ABSTRACT
Also known as Belorussia (Byelorussia), Belarus has inherited the state traditions of the Great Lithuanian Principality (from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries), the Byelorussian People's Republic (1918) and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919–91). In 1991, with the dissolution of the USSR, Belarus became an independent parliamentary republic, bordered by Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine.
