Belarus: An Eastern Bloc Country?

Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It was formerly known as Byelorussia or White Russia. Belarus was a part of the Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc, during the Cold War. The Eastern Bloc was an unofficial coalition of communist states in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union.

During the Cold War, Belarus was known as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) and was a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The BSSR was one of the four founding republics of the USSR, established on 30 December 1922. The BSSR was closely controlled by the Soviet Union, and nationalism was discouraged.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus declared sovereignty on 27 July 1990 and independence on 25 August 1991. Belarus has since retained close ties with Russia, its most dominant neighbour. Belarus has a highly centralized and authoritarian government and has often been described as Europe's last dictatorship.

Belarus was part of the Soviet Bloc

The Soviet Bloc was an informal coalition of communist states in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism and were opposed to the capitalist Western Bloc.

The Soviet Bloc was also referred to as the Eastern Bloc in Western Europe. This term was used to refer to the USSR and Central and Eastern European countries in the Comecon (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania).

The Soviet Bloc was also used to refer to communist states in Asia (Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, North Korea, South Yemen, Syria, and China) and the Americas (Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada).

Belarus was known as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Byelorussian SSR) or Belorussia during its time as a part of the Soviet Union. It was one of the founding members of the USSR and a founding member of the United Nations in 1945.

The Byelorussian SSR was created in 1919 and was one of the four founding republics of the USSR. The Byelorussian SSR grew in territory in 1924 when Soviet authorities transferred the regions of Polotsk, Vitebsk, Orsha, and Mogilyov from the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic to the Byelorussian SSR. Gomel and Rechitsa were added in 1926.

The Byelorussian SSR was dissolved in 1991 when Belarus declared its independence and became the Republic of Belarus. Belarus has been led by the authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko since 1994.

Belarus was occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II

Belarus was invaded by Nazi Germany on 22 June 1941, less than a year after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union had granted the latter control over the country. By the end of August 1941, all of modern-day Belarus was under German occupation.

The western parts of Belarus became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941, and in 1943, the German authorities allowed local collaborators to set up a regional government, the Belarusian Central Rada. The Nazi occupation of Belarus was brutal, with more than two million people killed in three years, including 500,000 to 550,000 Jews as part of the Holocaust. More than 9,200 villages and settlements, and 682,000 buildings were destroyed, and some settlements were burned several times.

The ethnically Slavic Belarusian population was intended to be exterminated, expelled, or enslaved as part of the German ethnic cleansing operation named Generalplan Ost. At least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed by the Nazis, and in more than 600 villages, the entire population was annihilated. The Khatyn massacre is one such example, where the entire population of the village was burned alive.

During the German occupation, atrocities against the Jewish population began almost immediately, with the dispatch of Einsatzgruppen (task groups) to round up Jews and shoot them. Local gentiles were encouraged to carry out their own pogroms. By the end of 1941, there were more than 50,000 troops devoted to rounding up and killing Jews. In three years of occupation, between one and two million Soviet Jews were killed.

Once in control of Belarus, the Nazis began to concentrate the Jews in ghettos, killing the elderly, young, and old and putting all able-bodied men and women to work for the Third Reich. However, the German attempts to incite the local population to carry out independent pogroms against the Jews failed. This was because Belarus had been part of the Soviet Union, and the Germans did not find a nationalist agenda that could propel the local population to do the killing for them. The majority of the population was either indifferent toward the fate of the Jews or thought primarily of their own suffering under the occupation.

The non-Jewish population was also subjected to Nazi terror. Hundreds of thousands were deported to Germany as slave labourers, thousands of villages and towns were burned or destroyed, and millions were starved to death as the Germans plundered the entire region. Belarus, at the mercy of both the Red and the German armies, was almost entirely destroyed by the war.

Belarus was a founding member of the United Nations

Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, was a founding member of the United Nations. The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was among the first countries that signed the United Nations Charter in 1945, becoming a founding member of the United Nations among 51 countries.

The history of Belarus is largely inseparable from that of its neighbours. The territory that is now Belarus underwent partition and changed hands repeatedly. Belarus has retained close ties to its most dominant neighbour, Russia. In 1999, Belarus and Russia signed the Union State Foundation Treaty, which aimed to create a politically integrated confederation with a common currency.

The Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations and the Soviet Union in 1945. The republic was home to a widespread and diverse anti-Nazi insurgent movement which dominated politics until well into the 1970s, overseeing Belarus' transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy.

The parliament of the republic proclaimed the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990, and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus gained independence on 25 August 1991. Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1994, Alexander Lukashenko was elected Belarus's first president in the country's first and only free election after independence, serving as president ever since.

The country has been a member of the United Nations since its founding and has joined the CIS, the CSTO, the EAEU, the OSCE, and the Non-Aligned Movement. It has shown no aspirations of joining the European Union but maintains a bilateral relationship with the bloc, and also participates in the Baku Initiative.

Belarus has been ruled by an authoritarian government since 1994

Lukashenko was first elected in 1994, following the adoption of a new constitution. Since then, he has held on to power through a series of controversial elections, with the most recent taking place in 2020. The 2020 election sparked mass protests and was not recognised by the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom or the United States. Lukashenko's regime has been characterised by the repression of opponents and the media, and the continuation of several Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy.

Belarus has a bicameral parliament, the National Assembly, which is made up of the House of Representatives and the Council of the Republic. However, the president holds significant power and can enact decrees that are executed in the same way as laws. The constitution grants the president the role of head of state and head of government, with duties including executing foreign and domestic policy, defending citizens' rights and welfare, and upholding the constitution.

Lukashenko's government has been condemned by organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Council of Europe, which has barred Belarus from membership since 1997. The country has also faced sanctions from the EU, US, UK, Canada and other countries due to its political oppression and role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Despite international criticism, Lukashenko has maintained close ties with Russia, with the two countries signing a treaty in 2000 for greater cooperation and forming the Union State. Belarus has also been a member of several international organisations, including the United Nations, the CIS, the CSTO, the EAEU, the OSCE and the Non-Aligned Movement.

Belarus has close ties with Russia

Russia and Belarus have a union agreement that involves close economic, political, and military ties. The two countries have a joint regional military force, and they coordinate their air defence systems, perform joint military exercises, and share a unified crime database. Belarusians and Russians have equal rights and opportunities in each other's countries, and they can cross the border without undergoing passport or customs controls.

The two countries also cooperate in the fields of energy, transport, and industrial cooperation. They have launched joint projects for the production of import-substituting products, and they participate in other integration projects in the post-Soviet area, such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

Belarus has increasingly relied on Russia's financial and political support, especially after the 2020 Belarusian presidential elections, which resulted in mass protests and the country's isolation from the West. Russia also launched its 2022 invasion of Ukraine from Belarusian territory.

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