West Belarus

West Belarus
Administrative division of the Byelorussian SSR (green) before World War II with territories annexed by the USSR from Poland in 1939 (marked in shades of orange), overlaid with territory of present-day Belarus
West Belarus in 1939 shown in dark green
Country	Belarus, partly in Poland and Lithuania
Area	Historical region
Today part of	Hrodna, Brest, Minsk (partially) and Vitsebsk (partially); Podlasie Voivodeship (partially), South Western areas of the Republic of Lithuania including Vilnius

West Belarus (Belarusian: Заходняя Беларусь, Zakhodnyaya Belarus) is a historical region of modern-day Belarus; comprising the territory which belonged to the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period in accordance with the international peace treaties. It used to form the northern half of the Polish Kresy Wschodnie macroregion before the 1939 Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland (the Eastern Borderlands). Following the end of World War II in Europe the territory of West Belarus was ceded to the USSR by the Allied Powers, while the city of Białystok with surroundings was returned to Poland. Until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 West Belarus formed a significant part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Today, it constitutes the western half of the sovereign Republic of Belarus.

West Belarus includes Hrodna and Brest voblasts (see map), as well as parts of today's Minsk and Vitsebsk voblasts. The city of Wilno (Belarusian: Вільня, Vilnia, today's Vilnius), also included in the BSSR, was given by the USSR to the Republic of Lithuania which soon after that became the Lithuanian SSR.