Belarusian Socialist Hramada
벨라루스 사회주의 흐라마다
The first Belarusian national political party, active in the Belarusian lands of the Russian Empire. Founded in the winter of 1902 as the Belarusian Revolutionary Hramada, it took its new name in December 1903. Alongside socialist reforms it demanded national and territorial autonomy with a diet in Vilnius, and later statehood of its own. After the revolution of 1917 it led the way to the Belarusian People’s Republic, but it split into several parties and ceased to exist on 27 July 1919.
In depth
The party grew out of national and cultural circles of young Belarusians, and the brothers Anton and Ivan Luckievič and Alaiza Pashkevich were among its founders. Its first congress in Vilnius in December 1903 renamed it the Belarusian Socialist Hramada and adopted its first programme, which according to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia took over the programme of the Polish Socialist Party and added a demand for national and territorial autonomy with a diet in Vilnius. The party called for the municipalisation of land and for labour legislation, and held that it should act together with the other left-wing forces of the empire towards the immediate goal of overthrowing the autocracy. While acknowledging the importance of class struggle in general, it denied that there was class struggle among Belarusians. Its members were mainly intellectuals, peasants and agricultural labourers, and it had branches in Minsk, Vilnius and Saint Petersburg. It held its second congress in Minsk in January 1906, but from 1907 it practically ceased active work and concentrated on publishing the legal Belarusian-language newspaper Nasha Niva. Its members included Jan Sierada, Vaclau Lastouski, Zmicier Zhylunovich, the linguist Branislaŭ Taraškievič, the later Rada chairman Vasil Zacharka and Paluta Badunova, the only woman in the Rada.
After the February Revolution the Hramada revived and worked for Belarusian autonomy and then for statehood. In September 1917 part of its Marxist wing left to found the Belarusian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, and its third congress in Minsk on 14–25 October revealed deep disagreements between its groups. In 1917–1918 the Belarusian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, the Belarusian Party of Socialist Federalists and the Belarusian Social Democratic Party split off. The Hramada nonetheless played a large part in founding the Belarusian People’s Republic; according to the English-language source the Rada became the temporary parliament on its initiative on 19 March 1918, and most of the Rada’s members belonged to it. The Bolsheviks were hostile: Lenin called it a “nationalist petite bourgeoisie party of left-populist orientation”, and the Second Congress of Soviets of the Western Oblast declared the Rada counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet. The party ceased to exist on 27 July 1919. After the Polish–Soviet War many of its activists found themselves in Western Belarus under Poland and fought for Belarusian autonomy; the Belarusian Peasants’ and Workers’ Hramada, founded in 1925 by Belarusian deputies to the Polish Sejm, is a different party despite the similar name.