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 A.D. With distinctive
features by the ninth century, the emerging Belarusian state was
then absorbed by Kievan Rus' in the 9th century. Belarus was later
an integral part of what was called Litva, which included today's
Belarus as well as today's Lithuania. Belarus was the birthplace
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Belarusian was the state language
of the Grand Duchy until 1697, in part owing to the strong flowering
of Belarusian culture during the Renaissance through the works
of leading Belarusian humanists such as Frantzisk Skaryna). 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, and the birthplace of
Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who played a key role in the American Revolution.
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. Suffering massive population
losses under Stalin and the Nazi occupation, Belarus was retaken
by the Soviets in 1944. 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 Aleksander Lukashenko since
1994.
