Belarus - History
While archeological evidence points to settlement in today's Belarus at least 10,000 years ago, recorded history begins with settlement by Baltic and Slavic tribes in the early centuries AD. In the middle of the first millennium that Slavs settled here. East-Slav tribes of Krivichi, Dregovichi and Radimichi were the Belarusian people's ancestors. They settled around the Polota (a Western Dvina tributary) and were later named Polotchane. They had formed local principalities, such as those of Pinsk, Turov, Polotsk, Slutsk and Minsk by the 8th to 9th century. These all came under the general suzerainty of Kievan Rus, the first East Slavic State, beginning in the mid-9th century.
They took up honey collecting, fur hunting and agriculture. Trade developed as the Dnieper was part of the «water road» from Constantinople via Kiev and Novgorod to the Baltic Sea. With distinctive features by the ninth century, the emerging Belarusian state was then absorbed by Kievan Rus' in the ninth century. Belarus was later an integral part of what was called Litva, which included today's Belarus as well as today's Lithuania. Trading settlements multiplied and many towns of the present-day Belarus were founded by the end of the 12th century. Polotsk and Turov first appeared in historical documents in 862 and 980 respectively, Brest — 1017, Minsk in 1067.
The geographical position of the country, the development of trade attracted Dutch herring-salters, Muscovite trappers, Jewish financiers, Hungarian wine-merchants, Turkish spicers, Tatar tanners and Chinese silkmen who bought in exchange furs, dried fish, salt, linen, sailcloth, ropes, timber, tar and foodstuffs. These international contacts influenced the most distinctive features of the Belarusian national character — tolerance and hospitality.
The advantageous geographical position — on the crossroads from east to west and from north to south — more than once turned into disadvantage. Belarus was the arena of many wars, invasions and aggressions. In the 11th century the Tatar-Mongols attacked Polotsk and Turov principalities in the east and south. In the 13th century the Crusaders invaded Belarus from the west. Sweden conquered the north of Belarus. Belarus was the site of the Union of Brest in 1597, which created the Greek Catholic Church, for long the majority church in Belarus until suppressed by the Russian empire.
Though Belarusians belong to the East Slavic ethnic group there is a strong mixture of Baltic and Scandinavian elements in their racial, linguistic and cultural background. Belarus was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (14th century), Poland and the Russian Empire (18th century). It was a backward province where 80% of the population were illiterate. People suffered from many diseases and there was only one doctor per 7,000 patients. Belarus was devastated by Russian-Polish wars (16—18th centuries), and Napoleon's invasion (1812).
The life changed for the better at the beginning of the 20th century. Occupied by the Russian empire from the end of the 18th century until 1918, Belarus declared its short-lived National Republic on March 25, 1918, only to be forcibly absorbed by the Bolsheviks into what became the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). On January 1, 1919 the Declaration on the formation of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was adopted. The Soviet-Polish war which ended with Western Belarus ceded to Poland. In December 1922 it joined the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR) as one of its founders. Suffering devastating population losses under Soviet leader Josef Stalin and the German Nazi occupation, including mass executions of 800,000 Jews, Belarus was retaken by the Soviets in 1944. the World War II and Nazi occupation (1941— 1944), the longest and the greatest fighting for freedom and independence during which Belarus lost every fourth citizen. All these tragic events slowed down but didn't stop the development of the nation.
On the disintegration of the USSR, Belarus proclaimed its sovereignty on July 27, 1990. In December 1991 it was one of the three Slavic republics of the former USSR to form the CIS (the Commonwealth of Independent States) with the headquarters in Minsk.
Nowadays Belarus is a country of developed industry, agriculture, science and culture. Belarusian industry produces heavy-duty trucks and tractors, large-capacity dump trucks, refrigerators, TV sets, fertilisers, meat and dairy products. They make its chief exports. Timber processing, furniture making, match and paper making, textile and clothing manufacture, food processing are the main industries for local consumption.
Most of the country has mixed crop and livestock farming with a strong emphasis on flax growing. Grain, chiefly barley, rye, oats, and potatoes are the main field crops, a large percentage of which is used for animal feed. Cattle and pig raising are also important.
Belarus is a country of well-developed science, culture and education. There is an Academy of Sciences, 37 higher educational establishments, and a lot of theatres, museums, and art galleries there. The long history has taught Belarusians to overcome difficulties. Today they are optimistic because their historical experience makes them sure they will do their best to preserve their unique culture, language and revive industry and agriculture. But they are anxious about the future of their children after the Chernobyl catastrophe, 1986. And still they hope for the best.
National activists had based their attempts to create an independent Belarusian state based on the Belorussian language, which had been kept alive over the centuries mainly by peasants. The stage was set for the emergence of a national consciousness by the industrialization and urbanization of the nineteenth century and by the subsequent publication of literature in the Belorussian language, which was often suppressed by Russian, and later Polish, authorities. It is ironic, then, that the first long-lived Belorussian state entity, the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Belorussian SSR), was created by outside forces--the Bolshevik government in Moscow. And it was those same forces, the communists, whose downfall in 1991 precipitated the existence of an independent Belarus, which has been torn between its desire for independence and a longing for integration with newly independent Russia.
Belarus declared independence in August 1991 following the failed coup in Moscow. In December 1991, Belarus became a founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In March 1994, the Communist-dominated Supreme Soviet adopted Belarus' first post-Soviet constitution. This switched the country from a parliamentary to a presidential form of government, under which the president is popularly elected. It declared its sovereignty on July 27, 1990, and independence from the Soviet Union on August 25, 1991. It has been run by the authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka since 1994.
Authorities have a selective approach to history. A monument on the site of the Slutsk ghetto in World War II lists the date of the massacre of Slutsk's Jews, but states "to the victims of Fascism" without any specific mention of the Holocaust. The local history museum in Slutsk, located in the building where Belarusian nationalists decided to begin an uprising against Soviet authorities in 1920, makes no mention of the Slutsk uprising.
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