A Brief History of Belarus

The region that is now modern-day Belarus was first settled by Slavic tribes in the 6^th century. East-Slavic 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. By the 8^th to 9^th century they had formed several state formations, such as the Principalities of Pinsk, Turov, Polotsk, Slutsk and Minsk. In the mid-9^th century they all came under the suzerainty of Kievan Rus, the first East Slavic State. During the 10^th-12^th centuries some of the major principalities actually became independent and were being ruled by local dynasties.

From the middle of the 13^th century the Belarusian lands belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1386 the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland were joined in a personal union through a marriage of their rulers. This union eventually resulted in the formation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzecz Pospolita), created in 1569. The state system of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the end of the 16^th century up to the 18^th century was an early form of the bourgeois (the szlachta) democracy, the first step to the civil society. The union between Poland and Lithuania ended in 1795, and the Commonwealth was partitioned by Imperial Russia, Prussia, and Austria. In the days of Imperial Russia Belarus was named Byelorussia, and the Russian tsar was usually styled Tsar of All the Russias – Great, Little, and White. After its incorporation into the Russian Empire, Byelorussia lost its status as a state. The change found reflection in its official name: from 1840 it was named ‘the North-Western Lands’.

During the negotiations of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Byelorussia first declared independence on 25 March 1918, forming the Byelorussian People’s Republic, a national bourgeois-democratic state. It failed, however, to turn into a fully-fledged state: it had no Constitution, no state boundaries, it had no armed forces of its own, the financial system and other attributes of statehood were not formed either. Soon afterwards, the BPR fell under the influence of the Bolsheviks and the Red Army and became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. On the 1 January 1919, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialistic Republic (the BSSR) was formed, in which political and economic life was under control of the central authority. Non-communist parties and organisations were banned, and the administrative functions were performed by the party machinery. After Russian occupation of eastern and northern Lithuania, it was merged into the Lithuanian-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Byelorussian lands were then split between Poland and the Soviets after the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921, and the recreated Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922. The final unification of the Byelorussian lands within its modern borders took place in 1939, when the ethnically Byelorussian lands that were part of interwar Poland were annexed by the USSR and attached to the Soviet Byelorussia.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Byelorussia was the hardest hit Soviet Republic in the war and remained in Nazi hands until 1944. During that time, Germany destroyed most of the cities in the republic, 85% of the republic’s industry, and more than one million buildings, while causing human losses estimated between two and three million. After the war ended in 1945, Byelorussia was among the founding countries of the United Nations Charter and began rebuilding the Soviet Republic. During this time, Joseph Stalin implemented a policy of Sovietisation to isolate the Byelorussian SSR from Western influences. The official use of the Byelorussian language and other cultural aspects were limited by Moscow. After Stalin died in 1953, his successor Nikita Khrushchev continued that program. When the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began pushing through his reform plan, the Byelorussian people delivered a petition to him in December 1986 explaining the loss of their culture. Since then the revival of Byelorussian culture has began.

On the disintegration of the USSR, on 27 July 1990, Byelorussia proclaimed its sovereignty by issuing the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Political change in Byelorussia came about only after the August 1991 coup d’état in Moscow. Following the coup’s collapse and declarations of independence by Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine, Byelorussia declared its own independence on 25 August by giving its Declaration of Sovereignty the status of a constitutional document. In September 1991, pressed by the small but vocal democratic opposition, the Parliament changed the state’s name from the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Republic of Belarus. On 8 December, Belarus joined Russia and Ukraine in signing the Minsk Agreement to form the Commonwealth of Independent States, which formally put an end to the Soviet Union. On 21 December, Belarus signed the Alma Ata Declaration, which expanded the CIS membership from the original three signatories of the Minsk Agreement to eleven states.

The national Constitution went into effect in March 1994, in which the functions of the Prime Minister were given to the President. Two-round elections for the presidency in June and July 1994 resulted in Alexander Lukashenko becoming the President of the Republic of Belarus. The four-question referendum was held on 15 May 1995. The populace voted ‘yes’ on all four questions: Russian as an official language, the return of a Soviet-era red and green flag, economic integration with Russia, and presidential power to dissolve the Supreme Soviet. A. Lukashenko was re-elected President in 2001 and in 2006.

The long history taught the 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.