08 April 2009

Which country is named after tractor

There is this joke about Belarus. Before Belarus got independent after collaps of the USSR, the brand Belarus was already known. But it was not the name of the country (in Belarusian it was, but in English it used to be BSSR or Byelorussia - transliteration from Russian). This was the name of tractor :D Yeah, sometimes it's really not easy to explain, that Belarus existed before with the name of Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Litva) in XIII-XVI and then as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (XVI-XVIII)... The later was partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria. The modern Belarusian lands were under Russian Empire for over a century. For the first time the name Belarus officialy was used in 25 March 1918, when the Belarusian Democratic Republic was created. It did not exist for a long time, but it forced Bolsheviks to establish BSSR later... Well, back to tractor :) Getty Images have ve recently teamed up with Time Inc. to re-launch the venerable LIFE brand. And I found some interesting photos of Belarus there :) One of them is this one, The Minsk Tractor Factory, 1960.

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