page_title: History of Belarus
section_title: Republic of Belarus
hierarchical_section_title: History of Belarus / Republic of Belarus
caption_attribution_description: English: In April 1991, Belarusian workers, led by the Belarusian Popular Front, protested against Soviet policies during the economic crisis. The demands soon became political and included democratic reforms and independence for Belarus
context_page_description: 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, and later in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire and eventually the Soviet Union. Belarus became an independent country in 1991 after declaring itself free from the Soviet Union.
context_section_description: On 27 July 1990, Belarus declared its national sovereignty, a key step toward independence from the Soviet Union. Around that time, Stanislau Shushkevich became the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus, the top leadership position in Belarus.
  On 25 August 1991, after the failure of the August coup in Moscow, Belarus declared full independence from the USSR by granting the declaration of state sovereignty a constitutional status that it did not have before. On 8 December 1991, Shushkevich met with Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, in Belavezhskaya Pushcha, to formally declare the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
  In 1994, the first presidential elections were held and Alexander Lukashenko was elected president of Belarus. The 1996 referendum resulted in the amendment of the constitution that took key powers off the parliament. In 1999 opposition leaders Yury Zacharanka and Viktar Hanchar disappeared and were presumably killed. In 2001,  Lukashenko was re-elected* as president in elections described as undemocratic by Western observers. At the same time, the west began criticizing him as authoritarian. In 2006, Lukashenko was once again re-elected* in presidential elections again criticized as flawed by most European Union countries. In 2010, Lukashenko was re-elected* once again in presidential elections which were again described as flawed by most EU countries and institutions. A peaceful protest against the electoral fraud was attacked by riot police and by armed men dressed in black. After that, up to 700 opposition activists, including 7 presidential candidates, were arrested by KGB.
caption: Mass protests in Minsk against policies by the central Soviet authorities in April 1991
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