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The purpose of the publication is to clarify the relationship between the Ukrainian state center and the city authorities of Gomel in the context of the accession of the Gomel region to the Ukrainian state. This issue is also important for studying the general experience of the city administration, as well as for the reconstruction of regional history, as Gomel demonstrated the case of the longest retention of elected city government in Belarus after October. According to the agreement of January 27 (February 9) 1918 between the UPR on the one hand and Germany, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria – on the other the southern districts of Grodno, Minsk and Mogilev provinces of the former North-Western region with ethnic Belarusian population were annexed. Ukraine and included in the process of Ukrainian state building. Gomel, the largest industrial and transport center on the Belarusian-Ukrainian-Russian border, also became part of Ukraine. In the conditions of establishment of structures of the Ukrainian state management and administration in Gomel district the activity of zemstvo-city self-government which party structure and state-political orientations were formed after February, 1917 and remained during short (from December, 1917 to the end of February, 1918) domination in the city of the Bolsheviks. The problem of the relationship between the hetman's government and local authorities in the annexed territories has not yet found its special study. The author of this text had to consider some institutional and personal aspects of the functioning of the Ukrainian authorities in the annexed Belarusian counties, as well as the issue of state identification of the Gomel Directory. The factual and institutional aspect of the topic was reflected in a thorough reference book on various government agencies in Belarus during the military-revolutionary period of 1917–1920. New sources of information for the topic were created by the publication of reports of the highest representatives of the Hetman's power on the ...

The article attempts to consider the political and legal crisis that has been going on in Belarus for almost a year, in the context of the relationship between its causes and the quality of public administration. To this end, the authors identify modern approaches to understanding good governance. The indicators of management quality developed by authoritative international structures are indicated, on the basis of which it is possible not only to give an objective assessment of the quality of management in Belarus, but also to identify the most problematic positions. As shown in the paper, the main disadvantage of the quality of governance in Belarus is its authoritarian nature, which is manifested in the disregard for people's opinions and accountability. The process of gradual establishment of an authoritarian regime in the republic by means of the analysis of the chronology of the social and political events that took place in the republic during the last decades is clearly shown. In the final part of the work, the author draws attention to the factors that give stability to those regimes that can be attributed to information autocracies. In particular, it is the existence of state property and control over it as an instrument of power retention. The issue of its effectiveness (for example, state-owned enterprises) is not a priority for the country's leadership. The next factor is the presence of control over the political influence of deputies, checking the loyalty of people's deputies. In the system of government formed in Belarus, all elected officials, from village council deputies to parliament, are rigorously selected for their loyalty and lack of ambition. After that, they easily move from the vertical to the representative bodies (and back), occupying leadership positions in structures that mimic civil society. Finally, the third factor is the government's permanent desire to control the entire public sphere and the information space. The driving forces that have the potential to gradually weaken the ...