Slutsk defence action

The flag of the First Regiment Slutsky. Vilnia 1921

Date	November 27 to December 31, 1920
Location	Slutsk, Belarus, and surrounding villages
Result	Soviet victory

Belligerents

local units associating themselves with the

Belarusian Democratic Republic

Russian SFSR

Commanders and leaders

Paval Zhauryd

Strength

10,000

The Slutsk defence action or the Slutsk uprising (Belarusian: Слуцкі збройны чын or Слуцкае паўстанне) was an unsuccessful armed attempt to establish an independent Belarus. It took place in late 1920, near the end of the Polish-Soviet War, in the region of the town of Slutsk. It involved a series of clashes between irregular Belarusian forces loyal to the Belarusian People's Republic and the Soviet Red Army, ending in a Soviet victory.

The preliminary peace accord (later finalized in Peace of Riga), signed on October 12, 1920, set new borders between Poland and the Soviet republics that divided modern Belarus and Ukraine in two parts. A Belarusian delegation was not invited to the Riga congress — neither from the Belarusian Democratic Republic, nor from the puppet Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus.

Due to the treaty, the demarcation line Kiyevichy-Lan lay in a way that the region of Slutsk, Belarus, stayed in a neutral zone for some time before being taken by the Red Army.

The main moving power of the Slutsk defence was the local peasantry fighting against the Bolshevist agrarian policy of War Communism and supporting the independence of Belarus declared on March 25, 1918. Leaders of the defence were local intellectuals and szlachta.

Slutsk was an important centre of Belarusian national life. Local intellectuals kept tense contacts with groups supporting the Belarusian Democratic Republic in other regions.

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Wikipedia