ABSTRACT
The geographical location of Belarus severely affects its geopolitics. In the pre-1991 period, the occasionally used nickname of the Belarusian SSR as ‘the Western Gate of the Soviet Union’ aptly reflects the country’s geostrategic significance. One fateful aftermath of this was the physical destruction of Belarus in World War II, including a heavy demographic loss, known as ‘every fourth one’, when 25 per cent of the nation were wiped out. As a consequence, the number of Russians in the republic rose by about one million between 1945 and 1985. This increase was even more significant among the intelligentsia as a result of the disproportionately high destruction of native cadres in the Stalinist purges.
