THE NATIONAL MINORITIES IN THE POLISH POLITICS. THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

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.

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