History
This region was the westernmost "border" of the Early East Slavs (tribal union Dregovichs?) on the lands of the Balts in the 6th-9th centuries. In the 13th-14th centuries it was a center of the area sometimes known as Black Ruthenia, that with neighbor the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became a basis for Baltic-Slavic state - Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). Being a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, amounting to the GDL's Trakai Voivodship, it was annexed by Russian Empire in 1795 during the partitions of Poland. The city of Grodno then became a seat for Grodno Governorate. During the World War I the area was occupied by Germany. During the German occupation the Belarusian National Republic declared its independence from the Soviet Russia in March 1918 in Minsk, Grodno was the site of the last stand of the BNR's Council (Rada). They were then forced to emigrate before Soviet troops captured the region in 1919. Since 1921 under the Peace Treaty of Riga the territory belonged to Second Polish Republic, in 1939 it became a part of the USSR and since its fall in 1991 - one of 6 provinces of independent Belarus.
The Mir Castle Complex, a 16th century historical landmark as well as part of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha nature reserve, both UNESCO World Heritage sites are located in this region.
Read more about this topic: Grodno Region
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)