The Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belorussia (SSR LiB), alternatively referred to as the Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and White Russia or simply Litbel (Lit-Bel), was a Soviet republic that existed within the parts of the territories of modern Belarus and Lithuania for approximately five months during the Lithuanian–Soviet War and the Polish–Soviet War in 1919. The Litbel republic was created in February 1919 formally through the merger of the short-lived Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Socialist Soviet Republic of Belorussia. Often described as a puppet state of Soviet Russia, during its brief existence the SSR LiB government had limited authority over the territories it claimed. By August 1919, the SSR LiB had lost control over all of its claimed territories, as the Polish Army and, to a lesser extent, Lithuanian Army advanced. History Background After the end of World War I in November 1918, Soviet Russia began a westward offensive following the retreating German Army. It attempted to spread the global proletarian revolution and sought to establish Soviet republics in Eastern Europe. By the end of December 1918, Bolshevik forces reached Lithuania. The Bolsheviks saw the Baltic states as a barrier or a bridge into Western Europe, where they could join the German and the Hungarian Revolutions. The Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania was proclaimed on 16 December 1918 and the Socialist Soviet Republic of Belorussia (SSRB) was established on 1 January 1919. On 16 January 1919, as the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) issued two resolutions affecting the two new Soviet republics of the western frontier; one calling for the unification of Soviet Lithuania and Soviet Belorussia and the other calling for the transfer of the Vitebsk Governorate, the Smolensk Governorate and the Mogilev Governorate from the Belorussian Soviet republic to Soviet Russia. On 22 January 1919 Adolph Joffe arrived in Minsk, as the representative of the Moscow centre with a mission to bring order among the infighting Bolshevik leadership in Belorussia. The Belorussian Bolshevik leaders rejected the notion of merger with Lithuania and the detachment of the three eastern Belorussian governorates from the SSRB. They protested to the RCP(b) Central Committee and decried that Joffe was incompetent. Minsk and Vilna congresses The was held in Minsk 2–3 February 1919. The Central Executive Committee of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR) was represented at the congress by its chairman Yakov Sverdlov.