48 Fun Facts About Belarus

Which future assassin lived in Minsk from 1960 to 1962, working at a radio and television factory?

Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the USSR in 1959 and was sent to Minsk, where he married Marina Prusakova before taking her back to the United States in 1962, the year before President Kennedy was shot.

Belarus borders Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and which fifth state?

Latvia. When it joined the EU in 2004 alongside Lithuania and Poland, more than 1,000 km of Belarus's frontier became the bloc's outer border.

The name Belarus is usually translated as what?

White Rus'. Rus' was the medieval East Slavic realm, not Russia, which is why the older English name 'White Russia' is now counted a mistranslation.

Who became president of Belarus in 1994 and was later labelled "Europe's last dictator"?

Alexander Lukashenko, a former state-farm director who made his name chairing parliament's anti-corruption committee, won that 1994 vote, and a 2004 referendum then scrapped the two-term limit.

As of 2025, Belarus is the only country in Europe that still does what?

Carries out the death penalty: Russia keeps it in law but under a long moratorium, and Belarus's executions are one reason its 1993 bid to join the Council of Europe has never succeeded.

The Chernobyl nuclear plant, whose 1986 explosion showered Belarus with fallout, stood in which country?

Ukraine. The reactor stood only about 16 km from the border, and the fallout left roughly a fifth of Belarus's farmland contaminated.

The 1991 agreement dissolving the Soviet Union was signed in which Belarusian protected area?

Białowieża (Belovezhskaya Pushcha): three republics' leaders met at Viskuli, a hunting lodge deep in the forest, and Boris Yeltsin phoned the US president with the news straight after signing.

Which animal, shot out of the wild in the 1920s, was bred back in a forest on the Belarus–Poland border?

European bison, Europe's heaviest land animal. The forest's last wild one was shot around 1921 and within a few years only zoo animals were left, so every herd there today comes from captive breeding.

Which flag, dating to the 1918 People's Republic, do Belarusian opposition groups fly?

White-red-white. It was independent Belarus's state flag from 1991 until a 1995 referendum brought back a Soviet-style design, and displaying it can now lead to arrest.

What decorates the hoist edge of the official red-and-green flag of Belarus?

A traditional embroidery-style ornament: the pattern copies a towel embroidered in 1917 by a village woman, Matrona Markevich, and was first put on the Soviet republic's flag in 1951.

Draniki, the national dish of Belarus, are what?

Potato pancakes. Potatoes reached Belarusian kitchens only in the 18th century, yet within a few generations they had become the core of the national cuisine.

Which two languages are both official in Belarus?

Belarusian and Russian. Russian regained equal status in a 1995 referendum, and by the 2019 census about seven in ten people said it was the language they spoke at home.

Which painter of dreamlike village scenes grew up in Vitebsk?

Marc Chagall founded an art school in Vitebsk after the revolution, then quit in 1920 when followers of the abstract painter Kazimir Malevich took it over.

Which Belarusian oral historian won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Svetlana Alexievich builds her books out of interviews, and the survivors' memories she gathered in Voices from Chernobyl fed HBO's 2019 series about the disaster.

Which Soviet-era name does Belarus's state security agency still go by?

KGB. Belarus kept the name when the Soviet Union broke up, and after the crackdown on the 2020 protests the agency's chief was placed on EU and US sanctions lists.

Which state ruled Belarus from 1569 until it was partitioned out of existence in 1795?

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was carved up by Russia, Prussia and Austria in three partitions, and by 1795 every part of Belarus had been annexed by the Russian Empire.

Which Belarusian village, burned with its people in 1943, became the republic's national war memorial?

Khatyn. Its 149 dead, most of them women and children, came to stand for a war that killed about a quarter of Belarus's people, and the memorial opened on the site in 1969.

Which border stronghold saw the first major battle of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941?

Brest Fortress. The Germans expected to take it on the first day but needed a week and two air raids, and in 1965 the Soviet Union honoured it with the title 'Hero Fortress'.

Which 2008 film tells the true story of the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who sheltered over 1,000 people in Belarus's forests?

Defiance. Daniel Craig plays Tuvia Bielski, whose real forest camp grew into a hidden village with a bakery, a school and workshops and brought more than 1,200 people through the war.

Which Belarusian holiday falls on 3 July, the day Minsk was liberated in 1944?

Independence Day. It fell on 27 July, the date of the 1990 sovereignty declaration, until a 1996 referendum moved it to the day Soviet troops retook the capital.

As of 2025, the Rada of the 1918 Belarusian People's Republic is the world's oldest surviving what?

Government in exile. The Rada has sat abroad since 1919, and while neighbouring countries' exiled governments handed their mandates home in the 1990s, it is still waiting for a freely elected Belarusian parliament.

Which two Belarusian castles, both linked to the Radziwiłł family, are UNESCO World Heritage Sites?

Mir and Nesvizh. Soviet rule was unkind to princely homes: Nesvizh's palace was turned into a sanatorium and its park left to run wild before both sites were restored.

A UNESCO-listed chain of 19th-century survey points crossing Belarus was built to measure what?

The Earth's size and shape. The Struve Geodetic Arc ran about 2,800 km from Norway's Arctic coast to the Black Sea and gave the first accurate measurement of a long stretch of meridian.

Which Belarusian was the first from her country to win a Grand Slam singles title, in 2012?

Victoria Azarenka. The title lifted her to world No. 1, and that summer she added Olympic mixed-doubles gold in London alongside her countryman Max Mirnyi.

Belarus's Aryna Sabalenka won her first Grand Slam singles title in 2023 at which tournament?

Australian Open. She beat Elena Rybakina in three sets in the final, and that September she became world No. 1 even though she had just lost the US Open final to Coco Gauff.

Biathlete Darya Domracheva won three gold medals for Belarus at which Winter Olympics?

Sochi 2014. Her three golds there earned her the Hero of Belarus medal, the country's highest title, and she added a fourth gold in the relay four years later.

Belarus finished fourth in 2002 Olympic hockey after a shock quarter-final win over which country?

Sweden. With the score tied late in the third period, Vladimir Kopat's long slap shot bounced off goalie Tommy Salo's mask and dropped into the net for a 4-3 win.

Which Belarusian gymnast won six gold medals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics?

Vitaly Scherbo won six of the eight men's golds on offer, competing for the Unified Team because the Soviet Union had broken up only months before the Games.

As of 2025, which Belarusian manufacturer builds the dump truck with the world's largest payload, 450 tonnes?

BelAZ. Its 75710 weighs about 360 tonnes empty, so instead of a single engine it carries two 16-cylinder diesels that drive electric motors at the wheels.

Which union, created by a 1999 treaty, has Belarus and Russia as its only two members?

The Union State was meant to bring a shared currency by 2004, but the launch was put off again and again, and both countries still use their own rubles.

In May 2021 Belarus forced a Ryanair flight to land in Minsk to arrest which opposition journalist?

Roman Protasevich was flying from Athens to Vilnius when a false bomb alert brought the jet down in Minsk, and the EU answered by telling European airlines to stop flying over Belarus.

Which former English teacher ran for president of Belarus in 2020 after her husband was jailed?

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya filed her own candidacy when her husband, a popular video blogger, was arrested before he could run, and after the disputed count she was forced into exile in Lithuania.

Which annual arts festival has drawn singers from across Eastern Europe to Vitebsk since 1992?

Slavianski Bazaar. Vitebsk had twice hosted a Soviet-wide festival of Polish song, and within months of the Soviet Union's break-up this new festival took its place.

On Kupala Night, Belarus's midsummer festival, people search the woods for which mythical bloom?

Fern flower. Ferns never bloom, which is the point: legend says the flower opens for a moment on this one night and brings fortune to whoever finds it.

Which Minsk landmark, opened in 2006, is built in the shape of a rhombicuboctahedron, a 26-faced solid?

The National Library. Its design won a Soviet-wide competition in 1989, but the Soviet Union collapsed first and construction began only in 2002.

Which three major rivers run through Belarus?

Neman, Pripyat and Dnieper. Belarus straddles a watershed, so the Neman runs west to the Baltic while the Pripyat joins the Dnieper on its way south to the Black Sea.

Belarus's highest point is named after which Belarus-born Soviet secret police chief?

Felix Dzerzhinsky. The hill was known as Holy Mountain until 1958, when it was renamed for the founder of the Soviet secret police.

Which hit online game was created by Wargaming, a studio founded in Minsk in 1998?

World of Tanks. Released in 2010, it had 75 million registered players within about three years, by which time its makers had moved their headquarters from Minsk to Cyprus.

Which script are both of Belarus's official languages written in?

Cyrillic. Belarusian adds a letter no other Slavic language uses, the 'short u', and one Belarusian city thought enough of it to put up a monument to the letter in 2003.

Which city is Belarus's second largest and the capital of its southeastern region?

Gomel. Its region bore the brunt of the Chernobyl fallout in Belarus: black rain fell on the city itself, and a radiation-medicine research centre was later built there.

The Byelorussian SSR, though part of the Soviet Union, was a founding member of what in 1945?

The United Nations. At Yalta Stalin asked for seats for all 16 Soviet republics, and Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to just two extra ones, one of them for Byelorussia.

When Belarus cut four zeros from its ruble in 2016, what entered everyday use for the first time?

Coins. The new money had been made years earlier and locked in the central bank's vault when the 2008 financial crisis postponed the reform, which is why notes first issued in 2016 are dated 2009.

Which hero of the American Revolution was born in what is now Belarus?

Tadeusz Kościuszko went home after the American war and in 1794 led an uprising against Russia and Prussia, and its defeat brought the final partition that wiped his country off the map.

Vitebsk-born Zhores Alferov shared which award in 2000 for semiconductor research used in CD players?

Nobel Prize in Physics. His layered semiconductors produced the first lasers of their kind to run continuously at room temperature, and he later sat in Russia's parliament as a Communist deputy.

Which city, first recorded under the year 862, is counted the oldest in Belarus?

Polotsk. Its prince Vseslav built a Saint Sophia Cathedral to rival those of Kyiv and Novgorod, then raided Novgorod and carried off its cathedral bell to hang in his own.

Which Belarusian city on the Neman, near the Polish border, is a centre of the country's Roman Catholic minority?

Grodno. It belonged to Poland between the world wars and is a centre of Polish culture, and most of Belarus's Poles are Catholic.

Which club became the first from Belarus to reach the UEFA Champions League group stage, in 2008?

BATE Borisov. Named after a factory making car and tractor electrics, the club reached the group stage four more times and in 2012 beat Bayern Munich 3-1.

Traditionally, how does a Belarusian host greet an honoured guest?

With bread and salt. The custom is shared across eastern Europe and has travelled far beyond it: arriving crews have been welcomed aboard the International Space Station the same way.