In 1937, there was an unofficial All-Union competition in which two Moscow based teams played ones from Minsk and Gorky.
[1] In 1949, rugby union was forbidden in the USSR during the "fight against cosmopolitanism".
[3] Belarus had its own rugby team in the USSR, but it was not treated as a proper national side.
The national team is seeing a resurgence, and played its first game in recent years on 4 October 2014 against Estonia, which resulted in a 58-12 defeat; a promising result against a well-established team.
It is reported that the national team has some fixtures in 2015, in which they hope to cement their reputation as up-and-coming contenders in the Eastern European circuit.