The Republic of Belarus is a landlocked nation sandwiched between Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia, and through history had been part of nearly every one of those nations. Formerly known as White Russia, the heavily forested state is closely tied to Russia in terms of trade, political alliances, language, culture, and more. Belarus is still in recovery from not only the devastation of the Nazi invasion of WWII, but also from the fact that 70% of the fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster rained upon the small state.

NEW: Daily Life In Belarus in pictures, from Boston.com 

Sidenote: Why do so many of the pages linked to in the Belarus portal appear so primitive, old, and outdated? Unfortunately, President Lukashenko has a tight grip over Belarusian citizens and their internet usage, so much that Reporters Without Borders named Belarus a "black hole of the internet". Belarus shares this distinction with such countries as Iran, Burma, China, and North Korea, as well as its fellow repressive former Soviet nations Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.