The first volume of the Great Historical Atlas of Belarus has been released

The first volume of the three-volume Great Historical Atlas of Belarus has been recently published in Minsk. This is the first cartographic edition which gives the most nearly complete picture of the earliest periods and events in the history of Belarus.

This solid edition was created by joint efforts of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences History Institute, the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Republic of Belarus, and the National Historical Archives of Belarus.
Vladimir Adamushko, director at the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Republic of Belarus is a deputy chairman of the editorial board. The chief editor is Viacheslav Nosevich, director at the Belarusian Research Center for Electronic Records, who is also the author of 21 maps (including the General Map of Belarus “Belarusian Lands in the 16th Century” in 51 pages, compiled together with M. Spiridonov) and five introductory articles, and the compiler of chronology and historical-geographical index.

The first volume covers the period from the earliest times to the mid 16th century (until the Union of Lublin in 1569, when Belarus, which belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithiania, became part of the Rzeczpospolita (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).

The second volume, scheduled to appear in 2010, will cover the period when the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was included into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the period when it was part of the Russian Empire. The third volume, scheduled for 2012, will illustrate the period from the beginnings of the Belarusian National Movement in the second half of the 19th century to the present days.