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Belarus
Quick Overview:
After seven decades as a constituent republic of the USSR, Belarus attained its independence in 1991. It has retained a rather regime-like governmental style with rigid control of President Aleksandr LUKASHENKO over mass media and political life. Belarus and Russia signed a treaty on a two-state union on 8 December 1999 envisioning greater political and economic integration but, to date, neither side has actively sought to implement the accord
Geography:
Beginning in the 6th century the territory of modern Belarus was settled by East Slavic tribes, the ancestors of the Belorussians. In the 9th and 10th centuries several principalities emerged, the most important being centered around Polotsk (Polatsk) Through dynastic links they came to be part of Kievan Rus' and were converted to Orthodox Christianity. After the disintegration of Kievan Rus' in the 13th century, the Belorussian lands were incorporated into the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At first the Belorussians exerted a strong religious and cultural influence on the pagan Lithuanians; after the dynastic union of Lithuania and Poland in 1386, however, the Lithuanians converted to Latin Christianity, and the position of the Orthodox Belorussians began to decline. The Belorussian bishops accepted union with Rome in 1596. Most of the population adhered to the EASTERN RITE (Uniate) church, but the nobility largely adopted Latin Rite Catholicism along with the Polish language and culture. In the Partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, and 1795; see POLAND, PARTITIONS OF), Belarus was annexed to the Russian Empire. In the 19th century the Russians and Poles competed for the loyalty of the Belorussian (largely peasant) masses.Only in the late 19th century, after a peasant revolt led by Kastus Kalinouski (Konstantin Kalinovsky) in 1863, did a distinct Belorussian national awareness begin to develop.This was further stimulated by a literary revival,exemplified by the works of the Belorussian poets Yakub Kolas and Yanka Kupala. An independent Belarus was proclaimed (March 1918) after the collapse of the Russian Empire. After the POLISH-SOVIET WAR of 1920, however, western Belarus was occupied by Poland,and the eastern regions became the Belorussian SSR,part of the Soviet Union. In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, the western territories were also annexed by the USSR. As a principal theater of the war, Belarus suffered enormous devastation and lost one-quarter of its population. Postwar reconstruction was followed by a period of considerable economic development and rapid industrialization. The reforms begun by Soviet leader Mikhail GORBACHEV in the mid-1980s stimulated a national revival,including the formation of a mass popular movement called Adradzhenne (Rebirth) in 1989, and unrest among Belorussian workers contributed to the economic crisis that hastened the end of the USSR. When the COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES was formed by the former Soviet republics in December 1991, Minsk became its capital.
Related Links:
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News News from Belarus Belarus Today |
Offical Sites Press Service of the President Information about Belarus |
Country Guides Virtual Guide to Belarus Another guide to Belarus |
Education Education in Belarus |