The Nowogródek Voivodeship was incorporated into the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in an atmosphere of terror,[1] following staged elections.

With the end of World War II, at the insistence of Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference of 1943, the area remained in Soviet hands, and the Polish population was soon forcibly resettled.

A decade later, the Polish census of 1931 results showed a steady increase in population at 1,057,200 inhabitants, of whom 82% were engaged in agricultural activities.

[4] The Polish government conducted two official surveys 10 years apart in order to determine the economic and minority status of the country.

[6] In percentage points this translates into an estimate of 53% of the population who identified their mother tongue as Polish, 39% as Belarusian, 7% as Yiddish and 1% as Russian.

[7][8] According to assessment by Tadeusz Piotrowski (1998) the census recorded the number of Poles as greater only because the language spoken wasn't defined unambiguously, thus quoting figures adjusted by Jerzy Tomaszewski (1985) as follows: the Nowogródek Voivodeship was home to about 616,000 ethnic Belarusians, or 38% of the total population of Polish lands later annexed by Stalin.

The chairman of the Polish census statistical office, Edward Szturm de Sztrem stated after World War II that the returned forms might have been tampered with by the executive power, but to what extent is not known.

[10][11] Jerzy Tomaszewski categorizes the largest non-Polish component as Belarusian and Ukrainian at 58.37% combined; and 7.85% as Jewish (as quoted by Teichova & Matis).

[3] The results of the 1931 census (questions about mother tongue and about religion) are presented in the table below: Belarusian and Orthodox/Uniate majority minority counties are highlighted with yellow.

It was also included counties (powiats) of Duniłowicze, Dzisna (whose center was Głębokie) and Wilejka between 1921 and 1922 till they were passed to Wilno Land.

It was dominated by small businesses meeting the needs of the local population, with the major meat processing plant at Baranowicze.

[14] The 71 brick factories were mostly small, with 10 large ones, producing mainly for the local market, because rail transport was not profitable enough.

As bulk of Polish Army was concentrated in the west, fighting Germans, the Soviets met with little resistance and their troops quickly moved westwards, occupying Voivodeship’s area with ease.