Editing Demographics of Belarus (section)

===Prior to the Second World War===
Prior to [[World War II]], [[Jews]] were the second largest ethnic group in Belarus, and at 400,000 in the 1926 and 1939 censuses they even exceeded the number of Russians (although admittedly by a small margin).<ref name=prewar>{{cite web|url=http://demoscope.ru/weekly/pril.php#1926|title=Приложение Демоскопа Weekly|website=demoscope.ru}}</ref> Jews accounted for 7%–8% of the total population at that time, comprising more than 40% of the population in cities and towns, where Jews and Poles were the majority, while Belarusians mostly lived in rural areas.

The Poles were the fourth largest ethnic group in Byelorussian SSR (current Eastern portion of Belarus), before World War II, comprising 1–2% of the population in the pre-war censuses (less than 100,000).<ref name=prewar/>

{| class="wikitable"
|+
'''Population of the Byelorussian SSR according to ethnic group 1926–1939'''
|-bgcolor="#e0e0e0"
! rowspan="2" | Ethnic<br />group
! colspan="2" | census 1926<sup>1</sup>
! colspan="2" | census 1939<sup>2</sup>
|-bgcolor="#e0e0e0"
! Number
! %
! Number
! %
|-
| [[Belarusians]]
| align="right" | 4,017,301
| align="right" | 80.6
| align="right" | 4,615,496
| align="right" | 82.9
|-
| [[Jews]]
| align="right" | 407,059
| align="right" | 8.2
| align="right" | 375,092
| align="right" | 6.7
|-
| [[Russians]]
| align="right" | 383,806
| align="right" | 7.7
| align="right" | 364,705
| align="right" | 6.6
|-
| [[Polish people|Poles]]
| align="right" | 97,498
| align="right" | 2.0
| align="right" | 58,380
| align="right" | 1.1
|-
| [[Ukrainians]]
| align="right" | 34,681
| align="right" | 0.7
| align="right" | 104,247
| align="right" | 1.9
|-
| [[Germans]]
| align="right" | 7,075
| align="right" | 0.1
| align="right" | 8,448
| align="right" | 0.2
|-
| [[Latvians]]
| align="right" | 14,080
| align="right" | 0.3
| align="right" | 8,117
| align="right" | 0.2
|-
| [[Tatars]]
| align="right" | 3,777
| align="right" | 0.1
| align="right" | 7,664
| align="right" | 0.1
|-
| [[Lithuanians]]
| align="right" | 6,864
| align="right" | 0.1
| align="right" | 4,284
| align="right" | 0.1
|-
| [[Ruska Roma|Roma]]
| align="right" | 2,366
| align="right" | 0.1
| align="right" | 3,632
| align="right" | 0.1
|-
| [[Mordvins]]
| align="right" | 1,051
| align="right" | 0.0
| align="right" | 2,042
| align="right" | 0.0
|-
| Others
| align="right" | 7,682
| align="right" | 0.2
| align="right" | 16,887
| align="right" | 0.3
|-bgcolor="#e0e0e0"
! align="left" | Total
! colspan="2" | 4,983,240
! colspan="2" | 5,568,994
|-
| colspan="5" | <small><sup>1</sup> Source: [http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ussr_nac_26.php]. <sup>2</sup> Source: [http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ussr_nac_39.php] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20121221160751/http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ussr_nac_39.php |date=2012-12-21 }}.  </small>
|}