Soviet repressions in Belarus

[1] According to incomplete estimates, approximately 600,000 people fell victim to Soviet repression in Belarus between the October Revolution in 1917 and the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953.

[2][3] Other estimates rise the number to more than 1.4 million people,[4] with 250,000 sentenced by the judiciary or executed by extrajudicial bodies (dvoikas, troikas, and special commissions of the OGPU, NKVD, and MGB).

[1] A total of 1520 Belarusian medical specialists have become victims of repressions, this includes about 500 doctors, over 200 nurses, almost 600 veterinarians, several hundreds of family members that have been sentenced within the same legal cases.

[8] In the late 1980s the influential pro-democracy and pro-independence movement in Belarus (the Belarusian Popular Front) has been largely inspired by the Perestroika and by the findings of graves on the former Soviet execution site in Kurapaty near Minsk.

Unlike in neighbouring countries, the authorities of the Republic of Belarus under president Alexander Lukashenko give only limited access to state archives related to Stalinist repressions and do not commemorate the victims of Communism on a governmental level.