Demographic Development of the Republic Belarus

The Republic Belarus is one of the 15 new independent states that have emerged as a result of the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. On 27 July 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Belarus adopted the Declaration of Independence, which was granted the status of the state law a year later. The territory of Belarus is of a compact size — 207.6 thousand square kilometres. According to the 1999 census, the population of Belarus is 10.037 million people. By the absolute size of the population, Belarus occupies the fifth position after Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The absolute size of the population of Belarus is 14 times smaller than the population of Russia, 5 times smaller than Ukraine’s population but 1.3 times larger than population of the all three independent Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) combined.