For nearly two decades the Western territories of Belarus, including Brest, were incorporated in Poland. Brest became a center of Polessie region (vajevodstva). Polish constitution adopted in March 20, 1921 guaranteed to all citizens of the country the protection of life, freedom and property regardless of the nationality, language, race or religion. According to the Constitution, national minorites had the right to protect their languages and national identity. Though, in reality all guarantees and rights remained in force only on the paper. The national discrimination began already in November 5, 1922 during the election campaign to the Parliament. The law was issued which allowed the inhabitants of the Western Belarus to elect one delegate from 100,000 people while in Poland a delegate represented 40,000 people. The oppression also was pursued in the educational sphere. Belarusian schools were closed down, and Belarusian children had to attend Polish schools. Belarusians were not represented at all in the executive branches of power. Belarusian peasants were also discriminated: they could not purchase land from a Polish owner. Especially this prohibition was severe in the frontier region where Poles wanted to create an area inhabited only by Poles. In the middle of 30s Poles even set up a concentration camp in Biaroza-Kartuzkaja (about 100 km from Brest) where they threw hundreds of participants of Belarusian nationalistic and communist movements.
Neverthless, the life of the Belarusians under the Polish rule was relatively much better than in the Soviet Union. If one did not meddle into politics then he/she was not persecuted. In Poland the private ownership was respected, and the life of laborious farmers was quite wealthy. Many peasants who considered themselves as not quite succesfull at home had the possibility to leave for the US, Canada or Argentina looking for better life there. At the same time, the Soviet-ruled Eastern Belarus was under a reign of terror. Stalinist rulers carried out mass killings during campaigns to collectivise the peasantry. Jews, Poles and nationalist opponents of Soviet rule were routinely executed or sent to Siberia. Hundreds of thousands of victims of Stalin's terror were later uncovered in a mass grave dating from 1938 and 1939 at Kuropaty near Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
Polish authorities did not pay too much attention to Brest. Many industrial enterprizes were closed, the industry in Brest was generally underdevelopped. The largest factory were the wood cutting enterprizes of Skrobnik where 25-80 people were employed. Here is the trend of the population growth. In 1921, 29 500 people lived in Brest, in 1929 - 37 500, in 1937 - 51 000. In 1936 there were 18 secondary schools in the city (10 state owned and 8 private). The instruction in state schools was delivered in Polish, in private schools - Polish, Jewish and in one school - Russian. The tuition fee was high, and many children could not attend the school. There were also five gimnasiums (one state owned and four the rest were private). The medical services were unaccessible for the majority of populatiojn because of high fees. Cultural institutions were represented by libraries and cinema. The city library was supported by the city council. 16 small libraries were run by public organizations. There were no belarusian library in the city. Three cinemas were operating in Brest, and three newspapers were published.
In September 1, 1939 the Nazist Germany waged the WWII by attacking the Poland. German army was better equipped, and it broke quickly the desperate Polish resistance. In August 23, 1939, governments of the USSR and Germany signed a non-aggression agreement and a secret treaty concerning the dividing their spheres of influence known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. On the 17th of September the Soviet troops crossed eastern Polish border and started to “liberate” Western Belarus and Ukraine. The population not pleased with the Polish rule and not knowing the real nature of the communist regime met the troops with enthusiasm. According to the Soviet - German pact German army was not supposed to cross the Boog river. Neverthless, Germans infatuated by the impetuous offensive progress rushed over the Polish-Belarusian border and found themselves in the vicinity of Brest. On the 15th of September Germans took Brest and continued moving eastward. Meantime, the soviet tank brigade of the general S.M. Krivoshein was moving from the East and on the 22nd of September entered Brest. Both generals warmly met in the city, and soon joint Soviet-German military parade was held. After that, Germans troops withdrew back, and the line of demarcation was drawn along the eastern frontier of the polish ethnographic territory.
Right after the annexation the Soviet power started to embrace the all spheres of life in the Western Belarus. In October 22, 1939 Soviet-style elections to the People’s Assembly of the Western Belarus were conducted. The candidates were preliminary selected by Soviet government, and nobody else could run for the membership in the Assembly. When the delegates were elected the Assembly was convened and addressed the government of the USSR with the request to join the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (Eastern Belarus). When the incorporation of the Western Belarus into the USSR occured the sovietization of the former began. The administration was sent from Russia. The secret police (NKVD) also arrived to help build socialism. Now Soviets wanted to clear Western Belarus from all actual and potential ennemies of the Soviet power.
The favorite mean of getting rid of unloyal to the Soviet regime elements were shooting down and deportation to Siberia. A plan for the mass deportation of anti-soviet elements from the areas acquired by Stalin in 1939-1941 was drawn up in Moscow less than two months after the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed. In the months that followed the Soviet Union’s formal annexation of Western Belarus in September 1939, members of Polish administration, Polish officers and settlers were arrested and usually annihilated, and their families were banished to Siberia. Then, the mass arrests and deportations to Siberia of people regardless of their nationality began. Chekists (secret police) from Eastern Belarus and Russia were mobilized for this purpose. Overcrowded wagon trains followed one after the other eastward, taking away those who, for the most part, would never return. They deported teachers, employees from variety of enterprises, farmers, physicians, et cetera, et cetera. The victims were deported from towns, from cities, from villages... Guilty of nothing, they went into the wagon trains, unaware that they had already been market by death, that in the instant they needed to say good-bye and for the last time hug their children, their wives, their parents... Polish historian Jan Gross estimates that in Soviet-occupied western Belarus and Ukraine, slightly more than 1 million - about one-eighth of the population - were deported between the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in1939 and the German attack on the USSR in 1941.
Meantime, the Soviet power was rooting deeply into the soil of Western Belarus. The secret police organized the total shadowing. Those expressing minor critisism of the Soviet power were immediately arrested together with their families and were deported to Siberia. The collectivization of peasantry started. By that time wealthy peasants were banished and the rest were forced into collective farms (kolkhoz). The nationalization of banks and enterprises brought poverty and misery. Food and and other goods disappeared from stores, and the rationing was introduced. To buy something one had to stand in the line for several hours or even days. It is worth mentioning that Soviets opened many new hospitals and schools. 150 doctors, 65 medical assistants and 2000 nurses were sent from the USSR to the Western Belarus. 5 643 schools were opened, 4 278 of which were belarusian. The opened schools were highly ideologised, and their main purpose was to bring up a new Soviet man. 4 pedagogical institutes were opened to "arm the teachers with the communist ideology”. In Brest by September 1940 17 secondary schools, pedagogical and rail way technicians training college were operating. The sovietization continued untill Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, and the Nazi army soon swept into Belarus.
