SSRB sought to join further territories, as the Red Army crossed into Poland, but the decisive Polish victory at the Battle of Warsaw in August ended these ambitions.

As the negotiations between the Polish Republic and the Russian Bolshevik government took place in Riga, the Soviet side saw the armistice as only a temporary setback in its western advance.

On 24 November the Polish units left the town, and for nearly a month the Slutsk partisans resisted Soviet attempts to re-gain control of the area.

Eventually the Red Army had to mobilise two divisions to overcome the resistance, when the last units of Slutsk militia crossed the Moroch River and interned by the Polish border guards.

In February 1921, the delegations of the Second Polish Republic and the Russian SFSR finally signed the Treaty of Riga putting an end of hostilities in Europe, and Belarus in particular.

Thus in March 1924, by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Russia returned most of territories that made up the Vitebsk and Mogilev Governorates, as well as parts of Smolensk.

The passing of land that largely survived the destruction of war not only doubled the SSRB's area to 110,600 square kilometres, but also raised the population to 4.2 million people.

Administratively it was split into ten okrugs: Bobruysk, Borisov, Vitebsk, Kalinin, Minsk, Mogilev, Mozyr, Orsha, Polotsk and Slutsk; all of which contained a total of 100 raions and 1,229 selsoviets.

Economically the republic remained largely self-centred, and most of the effort was put into restoring and repairing the war-damaged industry (if in 1923 there was only 226 different fabrics and factories, then by 1926 the number climbed to 246.

[citation needed] The head of government (chairman of the Soviet of People's Commissars) was by now then newly appointed Nikolay Goloded, whilst Vilhelm Knorin remained the first secretary of the Communist Party.

[20][21] Other estimates put the number at higher than 1.4 million persons.,[22] of which 250,000 were sentenced by judicial or executed by extrajudicial bodies (dvoikas, troikas, special commissions of the OGPU, NKVD, MGB).

The former Polish territories referred to as West Belarus were incorporated into the Belarusian SSR, with an exception of the city of Vilnius and its surroundings that were transferred to Lithuania.

This was part of a deal with the United States to ensure a degree of balance in the General Assembly, which, the USSR opined, was unbalanced in favor of the Western Bloc.

On 25 August 1991, after the failure of the coup in Moscow, the republic proclaimed its political and economic independence from the Soviet Union,[27] however, continued to consider herself part of the USSR.

According to the 1959 Soviet Census, the population of the republic were made up as follows: Ethnicities (1959): The largest cities were: Whilst part of the Union, the cuisine of Byelorussia consisted mainly of vegetables, meat (particularly pork), and bread.