Regional centres of Belarus (on 1 January 2016):

The most significant Stone Age settlements have been discovered in the Gomel region. Sites discovered from the Palaeolithic period in the village of Yurovichi (Kalinkovichi area) existed approximately 26 000 years ago.  Sites discovered in the village of Berdysh (Chechersk area) date back 23,000-24,000 years. Ancient cultural relics have also been discovered in the Mogilev, Grodno and Minsk regions.

In the 6th to 9th centuries East Slavs formed the first political associations – the unions of tribes.

The 9th century gives us the first recorded accounts of Polotsk and the Polotsk Duchy in the territory of modern Vitebsk and the northern part of the Minsk regions. It remained the dominating force in the region until the 13th century.

The Grand Duchy began its rise to power under the reign of Mindovg (Mindaugas) in the 13th century and only began to lose its authority after a number of wars in the 16th century.

In 1569 the Grand Duchy and the Kingdom of Poland signed the Union of Lublin: on equal terms the Duchy and the Crown united in a federative state – Rzecz Pospolita. It signified the start of a new chapter in Belarusian history.

Rzecz Pospolita led to long wars which weakened the state, and it lost its independence. In 1772 the western provinces of Belarus were annexed to the Russian Empire and in 1795 Rcecz Pospolitsa was divided between Russia, Austria and Prussia.

1794 to the First World War – a string of conflicts including:

In the 1880s the revolutionary organisation Gomon was established by Belarusian students in Saint Petersburg. This was the precursor to the first Belarusian national political party Gromada, formed in 1903.

In 1906 the Stolypin agrarian reform began. Mass displacement of the peasant classes (from 1906 – 1916) saw more than 33,000 move from Belarusian territory to Siberia.