Belarusian People's Republic

The Belarusian People's Republic was proclaimed during the First World War, after the collapse of the Russian Empire and the German occupation of Belarus. The Belarusian Democratic Republic's Rada, a national council formed in 1917, issued its Second Charter on 9 March 1918 and declared independence on 25 March 1918. The new state claimed the territories of the former Russian provinces of Minsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Grodno and parts of Vilna and Smolensk, with Minsk as its capital. Germany, whose army controlled the region, did not recognise the republic as a sovereign state, and its institutions functioned under occupation. After the German withdrawal at the end of 1918, the Rada was driven out by the advancing Red Army during the Polish-Soviet War, and its government went into exile, first to Vilnius and then to Grodno and later Prague. The republic's short life left a lasting symbol for the Belarusian national movement, and its white-red-white flag was revived in 1991. The Soviet republic that replaced it became the basis of modern Belarus.