The White Russians number about 6,000,000. Their country (49,000 sq. mi. in the republic) includes the upper parts of the W. Dvina, Dnieper and Niemen rivers; it is low, with a good deal of marshland, especially the Pripet marshes in the south. The Pripets were long noted for their mosquitoes, their fevers, and the spring floods when the villages, on the higher places, stood out like islands and kept in touch with one another by rowboats.
The people formerly raised potatoes, pigs, grain and hemp and in the towns many Jewish artisans were unable to find work. Before 1914 there were large emigrations to the United States. In that year Byelo-Russia was a torn and retorn battleground of the World War.
Following the war and up to 1939 farm products have been almost trebled and a network of highways constructed; industrial production has increased to about 24 times and electric power to about 100 times that of 1913. There are many small industries especially match factories which make use of the native aspen. Minsk, the capital, has been transformed into a modern city. Even the Pripet marshes have been drained and much land made arable.
The cultural advance is almost equal to the electric. Formerly forbidden to print their own language, White Russians now have about a million children in school, 200 newspapers, 14 theaters, 25 institutions of higher learning and use their own language. See also U.S.S.R.
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