Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Belarus
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The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Belarus (Polish: Wielkie Księstwo Litewsko-Białoruskie; Belarusian: Вялікае Княства Літоўска-Беларускае, romanized: Vialikaje Kniastva Litoŭska-Bielaruskaje) was a political project proposed in 1918 by the leaders of the conservative indigenous Catholic and Polish-speaking nobility of the Minsk Governorate (primarily members of the Minsk Society of Agriculture). The project envisioned the creation of a constitutional-monarchist state on the lands of Belarus and Lithuania (the Northwestern provinces of the former Russian Empire) under the curatorship (protection) of the German Empire. The capital was to be Vilnius.
The project represented both the desire of the local liberal-conservative nobility to create a joint Belarusian-Lithuanian state separate from Russia and Poland, and an alternative to the creation of possibly socialist republics in Belarus and Lithuania. The attempt to create the GDLB is one of the episodes in the struggle of local conservative nobles, led by Edward Woyniłłowicz (1847–1928), to realize the idea of the political subjectivity of the Lithuanian-Belarusian lands (or Belarus alone) in 1917–1921.