MINSK, 18 March (BelTA) - The Peace of Riga evoked in Belarusians a sense of despair and a feeling of total treason, Chairman of the Standing Commission on Education, Culture and Science of the House of Representatives, Doctor of History, Professor Igor Marzalyuk said at a meeting of BelTA's Expert Community project. The meeting discussed the impact and consequences of the Peace of Riga for Belarusian people.
“This event was, perhaps, one of the biggest and most important in the Belarusian history of the 20th century. Without its context, without knowing the facts, we will never understand the attitude of Belarusians to 17 September 1939. Because what happened on 18 March 1921 evoked a sense of despair and a feeling of total complete treason among the absolute majority of the Belarusian national intelligentsia, the Belarusian political elite of that time," Igor Marzalyuk said.
According to him, the Peace of Riga needs to be considered in several aspects. "Back then there was this joke in Europe that Poland was the largest country in the world, because no one knows where its borders end. I would like to note that Britain believed that Poland should stay within its ethnographic borders. The Entente countries saw the Polish claims to Western Belarus and Western Ukraine as imperial unfounded claims,” the MP said. “When we talk about the international legal aspects, our Polish colleagues do not like two definitions that we use in our historiography. First, they claim that the Polish occupation of Belarus is the wrong definition and that it cannot be used. In this respect I would like to recall Anton Lutskevich, the prime minister of the BPR, and his pamphlet "Polish Occupation of Belarus."
The second point is the legitimacy of the Peace of Riga in terms of international law. "This is a very important aspect for the modern Belarusian politics, because this is the cause of different assessments of September 1939 and the policy pursued by the USSR in relation to Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. I would like to highlight one fact: the Peace of Riga was not immediately recognized by any Entente country. They didn't recognize it for years. The treaty was recognized only by the two parties that concluded it, namely Bolshevik Russia and Poland," Igor Marzalyuk added.
