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The Communist Party of Western Belarus (Polish: Komunistyczna Partia Zachodniej Białorusi, KPZB; Belarusian: Камуністычная партыя Заходняй Беларусі, КПЗБ) was a banned political party in the Interwar Poland, infiltrated by Soviet special services (similar to German fifth column) operating in the territory of present-day West Belarus from 1923 until 1939; in Polesie (1932–1933) Słonim county (1934) and Vilnius. The organization was stockpiling smuggled weapons years before the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland and received Russian instructions about how to act afterwards.
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History
The party was founded in 1923 in Wilno by representatives of the Belarusian communist circles from Wilno, Białystok and Brest with logistical help from the Bolsheviks. Although its name, the Communist Party of Western Belarus, could suggest a desire for independence of Belarus, wrote historian Sergiusz Łukasiewicz, in reality the party advocated transfer of eastern provinces of Poland to the Soviet Union, which constituted high treason. This is why it has been delegalized by the Polish authorities.
The party's political program included a socialist revolution in Poland with the forcible separation of West Belarus leading to its unification with the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic in the USSR. The party worked undercover; in 1925-1927 it masked its illegal activities under the legal Belarusian Peasants' and Workers' Union in Poland. It received support from the Soviet Union with leadership brought in secretly from across the border (see Vera Kharuzhaya). It was actively involved in the anti-Polish subversion.
In 1938, following a decision by the Comintern on the orders of Joseph Stalin, the KPZB along with the Communist Party of Poland and the Communist Party of Western Ukraine were delegalized by the USSR under the charge of affiliation with the Polish bourgeoisie. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland and the annexation of Western Belarus to the Soviet Union in 1939, many former members of the KPZB were repressed, others joined the Communist Party of Byelorussia, the East Belarusian branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.