History of Belarus

uring the 9th and 10th centuries, Scandinavian Vikings established trade posts on the way from This article describes the history of Belarus. The Belarusian ethnos is traced at least as far in time as other East Slavs.

After an initial period of independent feudal consolidation, Belarusian lands were incorporated into the Kingdom of Lithuania, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire and eventually the Soviet Union. Belarus became an independent country in 1991 after declaring itself free from the Soviet Union.
Early history
The history of Belarus, or more precisely of the Belarusian ethnicity, begins with the migration and expansion of the Slavic peoples through Eastern Europe between the 6th and 8th centuries. East Slavs settled on the territory of present-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, assimilating local Baltic , Finno-Ugric and steppe nomads already living there, their early ethnic integrations contributed to the gradual differentiation of the three East Slavic nations. These East Slavs, pagan, animistic, agrarian people, had an economy which included trade in agricultural produce, game, furs, honey, beeswax and amber.

The modern Belarusian ethnos was probably formed on the basis of the three Slavic tribes — Kryvians, Drehovians, Radzimians as well as several Baltic tribes.
DScandinavia to the Byzantine Empire. The network of lakes and rivers crossing East Slav territory provided a lucrative trade route between the two civilizations. In the course of trade, they gradually took sovereignty over the tribes of East Slavs, at least to the point required by improvements in trade.

The Rus' rulers invaded the Byzantine Empire on few occasions, but eventually they allied against the Bulgars. The condition underlying this alliance was to open the country for Christianization and acculturation from the Byzantine Empire.

The common cultural bond of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and written Church Slavonic fostered the emergence of a new geopolitical entity, Kievan Rus' — a loose-knit multi-ethnic network of principalities, established along preexisting trade routes, with major centers in Novgorod , Polatsk and Kyiv — which claimed a sometimes precarious preeminence among them.

[dawnandy]

Whew, talk about a whirlwind historical overview. I only hope for peace and freedom for the people of Belarus from the brutality of today's government.

[minde]

Kingdom of Rus contained the lands of present day Ukraine and Belarus (Rhuthenia) with slavic populations. These were later incorporated into an new found lithuanian state after it's collapse by marriage or sword. Lithuanians were still pagans fighting crusaders from the Holy Roman Empire who were trying to convert them to christianity. The battles are well documented in Livonian chronicles and happened in lithuanian and samogitian lands which are now part of modern day Belarus and Lithuania.The names of the first rulers of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus (Rhuthenia) and Samogitia are of Baltic origin. Of course as pagans lithuanian tribes didn't use writing so as a new state with time it has adopted the church slavonic (Ruthenian) language which were understood in the majority of the duchy. It was a multicultural, multireligious, multilingual state. Belarus is not Lithuania

[pccalahan]

Snyder leads me to think that these vast forest/steppe regions were perpetually colonized by central Asian mounted warrior tribes, Scandinavian pirates, even Jewish exiles, with centuries-long cultural assimilation