Belarus: History
History
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.
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