Minsk

Industrial city and capital of Belarus (also capital of the Minsk oblast); population (1990) 1,612,800. Motor vehicles, machinery, textiles, leather are produced here; Minsk is also a centre of the computer industry. The city's large pre-war Jewish community, which comprised over half of its inhabitants, was deported and murdered during the Nazi occupation. The headquarters of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is located here.

Minsk dates from the 11th century and has in turn been held by Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, and Russia before Belarus became an independent republic in 1991. The city was devastated by Napoleon in 1812 and heavily damaged by German forces in 1944. In 1989, the mass graves of some 100,000 victims of Stalinist purges in the period 1937-1941 were discovered in a forest outside Minsk.