Belarus Trivia
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48 free Belarus trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Belarus is the landlocked country between Poland and Russia that most people know only from headlines about its long-serving president. There is far more to it: a medieval principality that rivalled Kyiv, five centuries inside the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the forest where the Soviet Union was formally dissolved, the heaviest wild animal in Europe, and a capital rebuilt from rubble in grand Stalinist style after losing a quarter of its people in World War II. This quiz covers geography (which sea does its Neman river reach?), history (Skaryna's Bible, the 1918 republic, Brest Fortress, Chernobyl's fallout, the Belovezha Accords), politics and symbols (why the opposition flies a white-red-white flag), culture (Chagall, Alexievich, Kupala Night, draniki) and sport (Domracheva, Azarenka, Sabalenka, that 2002 hockey upset over Sweden). Questions run from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and other reference pages before publishing.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which future assassin lived in Minsk from 1960 to 1962, working at a radio and television factory?
Lee Harvey Oswald
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.
Q 02Belarus borders Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and which fifth state?
Latvia
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.
Q 03The name Belarus is usually translated as what?
White Rus'
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.
Q 04Who became president of Belarus in 1994 and was later labelled "Europe's last dictator"?
Alexander Lukashenko
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.
Q 05As of 2025, Belarus is the only country in Europe that still does what?
Carries out the death penalty
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.
Q 06The Chernobyl nuclear plant, whose 1986 explosion showered Belarus with fallout, stood in which country?
Ukraine
Ukraine. The reactor stood only about 16 km from the border, and the fallout left roughly a fifth of Belarus's farmland contaminated.
Q 07The 1991 agreement dissolving the Soviet Union was signed in which Belarusian protected area?
Białowieża (Belovezhskaya Pushcha)
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.
Q 08Which animal, shot out of the wild in the 1920s, was bred back in a forest on the Belarus–Poland border?
European bison
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.
Q 09Which flag, dating to the 1918 People's Republic, do Belarusian opposition groups fly?
White-red-white
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.
Q 10What decorates the hoist edge of the official red-and-green flag of Belarus?
A traditional embroidery-style ornament
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.
Q 11Draniki, the national dish of Belarus, are what?
Potato pancakes
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.
Q 12Which two languages are both official in Belarus?
Belarusian and Russian
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.
Q 13Which painter of dreamlike village scenes grew up in Vitebsk?
Marc Chagall
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.
Q 21As of 2025, the Rada of the 1918 Belarusian People's Republic is the world's oldest surviving what?
Government in exile
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.
Q 22Which two Belarusian castles, both linked to the Radziwiłł family, are UNESCO World Heritage Sites?
Mir and Nesvizh
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.
Q 23A UNESCO-listed chain of 19th-century survey points crossing Belarus was built to measure what?
Q 14Which Belarusian oral historian won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature?
Svetlana Alexievich
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.
Q 15Which Soviet-era name does Belarus's state security agency still go by?
KGB
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.
Q 16Which state ruled Belarus from 1569 until it was partitioned out of existence in 1795?
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
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.
Q 17Which Belarusian village, burned with its people in 1943, became the republic's national war memorial?
Khatyn
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.
Q 18Which border stronghold saw the first major battle of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941?
Brest Fortress
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'.
Q 19Which 2008 film tells the true story of the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who sheltered over 1,000 people in Belarus's forests?
Defiance
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.
Q 20Which Belarusian holiday falls on 3 July, the day Minsk was liberated in 1944?
Independence Day
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.
The Earth's size and shape
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.
Q 24Which Belarusian was the first from her country to win a Grand Slam singles title, in 2012?
Victoria Azarenka
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.
Q 25Belarus's Aryna Sabalenka won her first Grand Slam singles title in 2023 at which tournament?
Australian Open
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.
Q 26Biathlete Darya Domracheva won three gold medals for Belarus at which Winter Olympics?
Sochi 2014
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.
Q 27Belarus finished fourth in 2002 Olympic hockey after a shock quarter-final win over which country?
Sweden
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.
Q 28Which Belarusian gymnast won six gold medals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics?
Vitaly Scherbo
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.
Q 29As of 2025, which Belarusian manufacturer builds the dump truck with the world's largest payload, 450 tonnes?
BelAZ
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.
Q 30Which union, created by a 1999 treaty, has Belarus and Russia as its only two members?
The Union State
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.