Republic, with an area of 10,450 sq mi (27,100 sq km), chiefly in the basins of the upper Vorskla, Donets, and Oskol rivers. The oblast, formed in 1954 and centred on Belgorod city, lies in a forest-steppe on rich soils. The natural vegetation of deciduous forest and feather-grass steppe, almost wholly cleared for agriculture since intensive settlement began in the 17th century, survives only as occasional oak groves along the rivers. Agriculture is highly developed, and the population is predominantly rural. Grains—wheat, barley, millet, and corn (maize)—are the main crops, with sugar beet in the west and sunflowers in the east. There are also numerous orchards. Large iron deposits were opened up in the 1950s and are now exploited on a considerable scale at Gubkin, Lebedi, and Yakovlevo, much by open-pit mining. Pop. (1970 prelim.) 1,261,000.

Belgorod, city and administrative centre of Belgorod oblast (region), western Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, on the upper Donets River where it is crossed by the Moscow–Kharkov and Sumy–Donets Basin railways. Founded in 1593 as a fortress, it became the key stronghold in the elaborate Belgorod defensive line set up in 1635–58 to protect Russia's southern frontier against Tatar attack. It maintained its military and administrative significance until the late 18th century. Modern Belgorod has a range of light engineering, building materials (chalk and slate), and food-processing industries, as well as a technical training institute. Pop. (1970) 151,000.

50°36' N, 36°35' E

Belgorod-Dnestrovsky, town, in Odessa oblast (administrative region), Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, on the southwestern shore of the broad, shallow Dnestr Estuary. In the 6th century BC Greeks from Miletus established the colony of Tyras on the site. It later came under the Scythians, and was settled by Slavs in early Kievan times (9th century). After the fall of Kiev to the Tatars, Belgorod became a republic city-state under Moldavian princes, and the Genoese established their factory of Mauro Castro there. Stormed by the Turks in 1484, it remained Turkish under the name Akkerman until 1812, when it was ceded to Russia. From 1918 to 1940 it was included in Romania with the name Cetatea Albă; its Kievan name was restored in 1944. The modern town is a minor regional centre with light industries, notably fish canning. Pop. (1970) 33,000.

46°12' N, 30°20' E

Belgrade, pop. 2,825, Serbo-Croatian BEOGRAD, (White Fortress), capital city of Yugoslavia and of Serbia, situated at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers. Pop. (1971) city, 741,613; metropolitan area, 1,204,271.

The text article contains a summary of Belgrade's 2,000-year history and a description of the contemporary city.

References in other text articles:
Eugene of Savoy's military conquest 6:1022h
map, Yugoslavia 19:1100
Ottoman territorial concessions 13:783e

Belgrade, Treaties of (September 1739), two peace settlements achieved by the Ottoman Empire that ended a four-year war with Russia and a two-year war with Austria. Disputes arising from ill-defined frontiers between the Ukraine and the Ottoman-dominated Crimean Tatars provided the pretext in 1735 for a new Russian attempt to establish itself on the northern Black Sea. Austria entered the war as Russia's ally in 1737. Because of military failures, however, Austria made a separate peace in September 1739, ceding northern Serbia (with Belgrade) and Little Walachia (in southern Romania) to the Ottomans and thus renouncing the strong position in the Balkans it had obtained under the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718). With Austria's defection, the militarily successful Russians had to make a disappointing peace that same month: Azov, which they had captured, was to be demilitarized, Russia was to have no warships on the Sea of Azov or the Black Sea, and it was to depend entirely on Ottoman shipping for its commerce on the Black Sea. The treaties, mediated and guaranteed by France, provided relatively stable conditions until 1768.

Belgrano, northwestern residential section of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Belgrano, Manuel (b. June 3, 1770, Buenos Aires—d. June 20, 1820, Buenos Aires), military leader in the Argentine war for independence. After studying law in Spain, Belgrano was appointed secretary of the Buenos Aires official merchants guild (1794), a position in which he advocated liberal ideas, particularly in education and economic reform. He revived his first infantry regiment during the unsuccessful British invasion of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata in 1806–07. When Río de la Plata broke with Spain in 1810, Belgrano became a member of the junta that tried to maintain its integrity. After outlying portions were lost, Belgrano was sent with a small army to bring what is now Paraguay under the authority of the junta but was unsuccessful. He later defeated pro-Spanish forces at Tucumán and Salta in the Argentine northwest, only to be defeated in Upper Peru (now Bolivia) in 1813. He was superseded in 1814 by José de San Martín as commander of the army.

Belgrano, like many other leaders of the South American independence movement, favoured establishment of a monarchical type of government. To find a ruler, he went to Europe with Bernardino Rivadavia, who later became the first president of the Argentine Republic. The European mission was unsuccessful.

Paraguayan independence resistance 13:990c

Belgrano Formation: see Pampa Group.

Belial, a name used in the Old Testament, generally as an epithet for an evil or subversive person. In later Jewish apocryphal literature it became synonymous with Satan.

Jewish dualistic Iranian elements 4:479h

Bel-ibni, 8th-century-BC king of Babylonia.

Assyrian domination of Babylonia 11:985g

Belize (country, South America): see British Honduras.

Belize City (British Honduras): see Belize City.

Belidor, Bernard Forest de (b. 1698, Catalonia, Spain—d. Sept. 8, 1761, Paris), military and civil engineer and author of a classic work on hydraulics. After serving in the French Army at an early age, he developed an interest in science and worked on the measurement of an arc of the Earth. The study of ballistics also attracted him, and he became professor of artillery at the French military school at La Fère and eventually rose to become inspector of engineers. He wrote several notable books on engineering, artillery, ballistics, and fortifications, but his fame rests primarily on Architecture hydraulique, in four volumes (1737–53), covering engineering mechanics, mills and waterwheels, pumps, harbours, and sea works.

belief, a mental attitude of acceptance or assent toward a proposition without the full intellectual knowledge required to guarantee its truth. Believing is apparently an introspectable occurrence, either an intellectual judgment or, as the 18th-century Scottish Skeptic David Hume maintained, a special sort of feeling with overtones that differ from those of belief. Beliefs have been distinguished according to their degree of certainty: a surmise or suspicion, an opinion, or a conviction. Belief becomes knowledge only when the truth of a proposition becomes evident to the believer. Belief in someone or something is basically different from belief that a proposition is true.

belief, the problem of, the critical difficulty associated with the discrepancy between the objective value of a literary work and the religious, moral, or ethical doctrines that the work espouses.

Questions that are raised concerning the problem of belief in literary works include such matters as whether an immoral or politically threatening doctrine of a literary work detracts from its aesthetic value; or whether aesthetic value and acceptance promote adoption of socially damaging action.

The first statement of this problem is Socrates' famous attack on poets in Plato's Republic. Socrates argues that Homer lies when he portrays the domestic squabbles of Zeus and Hera or when he attributes evil fortunes to the malice of some god. Such behaviour is incompatible with the concept of superior beings, and poetry that is not true is worthless. Socrates also assumed that a poet who represented base and ignoble characters must be himself ignoble.

This problem exists to the present day and is frequently a matter of concern of the New Critics who question the assumption that aesthetic value and doctrinaire position are inseparable and take the position that one need not believe in hell in order to be able to appreciate Dante's Inferno.

belief theory of probability, a theory of probability as a degree of the notion of a belief.

probabilistic theory and method 11:668d

Believers' Baptism, the practice, among some Protestant denominations, of baptizing adult believers rather than infants.

Anabaptists' belief in adult baptism 15:106f

Belin, Édouard (d. March 5, 1876, Vesoul, Fr.—d. March 4, 1963, Territet, Switz.), French engineer who in 1907 made the first telephone transmission, from Paris to Lyons to Bordeaux and back to Paris, using an apparatus of his own invention. The first transatlantic transmission was made in 1921 between Annapolis, Md., and Belin's laboratories at La Malmaison, Fr. His equipment was adopted in Britain in 1928. It was used almost exclusively by European news media during the 1930s and 1940s, when the term “Belino” came into general use for all kinds of picture transmission.

Belinga, mine site, Ogooué-Ivindo region, northeast Gabon, western Africa. Iron ore has been found in the vicinity and a railroad, which will connect Belinga to the port of Owendo on the coast, was under construction in the 1970s. Wood and other forest products are important to the economy.

1°06' N, 13°11' E

mining and industrial development 7:820e

Belinsky, Vissarion (Grigoryevich) (b. July 12 [June 30, old style], 1811, Sveaborg, Fin.—d. June 7 [May 26, O.S.], 1848, St. Petersburg, now Leningrad), eminent Russian literary critic, “father” of the Russian radical intelligentsia. Expelled from the University of Moscow (1832), he earned his living as a journalist. His first substantial critical articles, “Literary Dreams” (published in the newspaper Molva, 1834), expounded F. W. J. Schelling's view of national character, applying it to Russian culture, though Belinsky later embraced Hegel's philosophy of history. He obtained a permanent post (1839) with the journal Otechestvennye zapiski. By 1840 he was showing signs of revolt against orthodox Hegelianism.

Some Soviet critics, taking his rare political utterances out of context, consider his almost