[5] Originally a highly agrarian country with nearly 80% of its population in rural areas, Belarus has been undergoing a process of continuous urbanization.

[14] Prior to World War II, Jews were the second largest ethnic group in Belarus, and at 400,000 in the 1926 and 1939 censuses they even exceeded the number of Russians (although admittedly by a small margin).

The Poles were the fourth largest ethnic group in Byelorussian SSR (current Eastern portion of Belarus), before World War II, comprising 1–2% of the population in the pre-war censuses (less than 100,000).

In the post-war period Belarus experienced an influx of workers from other parts of the Soviet Union, for example Russians and Ukrainians.

The most significant exception to this trend has been a continued (if small-scale) net immigration of Armenians and Azerbaijanis, whose numbers increased from less than 2,000 in 1959 to around 10,000 in 1999.