For many readers, Belarus is a blank spot on the map: a country in the heart of Europe that few can place and fewer can explain. Little has been written in English about its history, its people, or the question of where the Belarusians came from at all. A History of Belarus sets out to fill that silence.
Lubov Bazan gives a full chronological narrative, from the early Slavic settlements and Kievan Rus’ through the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union, up to the nation’s uncertain path into the twenty-first century. Throughout, one question runs beneath the dates: how a people held for centuries inside other people’s states nonetheless kept, and keeps, a sense of itself. Rather than dictate conclusions, Bazan lays out the competing views on identity, language, and faith, and lets the reader weigh them.
Born in Vitebsk, Bazan is a historian and art scholar who directed the city’s Marc Chagall Museum before settling in the Netherlands. This edition is translated by Callum Walker and edited by Camilla Stein, making a rare and readable account of Belarus available to the English-speaking world.
