Read an Excerpt

Belarus

Bravo Ltd

LAND & PEOPLE

GEOGRAPHICAL SNAPSHOT

Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordering Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. It likes to boast that it is at the center of Europe, ideally positioned as a transit corridor for East–West trade. In some ways, this is true. Russia has been piping gas to Europe through Belarus for some time now. However, this arrangement is currently under some strain as Russia seeks to phase out the subsidies it has traditionally granted Belarus, in favor of charging more realistic prices for its products. Belarus can ill afford to pay market prices for its fuel and has used its power to interrupt the transit of supplies as a bargaining chip.

If you drive across Belarus, you'll see that it's quite flat, with many forests, lakes and swamps. Around 27 percent of the land is farmed. The major expressways are kept in fair condition, but, as you might expect, the less used rural thoroughfares are quite potholed. Winters are generally cold and snowy; 14°F is usual (-10°C) but temperatures can dip to -22°F (-30°C) on occasion. Spring and fall are rainy and cool, at 50–60°F (10–15°C), while summer is humid, with temperatures easily hitting 70°F (21°C), with occasional spurts up to 90°F (32°C).

Chernobyl

Reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine exploded on April 26, 1986. The measure of radiation released by the explosion was more than a hundred times that experienced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Belarus lay directly in the path of danger, with winds blowing the fallout straight over the border. The south and southeast of the country remain particularly affected by radiation, having received around 70 percent of the total fallout. Infant mortality in affected areas is 20 percent above the national average, and two-thirds of all infant deaths are attributable to abnormal fetal development.

Initially, local people were kept largely in the dark over what had happened, and several days passed before evacuation began from the affected areas; most believed they would be returning. Of course, all the possessions they left behind were contaminated, so could never be recovered. Limited information was shared on the consequences to health. Naturally, many felt that they had been misled by the authorities.

The longer-term social and psychological effects have been significant. Incidences of depression and alcohol dependence in affected areas have risen, exacerbated by a lack of employment opportunities and a sense of fatalism. Many women from the region have long been scared of having children, fearing abnormalities, and those who move away usually try to keep their former home secret, anxious that men won't marry them. The Belarusian government is now implementing a revival plan to set up factories and provide modern housing, schools, and hospital facilities in the affected areas, addressing a desperate need. Gradually, hope is returning.

More than 80 percent of human radioactive contamination is thought to be caused by eating contaminated food, rather than exposure to the environment. Concern remains over the health of children (occurrence of thyroid cancer is particularly high), but experts are divided on long-term consequences for the population. 1.3 million reside in the Gomel and Mogilev regions, the most contaminated, with respectively 64 percent and 30 percent of their total areas affected, according to state statistics. A fifth of all farming land has been affected, and agriculture is still forbidden in parts of the south.

In the exclusion zone, the wilderness has returned, with wolves and other wildlife roaming free. According to state figures, a total area of around 60,000 square miles (around 155,000 sq. km) is still contaminated, and will remain so for most of the next century. More than 770 square miles (more than 2,000 sq. km) of forest are affected, so eating berries or mushrooms from them is ill-advised. As radionuclides slowly penetrate the soil they filter down into the water table and poison rivers and lakes — the water supply for thousands of people. Domestically produced food available in cities is regularly checked for radiation by the authorities and is generally declared to be at "reasonable" levels.

Agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme in Belarus have been working to improve the quality of life of those living in affected areas, from supporting ventures and training schemes that will enhance job opportunities for local people to showing them which foods are most likely to be contaminated and how to use radiation detecting equipment. In addition, a vast number of international charity groups (many based in Italy, Ireland, and the UK) have been working to improve the lives of young people in these regions. Some children travel abroad on recuperative trips. Hands-on help and financial funding have also been given to improve housing, health, and education facilities in affected settlements. The Belarusian government has been keen to accept support in alleviating the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe.

Population Decline

The country has a population of around ten million, having steadily declined between 1993 and 2001 at around 50,000 annually. This was largely due to deaths exceeding births, in addition to the emigration of young Belarusians. The government is now actively promoting family life — advocating that it is every young woman's duty to have at least three children (2005 UNESCO figures showed that the average was 1.2 births per woman). Various child benefits are being offered to encourage this trend.

In the late 1990s, almost two-thirds of pregnancies ended in abortion, while a significant number of babies were abandoned to orphanages. Teenagers' lack of sex education and access to contraceptives is partly to blame but many of these unwanted pregnancies happened to families who felt they simply could not cope with another child to look after, bearing in mind that most live in very small apartments and have limited incomes. Women living in Chernobyl-affected areas also feared for the health of their unborn children. The president has warned that low birth rates are a potential threat to sustainable economic development. On a positive note, state figures show that the birthrate rose by 6.5 percent in 2006 and abortions fell to around one in three pregnancies. In 2007, the birthrate rose by a further 7.3 percent and mortality rates fell by 4 percent, resulting in a population fall of 3 percent.

The 2006 Independence Day parade included all those who had recently wed, resplendent in their beautiful wedding outfits. The campaign to promote marriage and family life was evident in 2006, proclaimed "The Year of the Mother," and continued in 2007 with "The Year of the Child," and in 2008 with "The Year of Health." As mortality levels begin to stabilize and birthrates rise, for the first time in a decade, it seems that positive population growth is within reach.

Young people in rural areas are increasingly heading for cities in search of opportunities: 73.4 percent of the population now live in urban surroundings. Around 30 percent of villagers are over sixty years of age. Additionally, women of childbearing age (15–49) made up just 21.5 percent of rural residents in 2005. The government is countering this by allocating significant funding to the development of agriculture and industry in rural areas, to promote employment and living standards.

A BRIEF HISTORY

Belarusians have only recently begun to think of themselves and function as an independent nation. Historically, they were passed from one neighbor to another — marched over, annexed, and dominated. This legacy helps to explain their characteristic traits of stoicism and acceptance.

Belarusian roots go back to the Slavic migrations into Eastern Europe between the sixth and eighth centuries, into territories already settled by Baltic tribes. They are mostly descended from East Slavic tribes — the Dregovichs, Krivichs, and Radimichs — some of whom mixed with the local Balts. The Slavs were pagan, agrarian people who traded in agricultural produce, game, furs, honey, beeswax, and amber. During the ninth and tenth centuries, the Varangians, Viking invaders, established trading posts along the waterways linking Scandinavia to the Byzantine Empire, crossing the lakes and rivers of modern-day Belarus. This became a lucrative trade route and gradually the Varangians assumed sovereignty over the East Slavic tribes. In time they assimilated into the majority Slavic population.

The Principality of Polotsk

The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus, emerged in the tenth century — a loose network of principalities along the trade routes from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Its major centers were Novgorod (in Russia), Polotsk (in northern Belarus), and Kiev (in Ukraine). Polotsk, on the Dvina River, was the dominant power on Belarusian territory, often asserting its independence within the grouping. It was also the first city in Belarus to embrace Christianity — in 992 — via the Greek Orthodox Church, under the Metropolitan of Kiev. Nevertheless, pagan rituals and beliefs continued to flourish for many centuries.

Litva — The Grand Duchy of Lithuania

After the destruction of Kievan Rus by the Tatars in 1240, the principality of Polatsk was subsumed into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, thus helping to shape Lithuania's political, religious, and cultural life. The Belarusian language, which had begun to form in the first half of the thirteenth century, became the official language of the Grand Duchy, a situation that lasted from the mid-fourteenth to the late-seventeenth century, when it was replaced by Polish.

In order to protect Lithuania from the depredations of the Teutonic Knights, whose ostensible mission was the conversion of the pagan peoples of Eastern Europe, in 1385 the Grand Duchy joined Poland in a dynastic union, thereby creating the largest country in Europe. The pagan Grand Duke Jogaila was baptized into the Catholic Church in order to marry Jadwiga, the heir to the Polish throne, and Roman Catholicism became the state religion.

In 1410, at the great Battle of Grünwald, the united armies of Poland and Lithuania decisively defeated the Teutonic Knights, and a period of prosperity followed. Royal charters confirmed the equality of Catholic and Orthodox feudal lords. The Lithuanian and Belarusian nobility, however, started converting to Catholicism and adopting Polish culture, and the Orthodox Belarusian peasantry came to be ruled by a class that shared neither their language nor their religion. The native, self-governing Orthodox Church came under pressure from the Polish authorities to unite with Rome. Moscow began to assert itself as the defender of Orthodoxy throughout Eastern Europe, particularly after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.

The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

In 1569, by the Union of Lublin, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland formed a federal state with a single Sejm (parliament) — the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. This covered modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, large parts of Ukraine and Estonia, and some parts of western Russia. Polish culture and language permeated Belarus, and Polish or Polonized nobles ruled the land. With the dying out of the Jagiellonian dynasty, the Polish monarchy became elective; central government grew weak, and the power of the nobility increased, leading to infighting and political instability.

Political conflict was fueled by religion. In the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation introduced Lutheranism and Calvinism to Belarus. The Counter-Reformation spearheaded by the Jesuits brought fanatical persecution of all non-Catholics. In 1596 the Uniate Church was formed to reconcile the Orthodox and fend off Moscow. This was a union of the native Orthodox Church with the Catholic Church, by which the Orthodox broke their links with the Patriarch of Constantinople and acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope, accepting certain articles of Catholic doctrine in return for retaining their traditional rites and a measure of autonomy. In the event, many of the Orthodox faithful rejected this compromise and the native Orthodox Church continued to exist alongside the Uniate Church.

The Polish–Lithuanian state's ferocious oppression of the native Orthodox Church gave Moscow the opening it needed to further its imperial ambitions. From 1648 to 1654 there was a peasant uprising against Polish landowners, and many Belarusians fled to Ukraine to join the Russian-backed Cossack rebellion.

From 1654 to 1667, Russia invaded and occupied a large portion of Belarus, creating a demographic and economic crisis. Cities were destroyed and about half the population was killed, including 80 percent of the urban population. The Great Northern War of 1700–21, a struggle between Russia and Sweden for control of the Baltic, in which Poland–Lithuania was allied with Russia, was a further disaster for Belarus. Political anarchy and religious divisions within the country gave its powerful neighbors the opportunity they wanted.

Imperial Russia

In 1772, 1793, and 1795 the enfeebled Polish–Lithuanian state was partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, after which the whole of Belarus was incorporated into the Russian Empire. Minsk was designated the regional capital.

In 1794, the Belarusian-born nobleman Tadeusz Kosciuszko (who had trained in France and was a hero of the American Revolutionary War) led an uprising against the Russian occupation, which was soon suppressed. A monument stands to him in Lafayette Square, opposite the White House in Washington.

Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the border of the Russian Empire in 1812. He was defeated and forced to retreat with terrible losses. A significant rearguard battle took place at the Berezina River in Belarus as the French army attempted to cross its bridges; the remains of French soldiers are still being unearthed today and given a Christian burial.

Apart from the destruction he wreaked, Napoleon's legacy was the dissemination of democratic ideas allied to nationalism. In 1830–31 a national-liberation uprising to restore Poland–Lithuania within the 1772 boundaries broke out. It failed to gain the support of the peasants in the countryside, however, and was decisively crushed. The political and economic power of the Polish-Catholic establishment was broken and the legal status of the Duchy of Lithuania was annulled. Few educated Belarusians now held positions of influence, while the Belarusian masses were generally regarded as provincial peasants.

Russification, Resistance, and the Emergence of a Modern Identity

As part of the crackdown, the Tsarist regime inaugurated an intensive program of de-Polonization and Russification. National cultures, including Belarusian, were repressed, those who had converted to Roman Catholicism were pressed to reconvert to Orthodoxy, and native Orthodox believers were forced to accept Russian Orthodox Christianity, which by now was effectively a tool of the state. The name "Belarusia" ("White Russia"), which had been introduced to replace "Lithuania," was quickly replaced with "Northwestern Territory," and the use of the Belarusian language was banned in schools and publications.

---

Excerpted from Belarus by Anne Coombes. Copyright © 2008 Kuperard. Excerpted by permission of Bravo Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---