CHARACTERISTICS AND ESSENCE OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CRISIS IN BELARUS IN THE EARLY 1990’S
The article is dedicated to one of the most challenging and understudied topics of the contemporary national history - transformation of the socio-economic development of Belarus in the first years of its independence. This time is characterized by one of the severest economic crises in the history of sovereign Belarus. The relevance of the article is determined by the fact that studying of the difficulties of the first stage of market reforms allows to identify the roots and prerequisites of crisis phenomena typical of the post-Soviet models of socio-economic development at the present stage. Based on a wide range of resources - official documents of state bodies, statistics, mass media data, personal memories of witnesses of those events - the author identifies and discloses the main features of the socio-economic crisis that gripped Belarus in the first half of the 1990’s, describes the major aspects of the decline in economy and social sphere. The article is based on the archival materials not yet introduced into scientific discourse.