БЕЛАРУСКІ ГІСТАРЫЧНЫ АГЛЯД
НАВУКОВЫ ЧАСОПІС

Aliaksandr Hužaloŭski. Revolutionary Army of Free Russia in the Mirror of the Belarusian Periodicals.

The article presents an analysis of such a complex and contradictory socio-political and institutional phenomenon as the disintegration of the Revolutionary Army of Free Russia in the sector of the Western Front. The analysis was performed on the basis of the 1917 Belarusian periodicals, which allowed to change the research optics, to study people’s behavior and events sequence at a closer look, on micro level. The process of the Army disintegration took place against the backdrop of the last year of World War I. It was a direct consequence of the revolutionary events of 1917 and the measures taken by the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies to democratize all aspects of the life of the country, as well as anti-war propaganda conducted by representatives of the leftist political parties in the Army. Destructive processes that took place in the Revolutionary Army of Free Russia had negative impact on the population of the eastern part of Belarus. To the old imperial conflicts added new ones, generated by revolution, such as mass desertion, grave crime, moral degradation. The result of the disintegration of the Revolutionary Army of Free Russia was not only the cessation of its existence as an armed force of the Russian state, but also the separation from its composition of new units formed on a national basis including the Belarusian ones.