Demarcation and Legalisation of the Borders of the Ukrainian SSR with its Neighbours – Border with the Belorussian SSR

This article is part of a series dedicated to the establishment of the borders of the Ukrainian SSR (and its legal continuation under the Union Constitution of 5 December 1936 of the Ukrainian SSR) with the neighbouring Soviet republics – the RSFSR, the Belorussian SSR (BSSR) and the Moldavian ASSR (Moldavian Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic; since 1936 – the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) and the latter’s legal successor – the Moldavian SSR. The author points out that the issue of territorial demarcation between the Ukrainian SSR and the BSSR in 1924 was resolved primarily on the basis of the demographic factor and was not accompanied by such brutal pressure as it was when drawing the borderline between the two republics with the RSFSR. During the establishment of the inter-republican borders of the USSR, the Ukrainian delegation (the commission of D. Bahalii and M. Hrushevskyi) expressed its readiness to voluntarily transfer to the BSSR territories with a predominantly Belarusian population – on ethnographic grounds. In turn, the Belorussian faction of the conciliation commission, headed by the chairman of the Central Election Commission of Belarus, A. Cherviakov, was ready to support the Ukrainian SSR in its territorial arrangement with the RSFSR. As a result, the issue of republican borders was referred to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). A conflict of interest emerged during the division of the Polish inheritance (autumn 1939), with the piquancy of the situation being that the interests of the BSSR were defended by the first secretary of the CP (b), P. Ponomarenko, a Ukrainian by nationality, and the Ukrainian SSR – by the Russian N. Khrushchev. The author suggests that the current Ukrainian-Belarusian border generally corresponds to ethnographic characteristics and does not require any correction, even in view of economic considerations (such as, for example, the exchange of territories with Moldova).