The population of Belarus today, according to the statistical committee, amounted to almost nine and a half million people. Among the CIS countries, this is the fifth place after the Russian Federation, Ukraine, as well as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Nevertheless, the population of Belarus exceeds the number of citizens of all the B altic countries (1.3 times), as well as residents of Finland or Denmark (two times). This figure is lower than in Sweden, Austria and Bulgaria. The number of residents of Belarus is approximately equal to the number of citizens in Greece, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Belgium, Yugoslavia and a number of other states.
The period lasting from the post-war years up to the nineties of the last century was characterized by a trend towards a constant increase in the population of the country, as a result of which the population of Belarus increased markedly. However, in the last decades of the twentieth century, the rate of increase in the population of the country began to decline markedly.
The economic reforms of the era of perestroika have affected many aspects of people's lives. Transition to marketrelations, the emergence of informal activities, the flourishing of private business, the growth of unemployment - all these factors played a significant role in changing the living conditions of citizens. This also affected the dynamics of the number, composition, and the process of reproduction of people living in the country.
Since 1993, Belarus, whose population began to decline, entered the stage of depopulation. The decrease in the number of citizens occurred due to the excess of the death rate over the birth rate. The result of this process is the country's constant movement towards acquiring the status of a smaller state (in terms of population).
The population of Belarus has a multinational composition. Representatives of one hundred and thirty nationalities live in the state. The main number of citizens are Belarusians. Their share of the total population is eighty-one percent.
The largest percentage of Belarusians live in the Minsk and Grodno regions. Currently, their number in the whole country is constantly increasing.
The percentage composition of other nationalities has been constantly changing throughout the historical period. It was directly dependent on external and internal factors (migrations, wars, and so on). However, invariably representatives of the second largest group of the population were Russian people. The share of this nation is equal to eleven percent. Many of the landlords, peasants and officials began to live in Belarus afterits accession to the Russian Empire. During the existence of Soviet power, this ethnic group surpassed the Polish and Jewish in its numbers, which corresponded to the geopolitics of the USSR. Currently, the residence of representatives of Russian nationality is mainly cities.
The population of Belarus in its northwestern regions is represented by a large proportion of Poles. It makes up almost four percent of the total population of this region. An insignificant level of migration of citizens of Polish nationality was observed in the Middle Ages. To date, most representatives of this ethnic group live in the Grodno region. They do not have any significant differences from Belarusians in terms of everyday and cultural features.
