Mr. Speaker. until World War II Byelorussians were among the least known of the many peoples living under the yoke of Soviet communism. We had heard of the Ukrainians. the Baltic peoples. of peoples in the Caucasus. and even of those in distant Asiatic areas. but one seldom heard of the Byelorussians despite the. fact that as an ethnic group they are more numerous than any of the groups named above. As a matter of fact these 10 million Byelorussians constitute the third largest ethnic group in the Soviet Union. exceeded only by the Russians and the Ukrainians. And these people. with their past glory. had lived there in the area east of the Baltic Sea. north of the Black Sea in northeastern Europe through the Middle Ages.