Belarus Genealogy

Europe Belarus

Guide to Belarus ancestry, family history, and genealogy: Birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, family history, and military records.

Belarus developed under the influence of Kievan Rus and Eastern Orthodox Christendom. When Kiev succumbed to Mongol invasion in the 13th century, Belarus came under Lithuanian hegemony. Following the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795, Russia tucked Belarus into its empire. Russian overlords suppressed Belarusian culture and essentially colonized it. National consciousness finally developed in the 19th century. By the terms of the 1921 Treaty of Riga, the Belarusian homeland was divided, the western portion going to Poland and the eastern to the Soviet Union. The eastern portion suffered through the state terrorism of collectivization and Stalinist purges of the 1930s.

The opposing armies of World War II devastated Belarus, annihilating a fourth of its population during the war. The Soviets regained ascendancy over both halves of Belarus after the war and used the country as a buffer shielding Russia against the infiltration of western ideas. Belarus gained its independence in 1991 but continues to suffer under a despotic regime. The economy is run centrally, the state police exert great power, and the media is censored. The country is politically isolated from most of its neighbors by its reactionary policies.

On the boundary between competing ideologies and nations, the Belarusian population has suffered catastrophic losses. At the end of the century, the population has only just achieved its pre-World War II population of 10 million. Belarusians are ethnically Slavic. Eastern Orthodoxy is the primary religion covering 80% of the population.

As of 1995, Belarusian and Russian are officially given equal status as the languages of Belarus. Russian is the language of the genealogical sources. Belarusian is written in Cyrillic and is closely related to both Ukrainian and Russian.

Getting Started with Belarus Research
Welcome to the Belarus Page!

FamilySearch Wiki is a community website dedicated to helping people throughout the world learn how to find their ancestors. Through the Belarus Page you can learn how to find, use, and analyze Belarusian records of genealogical value. The content is variously targeted to beginners, intermediate, and expert researchers. The Belarus Page is a work in progress, your contributions and feedback are essential!



Jurisdictions (also see Governates and Voivodeships)

 * Republic of Belarus Map

Research Tools

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 * Germans from Russia Wiki article

Web Resources - more than 15 links

 * Websites

Featured Content

 * The official name of Belarus is the ‘Republic of Belarus
 * The official languages of Belarus are Belarusian and Russian. Polish and Ukranian are also spoken there
 * The primary religion in the country is Russian Orthodox
 * Belarus is, at times, also known as ’White Russia’
 * The capital of Belarus is Minsk,the other major cities of Belarus include Brest, Grodno, Gomel, Mogilev and Vitebsk
 * The oldest city of Belarus is Polotsk, which has been known since 862 AD

Did you know?


Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. To read more about Belarus see The World Factbook and Wikipedia. For centuries the lands of modern-day Belarus belonged to several ethnically different countries, including the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the short-lived Belarusian People’s Republic (1918–19), Belarus became a republic of the Soviet Union. Belarus attained its independence in 1991.

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