MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Belarus

ONE LAND · 6 ATLASES

Belarus, on the map of history

What was Belarus before it was Belarus? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

White Rus (mod. Belarus) · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

OPEN THE MONGOL EMPIRE ON THE LIVING MAP →

Belarus · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

OPEN THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS ON THE LIVING MAP →

Belorussia · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

Belorussia lay in the path of every western army — occupied under Brest, fought across in the Polish war, and split at the Peace of Riga, its west going to Poland and its east becoming a Soviet republic. A borderland that got no independence, only borders drawn through it by others.

OPEN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION ON THE LIVING MAP →

Belarus (Russian Empire) · The Great War, 1914–1918

OPEN WWI ON THE LIVING MAP →

Belarus · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

Soviet Belarus lost a quarter of its population — proportionally the war’s highest toll. Overrun in Barbarossa’s first weeks, it became the heartland of the partisan war: by 1944 whole forest districts were effectively “partisan republics,” and the occupiers answered with more than 600 villages burned together with their inhabitants — Khatyn stands today as their memorial. Bagration (Ch. 12), the great 1944 offensive, was fought across these same forests and marshes; Minsk was liberated on 3 July 1944 as a field of rubble, with barely a fifth of the city standing.

OPEN WW2 ON THE LIVING MAP →

Belarus · The Cold War, 1945–1991

OPEN THE COLD WAR ON THE LIVING MAP →