One reason the Belarus protests resonate with me so much is that my ancestors lived in a shtetl called Haradzisischa for hundreds of years. It was a mostly Jewish village and was on the dividing lines of several military and political conflicts.
http://shtetlroutes.eu/en/haradzishcha-guidebook/

The village (formerly spelled Gorodishche) is 9 miles north of Baranovichi in western Belarus). On the northwest edge of this map is southeastern Lithuania, where many other ancestors of mine lived.

It was at the heart of the Pale of Settlement where Jews were required to live when under the Russian Empire, which crossed the current borders of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus.

Before the Polish partitions in the late 18th c., the region was part of the multi-ethnic Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania. While some Jews were expelled from other parts of Russia INTO the Pale, most had been living there since before it was part of the Russian Empire.

As for my family in Haradzishche, most had thankfully left for America by 1910. One who didn't, named Pincas Eliazer Kudevitsky, was murdered by the Nazis in October 1941 in the nearby forests.

Two sons of his, Boruch and Leiba, managed to hide out in the woods and joined a partisan militia called the Voroshilova brigade. Unlike the famous Bielski partisans, this was a multi-ethnic militia. After surviving the war they moved to Israel.

Some day I'd love to visit the place where they lived for so long before coming to America. "Belarus" - often Byelorussia - has had very little history as an independent nation. But it's a region with a distinct history, much of it defined by its longtime Jewish residents.

It is also a place marked by horrific and repeated tragedy - bloody wars, severe political repression, ethno-religious massacres, famine, environmental catastrophe (Chernobyl fallout) - that has befallen all of its residents. At long last, will they be free?