West Belarus, name for the western part of Belarus that was under Polish rule between 1921 and 1939 as a result of the Treaty of Riga. West Belarus, with a territory of 108,000 square kilometers, was inhabited by over four million people. It remained the most underdeveloped section of Poland, where 80 percent of the population, many of them landless, lived in rural areas. With chronic unemployment and cultural and religious discrimination against Belarusians, West Belarus became a source of social and political unrest. By the second half of the 1930s, citizens of Orthodox confession were denied the right to buy land. Many Belarusians, in search of employment, emigrated to countries of Western Europe (mainly France) and North and South America (especially Argentina and Paraguay). The official policy of the government was Polonization. Thus, of the 400 Belarusian schools active before the beginning of Polish rule, only 29 Belarusian schools and 49 mixed Belarusian-Polish schools were left by 1928, and not a single one remained by 1939. In September 1939, West Belarus was incorporated into the Belarusian SSR, where it remains after some territorial concessions to Poland and Lithuania.
