Polish-Soviet War in the context of "Belarus"

Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1941 until his death in 1953, governed the country as its General Secretary from the late 1920s until his death. He had initially been part of the country's informal collective leadership with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, but consolidated his power within the party and state, especially against the influences of Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin, in the mid-to-late 1920s.

Prior to the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin was a revolutionary who had joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) led by Vladimir Lenin, in 1903. In Lenin's first government, Stalin was appointed leader of the People's Commissariat of Nationalities. He also took military positions in the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War. Stalin was one of the Bolsheviks' chief operatives in the Caucasus and grew closer to Lenin, who saw him as tough, loyal, and capable of getting things done behind the scenes. Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia. His successes in Georgia propelled him into the ranks of the Politburo in late 1921. At the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1922, the leaders decided to expand the party's Central Committee. This decision led to the creation of the office of the General Secretary which Stalin assumed on 3 April. Stalin soon learned how to use his new office to gain advantages over key persons within the party. He prepared the agenda for the Politburo meetings, directing the course of meetings. As General Secretary, he appointed new local party leaders, establishing a patronage network loyal to him.

The Treaty of Warsaw (also the Polish–Ukrainian or Petliura–Piłsudski Alliance or Agreement) of April 1920 was a military-economical alliance between the Second Polish Republic, represented by Józef Piłsudski, and the Ukrainian People's Republic, represented by Symon Petliura, against Bolshevik Russia. The treaty was signed on 21 April 1920, with a military addendum on 24 April.

The alliance was signed during the Polish-Soviet War, just before the Polish Kiev offensive. Piłsudski was looking for allies against the Bolsheviks and hoped to create a Międzymorze alliance; Petliura saw the alliance as the last chance to create an independent Ukraine.

The Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty, also known as the Moscow Peace Treaty, was signed between Lithuania and Soviet Russia on July 12, 1920. In exchange for Lithuania's neutrality and permission to move its troops in the territory that was recognised during its war against Poland, Soviet Russia recognized the sovereignty of Lithuania. The treaty was a major milestone in Lithuania's struggle for international recognition and recognised Lithuania's eastern borders. Interwar Lithuania officially maintained that its de jure borders were those delineated by the treaty although a large territory, the Vilnius Region, was actually controlled by Poland.

Ratification documents were exchanged in Moscow on October 14, 1920. The treaty was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on March 8, 1921.

Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an area of 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) with a population of 9.1 million. The country has a hemiboreal climate and is administratively divided into six regions. Minsk is the capital and largest city; it is administered separately as a city with special status.

For most of the medieval period, the lands of modern-day Belarus was ruled by independent city-states such as the Principality of Polotsk. Around 1300 these lands came fully under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and subsequently by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; this period lasted for 500 years until the 1792-1795 partitions of Poland-Lithuania placed Belarus within the Russian Empire for the first time. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, different states arose competing for legitimacy amid the Civil War, ultimately ending in the rise of the Byelorussian SSR, which became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. After the Polish-Soviet War (1918–1921), Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland. Much of the borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939, when some lands of the Second Polish Republic were reintegrated into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland, and were finalised after World War II. During World War II, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a quarter of its population and half of its economic resources. In 1945, the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union. The republic was home to a widespread and diverse anti-Nazi insurgent movement which dominated politics until well into the 1970s, overseeing Belarus's transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy.

Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky (30 September [O.S. 10 September] 1895 – 5 December 1977) was a Soviet general who served as a top commander during World War II and achieved the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. During World War II, he served as the chief of the General Staff and deputy Minister of Defense, and later served as Minister of Defense from 1949 to 1953.

Born in central Russia, Vasilevsky began his military career in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and earned the rank of captain by 1917. After the October Revolution of 1917 and the start of the Russian Civil War, he was conscripted into the Red Army and took part in the Polish-Soviet War. Following the war, Vasilevsky quickly rose through the ranks, and in 1931 was appointed to the Directorate of Military Training. In 1939, after Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, he was appointed deputy chief of operations of the Red Army.

The Second Polish Republic adopted the March Constitution on 17 March 1921, after ousting the occupation of the German/Prussian forces in the 1918 Greater Poland Uprising, and avoiding conquest by the Soviets in the 1920 Polish-Soviet War. The Constitution, based on the Constitution of the Third French Republic, was regarded as very democratic. Among others, it expressly ruled out discrimination on racial or religious grounds. It also abolished all royal titles and state privileges affecting the nobility of Poland, and banned the use of blazons.

It was partially adjusted by the 1926 August Novelization, and superseded by the Polish Constitution of 1935 (April Constitution).