[28] The chronicles of Jan of Czarnków mention the imprisonment of Lithuanian grand duke Jogaila and his mother at "Albae Russiae, Poloczk dicto" in 1381.

[26] Belarusian minority populations live in countries neighboring Belarus: Ukraine, Poland (especially in the Podlaskie Voivodeship), the Russian Federation and Lithuania.

During Soviet times (1917–1991), many Belarusians were deported or migrated to various regions of the USSR, including Siberia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

[39] A peculiar symbiosis of Baltic and Slavic cultures took place in the area, but it was not a fully peaceful process, as evidenced by numerous fires in Balts' settlements in the 7th-8th centuries.

[40] According to Russian archaeologist Valentin Sedov [ru], it was intensive contacts with the Balts that contributed to the distinctiveness of the Belarusian tribes from the other Eastern Slavs.

[41] The Baltic population gradually became Slavic, undergoing assimilation, a process that for eastern and central Belarus ended around the 12th century.

[43] The Belarusian people trace their distinct culture to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, earlier Kievan Rus' and the Principality of Polotsk.

[44] Litvin was a term used to describe all residents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, primarily those belonging to the noble state, without distinction of ethnicity or religion.

However, it did not correspond to an ethnic or confessional division, as Lithuania proper included a large part of central and western Belarus with cities such as Polotsk, Vitebsk, Orsha, Minsk, Barysaw and Slutsk, while the remaining lands inhabited by Slavs were called Rus.

[45] From the 17th century onward, the name White Ruthenia (Belarusian: Белая Русь, romanized: Biełaja Ruś) spread, which initially referred to the territory of today's Eastern Belarus (Polotsk, Vitebsk).

[45][46] As stated by historian Andrej Kotljarchuk, the first person who called himself "Belarusian" was Calvinist writer Salomon Rysinski (Solomo Pantherus Leucorussus).

According to his words, he was born "in richly endowed with forests and animals Ruthenia near the border to frigid Muscovy" and doctorated at the University of Altdorf.

During World War I and the fall of Russian Empire, a short-lived Belarusian Democratic Republic was declared in March 1918.