ABSTRACT
The Republic of Belarus has taken its place among the independent states of eastern Europe only since 1991-a very short period of relative independence after an age of existing within the borders of other states. During the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, it was part of the Great Principality of Lithuania and, later, Rzecz Pospolita (the union of Poland and the Lithuanian Principality). From the second half of the eighteenth century, Belarus was a component part of the Russian empire, its northwestern province, and with the establishment of Soviet power, it became one of the fifteen USSR republics. The location of Belarus between Poland and Russia for centuries served to shape its culture and the mentality of its people. The fact of being poised between west and east, and of finding both worlds not entirely acceptable, is an important background to the entire history of Belarus. By the late 1990s, however, the Belarusian people put no obstacles in the way of either eastern or western waves of influence, which were rolling over the country and its inhabitants (Abdziralovich 1993).
