ABSTRACT
Throughout the war Belarusian national activists in Ober Ost 1 developed their own visions of the future political organization of Belarus. This chapter focuses on the evolution of their political thinking in the wider context of German national politics in East-Central Europe between 1916 and 1918. Similarly to the Minsk-based Belarusian organizations that in 1917 supported the idea of autonomy within a future democratic Russia, Ober Ost Belarusians also focused on federal solutions, although their understanding of federalism departed from Russia-oriented thinking and was rooted in a specific form of a regional collective identity known as krajovasc’. 2 Appealing to common historical memory, it centered around the idea of close cooperation between the nations of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). 3
