Russians in Belarus
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According to the 2019 census, there are 706,992 ethnic Russians in
Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
, which accounts for approximately 7.5 percent of the population of Belarus. Ten years earlier there were 785,084 ethnic Russians in Belarus, meaning that the Russian population in Belarus decreased 10 percent between 2009 and 2019, while the total population of Belarus decreased by 1 percent in the same period. Nevertheless, Russians are still the largest ethnic minority in the country.


History

Many
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
-Belarusians are descendants of people who migrated to Belarus during the Soviet times, as technical specialists and military or administrative personnel. There is also a minor group of
Old Believers Old Believers or Old Ritualists, ''starovery'' or ''staroobryadtsy'' are Eastern Orthodox Christians who maintain the liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian Orthodox Church as they were before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow bet ...
who settled in Belarus in the XVIII century. In early Soviet times the Moscow-appointed Belarusian government was largely formed from non-Belarusians like
Panteleimon Ponomarenko Panteleimon Kondratyevich Ponomarenko (russian: link=no, Пантелеймо́н Кондра́тьевич Пономаре́нко, ; ; 18 January 1984) was a Soviet statesman and politician and one of the leaders of Soviet partisan resistanc ...
or
Nikolay Gikalo Nikolay Fyodorovich Gikalo (russian: Никола́й Фёдорович Гика́ло; born March 8, 1897, Odessa, Kherson Governorate – April 25, 1938) was a Ukrainian Soviet revolutionary and statesman. He was born in Odessa into a Ukrai ...
. There is a large proportion of ethnic Russians among the current political leadership around
Alexander Lukashenko Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko (as transliterated from Russian language, Russian; also transliterated from Belarusian language, Belarusian as Alyaksand(a)r Ryhoravich Lukashenka;, ; rus, Александр Григорьевич Лука ...
. Censuses show a constant decline of the number of people identifying themselves as Russians in Belarus due to the process of assimilation.


See also

*
Ethnic Russians in post-Soviet states After the dissolution of the Soviet Union (USSR) in December 1991, about 25 million ethnic Russians in post-Soviet states found themselves living outside of Russia. All former Soviet citizens had a time window within which they could transfer the ...
*
Belarusians in Russia Belarusians are a major ethnic group in Russia. At the census of 2010, 521,443 Russian citizens indicated Belarusian ancestry. Major Belarusian groups live in the regions of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Karelia and Siberia. Most Belarus ...


References

* Ethnic groups in Belarus
Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
Russian diaspora in Europe {{Belarus-stub