The old-school learnin' continues here at LCS Hockey. When the Winter Olympics started two weeks ago, a lot of people were surprised to see an entry in men's hockey from a team named Belarus. BelaWho? Most people in North America never heard of the Republic of Belarus until the Games, let alone where it was located. So in order to clue you, our valued reader, in to world politics, LCS Hockey did some research into the subject and found the history of Belarus to be very intriguing. The following is a factual account of some of the recent past of the Republic of Belarus for your enjoyment.

The Republic of Belarus of today was actually part of the former Soviet Union. But throughout history, Belarus has seen days of independence intermingled with long stretches of rule by other countries and has suffered through some very hard times. For centuries, Belarus fought for control of its own territory with countries like Russia and Poland. The two countries wanted the land for political and religious reasons. In the 1700s, Russia invaded Belarus and claimed it as its own. Later in the century Poland took control only to lose it to Russia once again in the early 1800s. The Russians then began a period where they persecuted the Belarusians and tried to take their culture away from them. On the surface it looked like they were successful, but the Belarusians kept their culture and language alive underground. An enlightenment period in the 1860s brought about a successful revolt until the Russians executed the Belarus leader of the revolution.

During World War I, Belarus was a major center of battles between Russia and Germany and suffered serious losses. Then Belarus was caught in the middle of the Soviet-Polish War of 1921 and split into two sectors. The Russians, led by Stalin, continued their oppression over the Belarusians. This lasted until 1941 when Germany and Russia started fighting again in World War II. This time Germany took over Belarus. Hitler's plan was to make the Belarusians German slaves and exploit the nation for all it was worth. People were thrown into concentration camps or killed from 1941 to 1944. Eventually, 2.5 million people, or a quarter of Belarus's population, were killed and over 200 cities and townships were destroyed. Finally, the Russians defeated the Germans, but once again they took the area back over for their own and continued their oppressive treatment of Belarus. The two World Wars took their toll on Belarus. It lost a lot of its cultural heritage and suffered great damage during the war. The death toll was so bad that the pre- war population of Belarus wasn't recovered until the late 1970s.

Belarus remained under communist control until its demise in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell. On Aug. 25, 1991, Belarus once again declared its independence and on Dec. 8 Belarus, Russia and Ukraine formed the Commonwealth of Independent States.

But by the time Belarus declared independence, the country had a more serious problem to deal with. The explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine in 1986 had devastating effects on Belarus. Seventy percent of the fallout from Chernobyl landed right on the southwest part of Belarus due to the direction the winds blew. That meant the explosion, which was equal in radiation to 150 Hiroshima atomic bombs, contaminated one fifth of Belarus and exposed 2.5 million people directly to radiation. The rest of Belarus, however, was also affected. There is now a decrease in national health in Belarus - cancer levels are up, genetic mutations are up and leukemia has also increased. This is only the first wave of effects to hit Belarus. The radiation in the ground will remain there for thousands of years, and no one is really sure what kind of long-term effects it will have on the country.

Besides the radiation, Belarus is also struggling to become a stable nation. Like the rest of the former Soviet Union, Belarus has a very weak economy, political unrest and a large mafia influence of corruption. Some people are calling for a return to the communist ways of the past. Some are calling for a reunification with Russia so the economy can hopefully return to a level it was at before.

With all of the turmoil the Republic of Belarus has gone through, it must have been a great thrill for the country to see its ice hockey team make it to the second round of the Olympic Games. A team that no one had heard of, and no one expected anything from, made a name for itself on an international level.

Perhaps the team gave the country some hope in its quest to become a unified, and profitable, nation. But no matter what happens to the troubled country, the Belarus ice hockey team showed that with determination and hard work, anything is possible. Congratulations, Team Belarus, on a job well done.

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