Belarus is slightly smaller than the UK and borders Russia in the north and east, Latvia and Lithuania in the north-west, Poland in the west and Ukraine in the south. It's a low-lying country, with the highest hill, Dzjarzhinskaja, reaching only 345m (1132ft). The terrain is mostly low ridges dividing broad marshy lowlands scattered with small lakes. The major river is the Dnjapro, which flows into eastern Belarus from Smolensk in Russia.
Belarus was once completely covered in forest. By the 16th century most of it had been cleared for farming, but great plots have regrown, especially in the south. The most common trees are conifer, oak, beech and silver birch. The Belavezhskaja Pushcha Nature Reserve, on the Polish border, is Europe's largest slice of primeval mixed forest and is home to a healthy population of European bison. Belarus' other nature reserves are home to elk, deer, boar, wolf, fox, squirrel, marten, hare, beaver, otter, mink and badger. Agricultural land is given over to grains and to flax (the raw material for linen): great fields of the delicate blue flax flower are a striking sight.
Belarus has a continental climate which becomes marginally more severe as you move from south-west to north-east. Average January temperatures are between -4°C and -8°C (25-18°F), and there's frost on the ground 7 to 8 months of the year. The warmest month is July, when temperatures normally reach 19°C (66°F). It's wettest in June and August, and there's snow cover from December to April.
Evidence of human occupation in Belarus goes back to the early Stone Age. Eastern Slavs were certainly here in the 6th to 8th centuries AD, during the Slav expansion. Many Belarusian towns became Tatar vassals after the Mongols defeated the region's Slav rulers in Kiev in 1240. During the 14th century the area was taken over by Lithuania, a 'hands-off' ruler that allowed Belarus to hang onto its Orthodox religion and its language, despite imposing serfdom on most of the locals. Over the next 400 years, Belarus became a cultural entity distinct from Russia and Ukraine. When Poland unified with Lithuania in 1569, Polish culture became much more prominent in Belarus and the Belarusian church was brought under the authority of the Vatican.
By the end of the 18th century, Poland was getting a bit doddery, so Russia stepped in and took charge of Belarus. Russia was determined to make Belarus part of the great fatherland: publishing in the Belarusian language was banned and the Russian Orthodox church instituted. During the 19th century Belarus started moving from agriculture to a more industrialised economy. In the 1860s the serfs were freed, but poverty in the countryside remained so high that 1.5 million people emigrated around the turn of the century. Since the Russians required Jews to live in designated areas - one of which was Belarus - the country's urban Jewish population increased dramatically during the 19th century, and in some towns more than half the population was Jewish. Most urban areas were largely populated by Jews and Russians, while the Belarusians remained on the land, having little political influence or access to resources.
During WWI, many Russian-German battles took place in Belarus, and a lot of the country was destroyed. Germany took Belarus, but in 1921 the country was divided between Poland and Bolshevik Russia (which became the USSR the next year). The Soviet section of Belarus was subjected to purges and agricultural collectivisation during the 1930s, and its culture and independence were quashed. Thousands of Belarusians were executed, mostly in the forests outside Minsk.
When Poland was invaded by Germany and the USSR in 1939, the USSR took back the Polish section of Belarus. Unfortunately for the Belarusians, they were on the front line again when Germany invaded the USSR in 1941. The German occupation was savage and partisan resistance was widespread. In 1944 the Germans were driven out by the Red Army, but Belarus was trashed in the process: barely a stone was left standing in Minsk and a quarter of the country's population died. Many of the dead met their end in Nazi concentration camps or were deported and executed by the USSR.
The first post-war 5 year plan repaired a lot of the war damage, and Minsk developed into the industrial hub of the USSR. People moved into the city and many Russians immigrated to bolster the industrial workforce. Until 1980, Belarusian politicians walked a fine line between emphasising Belarus' nationhood and staying safe and warm in the Soviet family. That said, however, Belarus had a reputation for being one of the most rigidly communist of the Soviet republics.
When the Chornobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine melted down in 1986, Belarus was harder hit than the Ukraine itself. Around one-fifth of the country was seriously contaminated, and the tide of political opinion turned against continued membership in the Union. In 1988 the Belarusian Popular Front was formed to address issues raised by Chornobyl and the declining use of the Belarusian language. Nationalist sentiment grew in the following years, and on 27 July 1990 the republic issued a declaration of sovereignty within the USSR. On 25 August 1991 the Communist Party issued a declaration of full national independence.
Stanislau Shushkevich, a physicist who had campaigned against official negligence at Chornobyl, was the first head of state, pursuing a centrist line between the communist old guard and the reformist Popular Front. During the early 1990s, economic reform was slow and the communists re-established many ties with Russia, against Shushkevich's will. Shushkevich was removed in 1994 and, in Belarus' first direct presidential elections, replaced by Alexandr Lukashenko. Lukashenko promised to reverse price rises, stop privatisation, halt corruption, smash organised crime and develop closer ties with Russia.
The country has a strong musical tradition and many 12th century Orthodox hymns and sermons had their origins in Belarus. Belarusian folk music is well known; don't miss a performance if you get the opportunity. Modern folk music originated from ritualistic ceremonies or church music, and became highly developed from the 16th century onwards. Belarusian classical music is a 20th century phenomenon, though this hasn't stopped the Minsk opera and ballet companies from earning international reputations.
Belarus, like Ukraine, has always been a crossing point between Latin and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Around 70% of Belarusians are Eastern Orthodox, but a sizeable Roman Catholic population (which dominates the clergy) has resulted from centuries of Polish rule. There's also a scattering of Protestants (a remnant of the once-large German population), Muslims (mainly Tatars) and Jews, although many of these are emigrating.
Belarusian is an Eastern Slavonic language, related to Russian and Ukrainian. It's usually written in Cyrillic, but there's a rarely-used Roman Belarusian alphabet. Under Soviet rule, 80% of Belarusian children were taught exclusively in Russian, and Russian was the official language of all business and government transactions. In 1990, Belarusian was made the country's official language. Street names are now changing, and education is shifting its emphasis back to Belarusian history and literature. However, Russian is still the most widely-spoken language.
The Belarusians love their mushrooms, and gathering them is something of a local ritual. Many main dishes use fungus in one way or another - in a rich sauce, in a creamy filling, or by itself. Popular dishes include hrybi v smtane (mushrooms with sour cream), hribnoy sup (mushroom and barley soup) and kotleta pokrestyansky (pork cutlet with mushroom sauce). Other important ingredients are garlic, fish and caraway. Kvas is a favoured drink made from malt flour, sugar, mint and fruit.
Money & Costs
Currency: Belarusian rouble
Relative costs:
- Budget meal: US$1-3
- Moderate restaurant meal: US$3-5
- Top-end restaurant meal: US$5-10
- Budget room: US$5-20
- Moderate hotel: US$20-50
- Top-end hotel: US$50-80
The major cost when travelling in Belarus is accommodation, but everything else is extremely cheap. A full meal will rarely cost more than US$6, a night at the opera never more than US$1, and domestic train tickets are a bargain. Budget around US$30 a day if you're travelling on a shoestring, US$75 a day if you want a reasonably high level of comfort.
Credit cards and travellers' cheques are the most convenient and safest ways to carry money, but finding somewhere to use them can be tricky. It's worth bringing a substantial amount of cash to ease this burden: US dollars and Deutschmarks are the most widely accepted currencies. You can exchange money at moneychanging kiosks, as well as at banks.
A few top-end hotels add 5-15% to your hotel bills. Porters expect a tip of US$1-2; waiters appreciate 5-10% of the bill. Shops have fixed prices, but you're expected to bargain at craft markets.
Almost every building in Minsk has been erected since 1944, when Minsk's recapture by the Soviet army left barely a stone standing. Minsk is probably the best example of pure soviet planning on a grand scale. It almost carries off its attempt at worker utopia: the uniformity of its monumental facades is softened by its wide streets and pleasant parks. It has a bustling, cosmopolitan atmosphere and a cleaner, brighter feel than other former Soviet cities.
Minsk's main street, praspekt Skaryny, is a huge and hectic promenade. At the south-western end of the street, the 500m (1640ft) long ploshcha Nezalezhnastsi (Independence Square) is surrounded with government buildings and the attractive Polish Catholic Church of St Simon. The Park Janki Kupaly is a pleasant stretch of greenery bordered on 2 sides by the snaking Svislach River. You can rent a rowboat or check out the house where Russia's Communist Party held its illegal founding congress in 1898.
The Belarus National Museum of History and Culture will take you on a trip through the turbulent history of the nation, while the Belarusian State Art Museum has a collection of 17th to 20th century paintings. The Museum of the Great Patriotic War graphically displays the horrors of WWII and goes a long way towards explaining the country's apparent obsession with the war. Most grisly are the POW displays and photos of partisans being executed.
The Old Town, west of praspekt Skaryny, is home to the Baroque Cathedral of St Dukhawski. The Cathedral was once part of a Polish Bernardine convent - the former monastery buildings have been restored and now house a music academy. For a look at how Minsk used to be, travel to the east of the Svislach River, where a neighbourhood has been rebuilt in 17th and 18th century style. It's quaint and small-scale, and is scattered with cafes, bars, restaurants and gift shops. Nearby, the 1847 St Mary Magdeline Church has a pointed octagonal bell tower and a grand dome.
One of the busiest road and rail border points in Eastern Europe, Brest lies less than 200km (120mi) from Warsaw and 350km (215mi) from Minsk, right on the border with Poland. Like all border towns there's a hustle-and-bustle atmosphere, with Belarusians swarming over the border on quick buying forays. Central Brest fans out south-east from the main railway station to the Mukhavets River. Vulitsa Savetskaja is the main drag. Brest was one of the Soviet Union's 11 'Hero Cities' of WWII - when the Germans invaded in June 1941, the Brest Fortress held out for a month.
At the confluence of the Buh and Mukhavets rivers, the Brest Fortress is the thing to see in Brest. Between 1838 and 1842, the entire town was moved east to make way for this massive fort. It was ruined in 1941 and its remains have been turned into a grandiose memorial to its defenders. There's plenty of mournful music, recorded gunfire and Soviet-style statuary. Just to the west of the fortress is the partly ruined Nikolaivsky Church, the oldest in the city. Once part of a large monastery, it was gutted during the 1941 siege.
Other churches include the attractively detailed 200-year-old St Nikolaiv Church, with traditional Orthodox aesthetics, and the richly gilded 17th century St Simon Orthodox Cathedral. The Bereste Archaeological Museum is built over the excavated ruins of 13th century Brest's artisans' quarter.
Hrodna, 280km (175mi) west of Minsk, is probably the most picturesque city in all of Belarus, simply because it survived the war better than anywhere else and has more historic buildings intact to prove it. Settled since ancient times, Hrodna was absorbed by Lithuania in the 14th century, when it became a major defensive fort, and later by Poland, which built a palace and several churches. Hrodna fell easily during WWII, suffering little structural damage but losing most of its population. Today, it's an industrial and cultural centre with a cosmopolitan atmosphere.
Vulitsa Savetskaja is the favourite strolling venue - it's a pleasant strip of cobblestones lined by curious shops and cafes, with a tree-filled park at its southern end. Hrodna's churches include the proud and point Baroque Farny Cathedral with its ornate altars and saints, the Renaissance Bernardine church & Monastery and the 12th century wooden Church of Saints Boris & Hlib which, unassuming as it is, is the second-oldest building in Belarus.
The History of Religion Museum lives in a recently renovated 18th century palace, and has some interesting etchings and artefacts showing predominantly Polish Catholic and Russian Orthodox influences, with a few Jewish displays. Hrodna's Stari Zamak (Old Castle) was built in the 14th century, but all that remains are a few sections of wall. The museum in its grounds has interesting exhibits dating back to the 9th century. Close by is the 1737 Novi Zamak (New Castle), originally built in opulent rococo style but later renovated in a more subdued fashion. It's now a museum, library and head office of the Ministry of Culture.
Polatsk, 260km (160mi) north of Minsk, is a sleepy riverfront town with a rich history. The town dates back to the Varangians in the 6th century. Although it avoided being sacked by Mongol hordes in the 13th century, it was later absorbed by Lithuania and Poland and its citizens became serfs. Polatsk prospered as a river port, but was continually flung back and forth between the feuding Muscovy tsars and the Polish crown, and was reduced to rubble more than once.
There's not a great deal to see here - a lot of Polatsk is your typical sombre, Soviet-planned revolutionary town, scattered with monuments to various wars and heroes. St Sophia Cathedral is the highlight. Built in the 11th century, it's the oldest surviving building in Belarus, and was originally modelled on St Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. Unfortunately, it hasn't hung on to its 11th century features. Damaged by fire in the 15th century, it was turned into a military headquarters and entirely reconstructed in the 18th century as a Baroque Catholic cathedral. The museum inside has a model of the original cathedral, and you can see the 11th century foundations in the basement.
Other things worth having a look at include the fascinating Muzey Belarushka Knihadrukavanni, a museum of historical books and printing, and the Regional Historic Museum, which lives in a lovely street lined with charming old wooden cottages.
The most popular international bus routes are between Minsk and Vilnius (Lithuania) and Minsk and Bialystok (Poland). Trains come into Belarus from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Ukraine via 10 border crossings, and there are also about 10 border crossings open to private vehicles.
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