Recent events have thrust Belarus into the international spotlight, but for years after declaring independence in 1991, Belarus remained a little-known republic in the West, despite its important geostrategic position between Poland and Russia, and as a conduit for Russian energy supplies to central Europe. In the late Soviet period, it was best known as a victim of the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, which covered its territory in dangerous radionuclides of cesium, strontium, and iodi...