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With distinctive features by the ninth century, the emerging
Belarusian state was then absorbed by Kievan Rus' in the ninth
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 (U.S.S.R.). Suffering
devastating population losses under Soviet leader Josif Stalin and
the German Nazi occupation, including mass executions of 800,000
Jews, 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 authoritarian Alexander
Lukashenko since 1994. |
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