The National Minorities in the Polish Politics. The Past and the Present

Abstract

Reborn in 1918, from the very outset, the Polish State was confronted with the necessity of coping with an important internal issue-the one regarding the relations between ethnic Poles and the representatives of other nations who after 1923 became new citizens of the Polish Republic. Three basic factors seem to have determined the way in which the problem under discussion was dealt with in the inter-war period: 1/ the ratio of Poles to non-Poles and social differences between the two groups; 2/ interference of external forces; 3/ disputes which arose between those who opted for the building of mono-ethnic nation State and those who wished to see the restoring of a multinational Republic similar to that existing before the partitions in the 18th century. During the Second World War the problem of how to regain independence became again of crucial importance for all Poles. The problems connected with the ethnic minorities had quite naturally moved to the margin of political considerations. The Polish leaders stressed the need to grant national minorities the right to develop their cultural activity and secure for them the freedom of religious practice. The German minority, however, was excluded from this offer. It was demanded that the Germans as bearing responsibility for the suffering of the Polish people, should be forced to leave Poland. The effects of social-mechanisms that were decided in Yalta caused Poland to become a mono-ethnic state. The factors that determined it were as follows: 1/ the Nazi Holocaust which nearly occasioned the total physical annihilation of the Polish Jews community; 2/ displacement of the Germans from the lands granted to Poland; 3/ the lack of choice of a "new mother country" among Ukrainian, Byelorussians, and Lithuanian people, and automatic ascription of Soviet nationality to the former citizens of the Republic of Poland those of Slavic but non-Polish descent; 4/ settlement of the expelled Poles from behind the eastern border into the so-called "Recovered Territories". In turn, the imperative of integration and willingness to implement the rules in force in the structure of United Europe defined the status of national minorities in Poland after 1989.