13 ATLASES

History of Belarus in maps

Belarus as it appears in 13 interactive history atlases, from 1206 to 2015: White Rus, Belarus, Belorussia, the Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Byelorussia, Soviet Union. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.

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Map of Europe in January 1894, showing Belarus — MAP OF EUROPE IN JANUARY 1894

These maps are reconstructed from published sources · Cliopatria v 0.2.1 · Natural Earth physical geography

Source details

Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. Source polygons retained with original identities; geographic selections and corrections by Maps of History.. CC BY 4.0
Made with Natural Earth; geographic reference and physical land only. No modern political boundary is used as a historical boundary.. Public domain

Annual source features can describe claims, legal territory or military control. Occupied extensions are separated from the prewar Central Power homelands, while the original source names and shapes remain available.

reconstruction: 1871–1918 · reconstruction: 1894 Ottoman footprint · vector: 1815–1937 · vector: 1820–1899 · vector: 1848–1935 · vector: 1856–1894 · vector: 1864–1921 · vector: 1871–1914 · vector: 1871–1916 · vector: 1873–1914 · vector: 1880–1894 · vector: 1880–1897 · vector: 1880–1899 · vector: 1885–1894 · vector: 1885–1899 · vector: 1885–1904 · vector: 1885–1907 · vector: 1885–1910 · vector: 1885–1911 · vector: 1890–1894 · vector: 1890–1897 · vector: 1890–1904 · vector: 1890–1914

Layer records and reconstruction methods

What was Belarus before it was Belarus? The sections below follow this land through every era covered by the Maps of History atlases: who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed. Each line links to the dated map. Modern borders serve as an approximation, as each atlas says on the map itself.

Belarus · Norse and Aztecs

c. 790

Other peoples and states — the opening position

NORSE AND AZTECS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

White Rus (mod. Belarus) · Mongol Empire

1206	Other settled powers (Jin China, Christendom, Delhi) — the opening position
1241	Tributaries & vassals

MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Belarus (Russian Empire) · Industrial Revolution

1890	Industrialising — the opening position
1890	Industrialising
1890	Industrialising

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Belarus · Age of Revolutions

JUL 1789

The conservative monarchies — the opening position

AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Belarus (Byelorussia) · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia

At Belavezha in Belarus, leaders declared the Soviet Union dissolved. Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich signed alongside Yeltsin and Ukraine’s Leonid Kravchuk. Belarus had also suffered heavily from Chernobyl fallout carried north by the wind. In 1994 voters elected Alexander Lukashenko, who halted market reforms and retained a Soviet-style economy. The breakup of the Union did not lead every republic along the same path.

OCT 1964	The USSR, then Russia — the opening position
DEC 1991	Independent neighbours

MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Belorussia · Russian Revolution

Western armies repeatedly crossed Belorussia. It was occupied under Brest and fought over in the Polish war; then the Peace of Riga divided it, giving the west to Poland and making the east a Soviet republic. The borderland received no independence. Others drew a border through it instead.

SEP 1855	The Tsarist empire — the opening position
MAR 1917	Provisional Government, then the Whites
NOV 1917	Soviet power
MAR 1918	Breakaway national states
NOV 1918	Soviet power

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Belarus (Russian Empire) · WWI

JAN 1894	The Entente & Allies — the opening position
JAN 1894	The Entente & Allies
NOV 1917	Russia in revolution
MAR 1918	Under Central Powers occupation
JUN 1919	Russia in revolution
NOV 1918	Russia in revolution

WWI: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

The Byelorussian SSR · Stalin’s Soviet Union

Byelorussia stood on the invasion road to Moscow. Its peasants were collectivised in the 1930s, and the Terror brought the shooting of intellectuals; mass graves such as Kurapaty near Minsk were discovered only in 1988. The republic absorbed Poland’s western Belarusian lands in 1939. During German occupation in 1941–44, perhaps a quarter of its population died, including most of its Jews, and hundreds of villages were burned with their inhabitants.

JAN 1924	The Soviet Union — the opening position
DEC 1941	Under German occupation
SEP 1945	The Soviet Union

STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Soviet Byelorussia · Road to WW2

JAN 1933	Neutral & unaligned — the opening position
SEP 1939	Aggressor clients & partners
JUN–DEC 1941	Democracies & powers fighting them

ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →

Belarus · WW2

Soviet Belarus lost a quarter of its population, proportionally the highest toll of the war. German forces overran it in the first weeks of Barbarossa, and its forests became a heartland of partisan warfare. By 1944 whole districts were effectively “partisan republics,” while the occupiers had burned more than 600 villages together with their inhabitants. Khatyn stands as their memorial. The great 1944 offensive, Bagration (Ch. 12), crossed the same forests and marshes. Minsk was liberated on 3 July 1944 as a field of rubble, with barely a fifth of the city standing.

MAR 1936

Soviet Union — the opening position

WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →