Belarus

Belarus A territory formerly also known as Belorussia (White Russia) which had been under Polish and Lithuanian domination for centuries, until it came under Russian control in the late eighteenth century. When the Tsarist Empire collapsed after the Russian Revolution of 1917, independence was proclaimed briefly in July 1917, until the territory became a Soviet Republic in the Russian Civil War. It was occupied by Polish troops in the Russo-Polish War, and then partitioned in the Peace Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921), with its western areas becoming part of Poland, while the east became a founding Soviet Republic of the USSR in 1922. The western parts were reclaimed for good after the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland, in accordance with the Hitler–Stalin Pact. It was devastated by the German army, during whose occupation around two million people, mostly but not exclusively Jews, were killed. After World War II it benefited considerably from its membership of the USSR, as it was industrialized despite its lack of mineral resources. It became a sovereign state amidst the collapse of the USSR, in the wake of the August coup, on 26 August 1991.

Subsequently, a tug of war developed between the reformist President, Stanislav Shushkevich, and the parliament, which had retained its Communist composition of the Soviet era. Shushkevich was deposed by a no-confidence vote in 1994, and was replaced by Aleksandr Lukashenka (1994– ) on an anti-corruption platform. This did not end the confrontations with parliament, whose composition remained the same after the 1995 elections were made void through their low voter turnout. Of the former Soviet republics, Belarus has remained most closely attached to Russia: in a 1995 plebiscite, Russian was reintroduced as an equal language with Belorussian, and the old Soviet Belorussian flag was readopted. In 1999 it entered into a Union with Russia, which aimed at creating a customs and currency union by 2005, a common parliament, and a common judiciary. Lukashenka's pro-Russian policy became increasingly contentious among the population, and discontent was fuelled further by his autocratic governing style. Lukashenka suppressed the opposition by curtailing freedom of speech and closing down independent media outlets. He was also reported as having members of the opposition murdered by death squads.