Belarus: The crossroads of Eastern Europe

Belarusian lands have seen dramatic upheavals throughout the twentieth century and today, like its neighbour Ukraine to the south, Belarus finds itself on the cusp, in between the countries of the European Union on one side and Putin’s Russia on the other. While Belarus often features in the news, its history is less well known. So how far back does the story of Belarus go? How was its sense of national identity forged? And how did it survive the traumas and repressions that it has been subjected to by various invaders and imperial powers? Three historians of Eastern Europe join Bridget Kendall to answer these questions: Dr. Nelly Bekus, Lecturer at the University of Exeter who studies post-Soviet nations; Dr. Natalya Chernyshova, Senior Lecturer in modern history at Winchester University who researches the 20th century in Belarus and beyond; and Dr. Andrej Kotljarchuk, Senior Lecturer at Uppsala University in Sweden who focuses on the Second World War in Eastern Europe. (Photo: Mir Castle in Belarus, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Credit: tbralnina/Getty Images)