Chapter 01 · c. 800 – 1240
Polotsk and the Early East Slavs
Among the Krivichi on the Western Dvina rose the Principality of Polotsk, the first state on Belarusian soil and an early, often defiant, centre of Kievan Rus.
In the early Middle Ages the forests and river-roads between the Baltic and the Dnieper were settled by East Slavic tribal unions, among them the Krivichi, the Dregovichi and the Radimichi, whose lands form the core of modern Belarus. By the eighth or ninth century the Krivichi had founded a local principality around the town of Polotsk on the Western Dvina, a river that linked the region to the great north-south trade route from the Baltic to Byzantium. Polotsk is among the oldest towns of the East Slavs and gave its name to the first organised state on Belarusian territory.
Polotsk belonged to the loose federation of principalities known as Kievan Rus, but it guarded a marked autonomy and at times open rivalry with Kiev. Under its own line of princes, most famously Vseslav of Polotsk, who briefly seized the throne of Kiev itself in 1068, the principality pursued an independent course, minting its influence over the Dvina trade and the Baltic frontier. The conversion of Rus to Orthodox Christianity in the late tenth century drew Polotsk into Byzantine Christendom, and the twelfth century saw a flowering of church-building and learning associated with figures such as Saint Euphrosyne of Polotsk.
The world of the early principalities was shattered in the thirteenth century. The Mongol invasion that crushed Kievan Rus from 1237 and reached its devastating climax in 1240 broke the old order across the East Slavic lands. Polotsk and the western principalities, more sheltered than Kiev, escaped the worst of the Mongol yoke, but the collapse of Kievan power left a vacuum on the Belarusian lands that a rising Baltic dynasty to the north-west would soon fill.
“The Principality of Polotsk is regarded as the first form of statehood on the territory of Belarus.”
— On the origins of Belarusian statehood
Turning points
- 8th-9th c.Formation
- c. 988Religion
Christianization of the Rus lands
The conversion of Kievan Rus to Orthodox Christianity in the late tenth century bound Polotsk and the Belarusian lands to Byzantine Christendom and its written, ecclesiastical culture.
- 1068Politics & Power
Vseslav of Polotsk seizes Kiev
Prince Vseslav of Polotsk, the principality's most celebrated ruler, briefly held the throne of Kiev itself, a measure of Polotsk's ambition and its rivalry with the senior princes of Rus.
- 1237-1240War & Rupture
The Mongol invasion of Rus
The Mongol onslaught destroyed Kievan Rus and shattered the old federation of principalities; the western Belarusian lands, comparatively sheltered, were soon drawn into the orbit of rising Lithuania.
See the data
Figures of the era
Vseslav of Polotskc. 1039 – 1101
Prince of Polotsk
The most renowned ruler of medieval Polotsk, Vseslav defended and expanded the principality's autonomy within Kievan Rus and in 1068 briefly seized the throne of Kiev, becoming a near-legendary figure of early Belarusian and Rus history.
Euphrosyne of Polotskc. 1101 – 1167
Princess, abbess and patron
A princess of the Polotsk line who became a nun, founded convents and promoted learning and manuscript copying, she is venerated as a patron saint of the Belarusian lands and a symbol of Polotsk's medieval cultural flowering.
Chapter sources: Belarus, History of Belarus, Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Chapter 02 · 1240 – 1569
Heart of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Absorbed into a vast Baltic-Slavic state, the Belarusian lands gave the Grand Duchy of Lithuania its chancery language and, in Francysk Skaryna, the first printer of an East Slavic book.
After the Mongol catastrophe the Belarusian lands were gathered, over roughly a century and a half, into the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a state that grew from its Baltic core until it stretched from the Baltic almost to the Black Sea. Though ruled by a Lithuanian dynasty, the Grand Duchy was overwhelmingly East Slavic in population and culture. Its administration, its statutes and its courts used the Ruthenian language, the medieval ancestor of modern Belarusian and Ukrainian, which served as the official chancery language of the state. For the Belarusian lands this was less a conquest than a partnership at the centre of a great Eastern European power.
It was from this world that Francysk Skaryna emerged. Born in Polotsk before 1490 and educated at Kraków and Padua, where he took a doctorate in medicine, Skaryna established a printing press in Prague and on 6 August 1517 issued his Psalter, followed by further books of the Bible. Rendered in a Ruthenian, or Old Belarusian, recension of Church Slavonic, these were the first books printed in an East Slavic language, appearing only decades after Gutenberg. Around 1520 Skaryna moved his press to Vilnius, the capital of the Grand Duchy, where he printed the first books produced within the realm itself.
The Grand Duchy was also a land of castles and magnate dynasties. The fortress at Mir, begun in the 1520s and later remade as a Renaissance residence by the powerful Radziwiłł family, and the Radziwiłł seat at Nesvizh, a planned residential and cultural complex that became a centre of arts and learning, both survive as monuments of this age and are today inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. By the sixteenth century the Grand Duchy's deepening association with the Kingdom of Poland was drawing it toward a single, federated commonwealth.
“Skaryna's Psalter of 1517 was the first book printed in an East Slavic language, the foundation of the Belarusian printed word.”
— On the birth of Belarusian printing
Turning points
- 14th c.Politics & Power
- 6 Aug 1517Culture & Ideas
- from the 1520sCulture & Ideas
- c. 1520-1522Culture & Ideas
A printing press in Vilnius
Moving his workshop to Vilnius, capital of the Grand Duchy, Skaryna produced the Little Travel Book and later The Apostle, the first books printed within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania itself.
Figures of the era
Francysk Skarynabefore 1490 – c. 1551
Printer, physician and humanist
Born in Polotsk and educated at Kraków and Padua, Skaryna printed the Psalter in Prague in 1517, the first book in an East Slavic language, and later founded the first press in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at Vilnius. He is celebrated as the father of Belarusian printing.
The Radziwiłł family16th century onward
Magnate dynasty of the Grand Duchy
Among the most powerful houses of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Radziwiłłs built and held the residential complex at Nesvizh and the castle at Mir, making their domains centres of European architecture, learning and the arts.
Chapter sources: Grand Duchy of Lithuania, History of Belarus, Francysk Skaryna and the First Printed Books in the GDL, Mir Castle Complex, Architectural, Residential and Cultural Complex of the Radziwill Family at Nesvizh
Chapter 03 · 1569 – 1917
The Commonwealth, Partition and the Russian Empire
Joined to Poland in a great commonwealth, then annexed by Russia in the partitions, the Belarusian lands endured a century of Russification before a national awakening took shape.
The Union of Lublin of 1569 fused Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a single federal state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest powers of early modern Europe. The Belarusian lands lay at its centre, and their elites were progressively drawn into Polish language, Catholic and Uniate religion, and the noble culture of the szlachta, even as the peasantry remained Orthodox and East Slavic. The Ruthenian chancery language gradually gave way to Polish, and the cultural divide between a Polonised gentry and a Belarusian-speaking peasantry would shape the region for centuries.
The Commonwealth's long decline ended in its dismemberment. In the three partitions of 1772, 1793 and 1795, Russia, Prussia and Austria divided the state out of existence; Russia took the lion's share of the Belarusian lands, and after the final partition of 1795 all of Belarus came under the rule of the Russian Empire. The new masters pursued a steady policy of integration and Russification: the Uniate Church was suppressed and absorbed into Orthodoxy in 1839, the name 'Belorussia' was discouraged in favour of the bureaucratic 'North-Western Krai', and Russian became the language of administration and schooling. The risings of the Polish-Lithuanian lands in 1830-1831 and 1863-1864 were crushed and followed by intensified repression.
Out of this pressure grew a modern Belarusian national consciousness. In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars, ethnographers and writers began to assert that the Belarusians were a distinct people with their own language and history. The newspaper Nasha Niva ('Our Field'), published from 1906, became the forum of the movement, and the poets Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas gave the emerging nation a literature in its own tongue, transforming a peasant vernacular into a vehicle of national feeling.
“After the third partition of 1795, all of Belarus was ruled by Russia.”
— Encyclopaedia Britannica
Turning points
- 1569Politics & Power
- 1772-1795Politics & Power
- 1816-1855Culture & Ideas
The Struve Geodetic Arc
Five of the surviving station points of the Struve Geodetic Arc, the first accurate measurement of a long meridian segment carried out across the empire between 1816 and 1855, lie in Belarus and are inscribed by UNESCO.
- 1839Religion
Suppression of the Uniate Church and Russification
The Uniate (Greek Catholic) Church was abolished and absorbed into Russian Orthodoxy, part of a sustained imperial policy of Russification that discouraged the Belarusian language and name.
- 1906-1916Culture & Ideas
Figures of the era
Yanka Kupala1882 – 1942
National poet of Belarus
The foremost poet of the Belarusian national revival, Kupala wrote in a Belarusian language that had been discouraged under the Russian Empire, giving the emerging nation a literature and a near-anthem in his verse. He remains the central figure of modern Belarusian letters.
Chapter sources: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, History of Belarus, Belarus, Yanka Kupala, Struve Geodetic Arc
Chapter 04 · 1917 – 1939
People's Republic, Soviet Republic and Terror
A fleeting Belarusian People's Republic gave way to a Soviet republic; the Treaty of Riga split the nation in two, and Stalinist terror filled the pits of Kurapaty.
The collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 opened a brief window for Belarusian statehood. On 25 March 1918, while the country was under German occupation, the Rada (council) of the Belarusian movement proclaimed the independence of the Belarusian People's Republic in Minsk. The republic never controlled its own territory or won recognition from the occupying Germans, and its government soon went into exile; but its declaration is remembered as the first modern assertion of Belarusian independence. As German troops withdrew, the Bolsheviks announced the formation of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic on 1 January 1919.
The Belarusian lands then became a battlefield of the Polish-Soviet War. Hostilities were ended by the Treaty of Riga, signed on 18 March 1921, which divided Belarus between Poland and Soviet Russia roughly along the line of the first partition. Western Belarus passed to the reborn Polish state, while the east formed the Byelorussian SSR, which in 1922 became one of the four founding republics of the Soviet Union and was enlarged in 1924 and 1926 with Belarusian-populated districts transferred from Russia. The Belarusian nation now lived divided between two states.
Within the Soviet republic, an early policy of Belarusianisation that promoted the national language and culture was reversed in the 1930s as Stalin imposed forced collectivisation and mass terror. The peasantry was driven into collective farms, and the national intelligentsia, the very writers and scholars who had built the modern nation, were arrested, deported and shot. At Kurapaty, a forest on the edge of Minsk, the NKVD secretly executed and buried victims between 1937 and 1941; estimates of the dead range widely, and the mass graves, revealed in 1988, became the central symbol of Stalinist repression in Belarus.
“The Treaty of Riga, signed 18 March 1921, divided the area of Belarus between Poland and Soviet Russia along the lines of the First Partition of Poland.”
— Encyclopaedia Britannica
Turning points
- 25 Mar 1918Independence
Belarusian People's Republic proclaimed
Under German occupation, the Rada in Minsk proclaimed the independence of the Belarusian People's Republic, the first modern declaration of Belarusian statehood, though it never controlled the territory and was soon driven into exile.
See the data - 1 Jan 1919Formation
Founding of the Byelorussian SSR
As the Germans withdrew, the Bolsheviks announced the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic; in 1922 it became one of the four founding republics of the Soviet Union.
- 18 Mar 1921War & Rupture
Treaty of Riga partitions Belarus
The treaty ending the Polish-Soviet War divided Belarus between Poland and Soviet Russia along the line of the first partition; western Belarus went to Poland and the east became the Byelorussian SSR.
See the data - 1937-1941Catastrophe
Stalinist terror and Kurapaty
Amid forced collectivisation, the NKVD carried out mass executions of Belarusians at Kurapaty near Minsk between 1937 and 1941; the mass graves, revealed in 1988, became the emblem of Soviet repression in Belarus.
See the data
Figures of the era
Yazep Losik1883 – 1940
Belarusian national activist and linguist
A leading figure of the Belarusian national movement and a scholar of the Belarusian language, Losik was among the intelligentsia who built the modern nation only to perish in the Stalinist terror, dying in Soviet detention.
Zianon Pazniakborn 1944
Archaeologist and discoverer of Kurapaty
The archaeologist whose investigations brought the Kurapaty mass graves to public knowledge in 1988, Pazniak helped force a reckoning with Stalinist crimes and went on to lead the Belarusian national revival movement of the late Soviet years.
Chapter sources: Belarus: The emergence of the Belorussian S.S.R., History of Belarus, Kurapaty (1937-1941): NKVD Mass Killings in Soviet Belarus
Chapter 05 · 1939 – 1986
Reunification, the Nazi Catastrophe and Soviet Belarus
Reunited in 1939, then devastated by a Nazi occupation that killed a quarter to a third of its people, Belarus rebuilt as a Soviet republic and a founding member of the United Nations.
The Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 redrew the map once more. Following the German invasion of Poland, Soviet forces moved into eastern Poland on 17 September 1939, and western Belarus was annexed to the Byelorussian SSR, reuniting the Belarusian lands under Soviet rule. The reunion was brief in peace. On 22 June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and Belarus, lying directly in the path of the advance, was overrun and subjected to one of the most destructive occupations of the entire war.
The occupation of 1941 to 1944 was a catastrophe almost without parallel. The Germans murdered the Jewish population in ghettos and mass shootings, the Minsk ghetto alone holding about 100,000 people; they conducted punitive expeditions that burned villages with their inhabitants, the most infamous being Khatyn, destroyed in March 1943, one of hundreds of such places; and they waged a savage war against the vast Soviet partisan movement that made Belarus's forests a centre of resistance. Belarus lost roughly a quarter to a third of its population: its people numbered about 9.2 million before the war and only some 6.3 million by late 1944, with cities such as Minsk left 80 to 90 percent in ruins.
From these ashes the Byelorussian SSR was rebuilt as an industrialised Soviet republic. In recognition of the suffering and the role of the Belarusian people in defeating fascism, the republic was made a founding member of the United Nations in 1945, signing the UN Charter at San Francisco even though it was not an independent state, one of only two Soviet republics, with Ukraine, to hold a separate UN seat. Postwar Belarus was heavily Russified in language and was developed as a hub of Soviet machine-building, chemicals and electronics until a disaster beyond its borders changed everything.
“Belarus's population fell from about 9.2 million before the war to roughly 6.3 million by the end of 1944.”
— Archives of Belarus, on the Nazi occupation
Turning points
- 17 Sep 1939Politics & Power
- 1941-1944War & Rupture
Nazi occupation and mass death
The German occupation killed a quarter to a third of the population; the people of Belarus fell from about 9.2 million before the war to roughly 6.3 million by late 1944, with cities like Minsk left in ruins.
See the data - 22 Mar 1943War & Rupture
The Khatyn massacre
German forces and auxiliaries burned the village of Khatyn with its inhabitants, one of hundreds of Belarusian villages annihilated in anti-partisan reprisals and a lasting symbol of the occupation's brutality.
See the data - 1945Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Kuzma Kiselyov1903 – 1977
Foreign minister of the Byelorussian SSR
As People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Byelorussian SSR, Kiselyov led the Belarusian delegation to the 1945 San Francisco Conference and signed the United Nations Charter, securing Belarus a founding seat in the world organisation.
Vasil Bykau1924 – 2003
Writer of the war generation
A frontline veteran and Belarus's most internationally renowned writer, Bykau drew on the partisan war and Nazi occupation to produce unflinching novels of moral choice under terror, becoming a conscience of the nation and later a critic of authoritarian rule.
Chapter sources: Belarus: The emergence of the Belorussian S.S.R., History of Belarus, Aftermath of the War, History of Belarus at the United Nations
Chapter 06 · 1986 – present
Chernobyl, Independence and the Lukashenka Era
Scarred by Chernobyl and born into independence at the dissolution of the USSR on its own soil, Belarus has since 1994 been ruled by Alyaksandr Lukashenka in deepening union with Russia.
On 26 April 1986 a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in neighbouring Ukraine exploded, and the prevailing winds carried about 70 percent of the radioactive fallout onto Belarus. Close to a quarter of the country's territory was contaminated and some 2.2 million people affected; tens of thousands were evacuated and resettled, and vast tracts of farmland were rendered unusable. Chernobyl became, and remains decades later, the defining environmental and public-health catastrophe of modern Belarus, and the secrecy of the Soviet response fed a rising tide of national and democratic feeling.
As the Soviet Union weakened, Belarus moved toward sovereignty: the Supreme Soviet adopted a Declaration of State Sovereignty on 27 July 1990, and on 25 August 1991, after the failed Moscow coup, gave it constitutional force, proclaiming the Republic of Belarus. The end came on Belarusian soil: on 8 December 1991, in the Belavezha forest, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the Belarusian parliamentary chairman Stanislau Shushkevich among them, signed accords declaring that the USSR had ceased to exist and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States. Belarus also holds part of the ancient Belavezhskaya Pushcha, a UNESCO-listed primeval forest and the last refuge of the European bison.
In 1994 Belarus elected as its first president Alyaksandr Lukashenka, a former collective-farm manager who won on an anti-corruption platform. He swiftly consolidated power, extended his rule through contested referendums and elections, and bound Belarus ever closer to Moscow, signing a Treaty on the Creation of a Union State with Russia in December 1999 and pursuing deep integration thereafter. His claimed landslide re-election in August 2020 triggered the largest protests in the country's history; the European Union declared the vote neither free nor fair and refused to recognise Lukashenka's renewed mandate, even as he retained power with Russian backing and tightened the Union State with Russia still further.
“Around 70 percent of the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl spread across Belarus, contaminating nearly a quarter of the country's territory.”
— United Nations, on the Chernobyl disaster
Turning points
- 26 Apr 1986Catastrophe
The Chernobyl disaster
The reactor explosion at Chernobyl in Ukraine sent about 70 percent of its radioactive fallout onto Belarus, contaminating nearly a quarter of the country's territory and affecting some 2.2 million people.
See the data - 25 Aug 1991Independence
Independence of Belarus
After declaring sovereignty on 27 July 1990, the Supreme Soviet gave the declaration constitutional force on 25 August 1991 in the wake of the Moscow coup, proclaiming the independent Republic of Belarus.
See the data - 8 Dec 1991Politics & Power
Belavezha Accords dissolve the USSR
In the Belavezha forest in Belarus, part of the UNESCO-listed Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, including Stanislau Shushkevich, signed accords declaring that the USSR had ceased to exist and founding the Commonwealth of Independent States.
- 1994Politics & Power
Lukashenka elected president
Alyaksandr Lukashenka won Belarus's first presidential election on an anti-corruption platform and went on to consolidate authoritarian rule and forge ever-deeper ties with Russia.
- 8 Dec 1999Politics & Power
- Aug-Sep 2020Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Stanislau Shushkevich1934 – 2022
First head of independent Belarus
A physicist who chaired the Supreme Soviet of newly independent Belarus, Shushkevich signed the Belavezha Accords in 1991 that dissolved the Soviet Union. A reformer, he was forced from office in 1994 as Lukashenka rose to power.
Alyaksandr Lukashenkaborn 1954
President of Belarus since 1994
Elected in 1994 as Belarus's first president, the former collective-farm manager built a durable authoritarian state, anchored Belarus to Russia through the Union State, and clung to power after the disputed 2020 election that the EU refused to recognise.
Chapter sources: Fallout from Chernobyl disaster still a 'very important challenge' for Belarus, Belarus, Declaration of State Sovereignty of Belarus (1990), Belavezha Agreement (1991), Bialowieza Forest (Belovezhskaya Pushcha), Alexander Lukashenko, Treaty on the Creation of a Union State, Belarus: Declaration by the High Representative on the so-called 'inauguration' of Lukashenko