Since 1991 the Republic of Belarus has taken her place in Eastern Europe as a new independent state. Although the history of Belarusian statehood goes back to the 10th century, this nation is only now being discovered by the world community. This is due to the fact that as one of the allied republics of the former Soviet Union (as the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic or BSSR), Belarus was not represented in the world in terms of her independent political, economic, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic character, but rather as a member of the Soviet monolith.