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Belarus: White Russia
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Belarus, meaning "White Russia," is in Eastern Europe and consists of flat lowlands separated by low hills and uplands. Forests cover a third of this republic, and the Pinsk Marshes occupy much of the south. Settled by a Slavic people, Belarus was dominated by Kiev during the 13th century, by Lithuania and Poland into the 18th century, and by Russia after 1772. The region suffered grievously during World War II, losing more than two million people. Postwar years saw heavy industrial development, centered at Minsk. The 1986 nuclear disaster at Chornobyl (Chernobyl), just south of Belarus in Ukraine, contaminated one third of Belarus—70 percent of the radiation fell on its territory.
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Much of Belarus is a hilly lowland, drained by the Dnieper, Western Dvina, and Neman rivers. The climate is moderate humid continental, with warm summers and cold winters. More than one third of the land is covered with peat and other swampy soils, notably in the Pripyat Marshes in the south. In addition to the capital, other important cities are Gomel (in Belarusian, Homyel), Vitebsk (Vitsyebsk), Mogilev (Mahilyow), Bobruysk (Babruysk), Grodno (Horodna), and Brest. Some 80% of the population are Belarusians; Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians are the republic's largest minorities. Since the breakup the USSR, Belarus has experienced a slow decline in population.
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According to the Save the Children international organization report (comparing 167 countries), Belarus has the highest rating for the quality of life for women and children among all countries in the former Soviet Union. Belarus ranked sixteenth for mothers’ quality of life, fourteenth for a womans’ quality of life and twentieth for the quality of life for children. The closest former Soviet republics are Estonia (18th for Women’s rank), Ukraine (21/31/26) and Russia (27/34/64).
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Belarus, led by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, has poor relations with the United States and Western Europe. It is unlikely to garner the kind of international sympathy that Ukraine, for example, enjoyed when Russia cut off its natural gas in a pricing dispute last January.
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Belarus first declared independence on 25 March 1918, forming the Belarusian People’s Republic. The Republic... was short-lived, and the regime was overthrown soon after the German withdrawal. In 1919, Belarus became the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). After Russian occupation of eastern and northern Lithuania, it was merged into the Lithuanian-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921, Byelorussian lands were split between Poland and the Bolsheviks, and the recreated Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922.
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Belarus has seen little structural reform since 1995, when President LUKASHENKO launched the country on the path of "market socialism." In keeping with this policy, LUKASHENKO reimposed administrative controls over prices and currency exchange rates and expanded the state's right to intervene in the management of private enterprise. In addition to the burdens imposed by high inflation and persistent trade deficits, businesses have been subject to pressure on the part of central and local governments, e.g., arbitrary changes in regulations, numerous rigorous inspections, retroactive application of new business regulations, and arrests of "disruptive" businessmen and factory owners. A wide range of redistributive policies has helped those at the bottom of the ladder. Close relations with Russia, possibly leading to reunion, color the pattern of economic developments. For the time being, Belarus remains self-isolated from the West and its open-market economies.
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