section_path: History
section_name: History
paragraph_text: History
  
  The founding congress of RPA "Belaya Rus" was held in Grodno on 17 November 2007 and attended by 470 delegates who elected a chair and leadership council with 85 members. Alexander Radkov, the then education minister of Belarus, was elected as chairman. RPA "Belaya Rus" was subsequently registered with the Belarusian authorities as a public association on 12 December.
  
  RPA "Belaya Rus" held its first congress on 25 October 2008. A total of 380 delegates representing 82,000 members discussed and ultimately approved an organisational program.
  
  On 19 January 2018, RPA "Belaya Rus" held a major congress in which domestic political analysts expected it to announce plans to register as a political party. Commentators noted that, since the association's inception, it had been focused on electoral and parliamentary participation. At the time of the congress, civil servants made up a majority of the association's membership. The association, however, did not announce a change in its legal status. Instead, a delegation of 500 people representing 178,000 members met in the National Library of Belarus in the capital Minsk and elected Gennady Davydko, the then head of Belteleradio, as their new chairman.
  
  At its fourth congress on 18 June 2022, delegates elected Oleg Romanov, then rector of Saint Euphrosyne Polotsk State University, as its chairman.
  
  RPA "Belaya Rus" held a congress on 18 March 2023, in which a thousand delegates voted to create a new political party. The Belarusian Party "Belaya Rus", or simply Belaya Rus, was subsequently established, with the leadership council unanimously approving the continuance of Romanov's chairmanship. Grigory Azarenok, a popular pro-Lukashenko TV presenter, was also elected to the party's leadership council. United Russia, the ruling party of Russia, expressed its support for the new party and invited its members to partake in interparty meetings.
  
  In the 2024 Belarusian parliamentary election, the party won 46.4% of the popular vote and 51 seats in the House of Representatives.