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Polonization () is the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, especially the Polish language, experienced by the non-Polish population of the territories controlled by Poland or with a significant Polish influence, in different historical periods. Polonization is often compared to other assimilationist policies carried out at times by other European powers that aspired to the regional domination (e.g. Germanization, Rumanization or Russification), or to policies carried out by reconstituted countries which wanted to increase the role of their language in their societies (eg. Ukrainization).
Polonization was especially noted in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795) and the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939), although it must be noted that because of strong differences between these two widely separated historical periods, the process of Polonization was quite different in each. In the times of the Commonwealth, the Polish culture, itself influenced by Western culture, drew to itself the upper classes of the Ruthenian (Belarusian and Ukrainian) and Lithuanian communities leading to those classes' lesser or greater alienation from their ethnic roots.
Polonization was sometimes closely related to conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, as in some areas and in some historical periods being Polish culturally and Roman Catholic by religion was almost the same, although the correlation was by no means universal. The promotion of the Roman Catholic Church at the expense of the Orthodox Churches was the aspect of Polonization most resented by Belarusian and Ukrainian masses. In contrast the Lithuanians, who were mostly Catholic, were in danger of losing their cultural identity as a nation, but that didn't become evident for the wide masses of Lithuanians until the Lithuanian national renaissance in the middle of the 19th century.
In the twentieth century the Second Polish Republic's Polonization policies were aimed at achieving an ethnically homogeneous Poland over the entire territory of the Republic while over one third of the Poland's population was non-Polish. These policies mainly relied on emphasizing the Polish language in education and official use, while discriminating against other languages. The proponents of this policy hoped that it would result in the Polish language becoming dominant over the continuum of a few generations. Given the short time span in which they were applied, these policies, applied with varying intensity, fell far short of their aim, but contributed to increased ethnic tensions which led to large scale violence during World War II.
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Poland of Piasts
Between the 12th and the 14th centuries many Polish towns were accorded the, so called, Magdeburg rights that promoted the towns' development and trade. The right were usually granted on the occasion of the arrival of the colonists from Germany. After the years of living between Polish majority of western and central Poland those groups were Polonized. Similar way of Polonization took place in case of merchants that settled in those areas, especially Greeks and Armenians, they adopted most aspects of Polish culture but kept their Orthodox faith.
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Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the minorities (especially Ruthenian and Lithuanian) found themselves under strong cultural and religious pressure of Poland. into the Catholicism, pressures of Polonization
The Polish king Wladyslaw II Jagiello (reigned 1386-1434) built many Roman Catholic churches and provided them generously with estates, gave out the lands and positions to the Catholics, settled the cities and villages by the Poles and gave those settlements the Magdeburg Rights privilleges that consisted of many allowances. These rights were given only to the settlements dominated by the Poles and the Germans but not to Ruthenian settlements whose residents were fully taxed. The noble Ruthenians were also freed from many payment obligations and their rights were equalized with those of the Polish Szlachta but only when they adopted the Catholicism. Then they were provided with compensation for the military service, while those who remained Orthodox received none. As such, the entire population of Ruthenia was split into the privileged and non-privileged ones, and the latter were the Orthodox people of Ruthenia. The commoners, deprived of their native protectors, sought protection through the Cossacks,[ who, being fiercely Orthodox, tended also to easily turn to violence against those they perceived as their enemies, particularly the Polish state and what they saw as its representatives, the Poles and generally the Catholics , as well as the Jews.]
After several , especially the fateful Khmelnytsky uprising, and foreign invasions (like the Deluge), the Commonwealth, increasingly powerless and falling under the control of its neighbours , started to decline, the process which eventually culminated with elimination of the Polish statehood in the end of the 18th century for the next 123 years.
While the Commonwealth's Warsaw Compact is widely considered an example of an unprecedented religious tolerance for its time, the oppressive policies of Poland towards its Eastern Orthodox subjects is often cited as one of the main reasons that brought the state's demise.
During all time of existing of Commonwealth Polonization in western part of country referred to rather small groups of colonists, like Bambrzy in Greater Poland.
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Partitions
The Polonization took place also in time when Polish state didn't exist. On one way, by mixed marriages between Poles (especially Polish women). This process was strongest during Napoleonic wars when relatively large numbers of French soldiers stayed in Polish lands.
Other, specific situation took place in Prussian partition, were during Kulturkampf as a reaction to persecution of Roman Catholicism, German Catholics living in the areas with Polish majority voluntarily integrated themselves with them, this process affected for example about 100,000 Germans from the eastern provinces of Prussia (and similarly, Russian state was engaged in forced Russification).
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Second Polish Republic
By the times of Second Polish Republic (1918-1939) much of the territories controlled by Poland over a century ago (at the Commonwealth's time), that were historically mixed (partly Ruthenian and partly Polish), had the Ukrainian and Belarusian majority.[THE REBIRTH OF POLAND. University of Kansas, lecture notes by professor Anna M. Cienciala, 2004. Last accessed on 2 June 2006. Quote:"there were large Polish minorities in what is today western Belarus, western Ukraine and central Ukraine. According to the Polish Census of 1931, Poles made up 5,600,000 of the total population of eastern Poland which stood at 13,021,000.] In Lithuania, Poles had majorities in the Vilnius P. Wilno, Rus. Vilna and Suwałki areas, as well as significant numbers in and around Kaunas P.Kowno." Following the post-World War I rebirth of the Polish statehood, these lands became again disputed but the Poles were more successful than the nascent West Ukrainian People's Republic in the Polish-Ukrainian War. Thus, in the wake of the Poland's elimination of Ukrainian statehood attempt in Galicia (Eastern Europe) and Volhynia followed by the further westward expansion into Belarus which the Soviet Russia succeeded to deter only to a degree, these territories ended up under the Polish control. As such, Poland had to deal with the problems it brought upon itself by expanding into non-Polish populated territories as the approximately one third of new state's population was non-Polish and non-Catholic.["Poland's one third of population consisted of non-Poles, many of whom felt bitterly alienated from a state that had forcibly incorporated them into itself... The Polish government felt it had little reason to negotiate terms of autonomy with minorities upon which it had already imposed its rule."]
The Ukrainian territories of Galicia and Volhynia had different backgrounds, different late histories and different dominant religions. Until the First World War, Galicia with its largely Greek Catholic Ukrainian population, was controlled by the Austrian Empire whose local policies were relatively pro-Ukrainian (Ruthenian) in an attempt to cement the Austrian control over the territories and prevent the political trends of population's leaning towards the rest of Ukrainians controlled by the Russian Empire. Such policies resulted in much stronger national self-perception among the Galicia Ukrainians. On the other hand, the Ukrainians of Volhynia, formerly of the Russian Empire, were largely Orthodox by religion, and were influenced by the strong Russophile trends. Therefore, while the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), which functions in communion with the Latin Rite Catholicism, could have hoped to receive a better treatment in Poland, where the leadership saw the Catholicism as one of the main tools to unify the nation, the Poles saw the Greek Catholic Galicia Ukrainians as even less reliable than the Orthodox Volhynia Ukrainians seen as good candidates for the political assimilation. As such the Polish policy in Ukraine initially was aimed at keeping "bad" Greek Catholic Galicians from influencing "good" Orthodox Volhynians.[Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-10586-XGoogle Books, p.144]
Due to the region's history the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church attained a strong Ukrainian national character, and the Polish authorities sought to weaken it in various ways. In 1924, following a visit with the Ukrainian Catholic believers in North America and western Europe, the head of the UGCC was initially denied reentry to Lviv until after a considerable delay. Polish priests led by their bishops began to undertake missionary work among Eastern Rite faithful, and the administrative restrictions were placed on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
With respect to the Orthodox Ukrainian population in eastern Poland, the Polish government initially issued a decree defending the rights of the Orthodox minorities. In practice, this often failed, as the Catholics, also eager to strengthen their position, had official representation in the Sejm and the courts. Any accusation was strong enough for a particular church to be confiscated and handed over to the Roman Catholic church. 190 Orthodox churches were destroyed (some of the destroyed churches were abandoned[The Impact of External Threat on States and Domestic Societie, Manus I. Midlarsky in Dissolving Boundaries, Blackwell Publishers, 2003, ISBN 1-4051-2134-3, Google Print, p.15] and 150 more were forcibly transformed into Roman Catholic (not Greek Catholic) churches
How to deal with the non-Polish minorities was a subject of intense debate within the Polish leadership. Two ideas of Polish policy clashed at the time - a more tolerant and arguably less assimilationist approach advocated by Józef Piłsudski,[Zbigniew Brzezinski in his introduction to Wacław Jędrzejewicz’s “Pilsudski A Life For Poland” wrote: Pilsudski’s vision of Poland, paradoxically, was never attained. He contributed immensely to the creation of a modern Polish state, to the preservation of Poland from the Soviet invasion, yet he failed to create the kind of multinational commonwealth, based on principles of social justice and ethnic tolerance, to which he aspired in his youth. One may wonder how relevant was his image of such a Poland in the age of nationalism.... Quoted from this website.] [Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. Messiah and Central European Federalist. Polonica.net article by Patryk Dole] whose project of creating a Międzymorze federation with other states failed in the aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War, clashed with the eventually prevailing strictly nationalist and assimilationist approach advocated by Roman Dmowski, a minister of foreign affairs, and Stanisław Grabski, a minister of religion and education. Dmowski and Grabski saw the solution of the "minorities problem" in imposing "Polish values" (Polish language and the Catholic Church) on the minorities to achieve "national assimilation", i.e. to make them "Polish" within the "next generation".[ On the other hand, Józef Piłsudski, a Polish chief of State who also controlled the army, supported "state" rather than "national" assimilation as a more practical approach. ]
As most of the Polish government was initially controlled by Roman Dmowski, leader of endecja and a strong proponent of polonization,[Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman, Elisabeth Glaser, The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-521-62132-1, Google Print, p.314] the policies that based on his views were implemented*. Dmowski, quoted to have said Wherever we can multiply our forces and our civilizational efforts, absorbing other elements, no law can prohibit us from doing so, as such actions are our duty.[Tomaszewski J. Kresy Wschodnie w polskiej myśli politycznej XIX i XX w.//Między Polską etniczną a historyczną. Polska myśl polityczna XIX i XX wieku.—T.6.—Warszawa, 1988.—S.101. (Cited through: Oleksandr Derhachov (editor), "Ukrainian Statehood in the Twentieth Century: Historical and Political Analysis", 1996, Kiev ISBN 966-543-040-8)).] engineered the policies of "Endecja", that alienated the minorities in Poland to such an extent that even when Piłsudski gained power in 1926 his attempted modest reforms did not affect the attitude of the minorities to the Polish state formed by endecja policies.
When the territories of Western Belarus, Western Ukraine and the Wilno region were incorporated by Poland after the Treaty of Riga, Poland rejected its international obligations to grant the autonomy to eastern Galicia which Poland never intended to follow anyway.[ The linguistic assimilation was considered as a major factor of "unifying the state" by National Democrats. For example, Stanisław Grabski, Polish Minister for Religion and Public Education in 1923 and 1925-1926 wrote that "Poland may be preserved only as the state of Polish people. If it were a state of Poles, Jews, Germans, Rusyns, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Russians, it would lose its independence again" and that "it is impossible to make a nation of those who do not have the 'national self-identification', who calls themselves "local" (Tutejszy)". Grabski also said that the aim of Polish policy should be "the transformation of the Commonwealth into Polish ethnic territory".][Anna Reid, Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine, Westview Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8133-3792-5, Google Print, p.106] [Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe, Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-521-57649-0, Google Print, p.100] Some other officials rejected the existence of Ukrainian and Belarusian nations altogether.
A law issued in 1924 banned usage of any language but Polish in governmental and municipal paperwork. It the area of public education it was postulated that state schools could be only Polish language schools[. Local populations could have private local language schools, but only in territories "loyal to the Polish state". Specifically with respect to the Eastern territories (known as Kresy Wschodnie, or "Eastern Borderlands") it was recognized that "schools can become an instrument of the cultural development in Eastern lands only if Polish teachers will work there". It turned out to be infeasible for implementation and, in particular cases, bilingual ("utraquist") schools were proposed, while in reality those schools were functionally the Polish language ones.][ ]
In internal politics, Piłsudski's reign marked the much needed stabilization and improvements in the situation of ethnic minorities, which formed almost a third of the population of the Second Republic. Piłsudski replaced endecja's 'ethnic assimilation' with the 'state assimilation' policy: citizens were judged by their loyalty to the state, not by their nationality.[ The years 1926-1935 were favourably viewed by many Polish Jews, whose situation improved especially under the cabinet of Piłsudski’s appointee Kazimierz Bartel.][Feigue Cieplinski, Poles and Jews: The Quest For Self-Determination 1919-1934, Binghamton Journal of History, Fall 2002, Last accessed on 2 June, 2006.] However a combination of various reasons, from the Great Depression[, through the Pisłudski's need for support from parties for the parliament's election][ to the vicious spiral of terrorist attacks by Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and government pacifications][Davies, God's Playground, op.cit., *] [ meant that the situation continued to degenerate, despite Piłsudski's efforts.]
The land reform designed to favor the Poles[Snyder, op cit, Google Print, p.146] in mostly Ukrainian populated Volhynia, the agricultural territory where the land question was especially severe, brought the alienation from the Polish state of even the Orthodox Volhynian population who tended to be much less radical than the Greek Catholic Calicians.
After the Polish legislative election, 1930, Belarusian representation in the Polish parliament was reduced and since the early 1930's the Polish government started to introduce policies intended to Polonize the minorities. In 1938 about 100 abandoned[Orthodox churches were destroyed or converted to Roman Catholic in the eastern parts of Poland][Eugeniusz Mironowicz, "Białoruś", Trio, Warszawa, 1999, ISBN 83-85660-82-8, p. 109]. The use of Belarusian language was discouraged. There wasn't a Belarusian school in the spring of 1939, and only 44 schools teaching Belarusian language existed in Poland at the beginning of World War II.
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Post World War II
Ethnic Germans still living in the western territories gained by Poland (determined by Tehran Conference by Stalin in the aftermath of World War II - e.g. Silesia) were denied the use of their language in public by the Communist regime and they had to adopt the Polish language and citizenship to evade discrimination, expropriation and insult. Some 180,000 were sent to forced work camps like camp Tost, camp Potulice or camp Lambsdorf. Their situation improved in 1950 with the Treaty of Zgorzelec between Poland and the GDR. Western Germany however did not recognize this agreement. Until 1953 there were 55 German basic schools and 2 higher German schools in Poland. Unlike the Poles in Germany, the Germans enjoy a formally recognized status of an ethnic minority in modern Poland.
During Operation Wisła in 1947, the Ukrainian and Rusyn populations were forcibly resettled from their historic territories in the south-east of Poland to northern areas of the territories awarded by the Allies to Poland in the post-war settlement. According to the order of the Ministry of Recovered Territories "the main goal of the relocation of settlers "W" is their assimilation in a new Polish environment, all efforts should be exerted to achieve those goals. Do not apply the term "Ukrainians" towards the settlers. In cases when the intelligentsia element reaches the recovered territories, they should by all means be settled separately and away from the communities of the "W" settlers."
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Ethnicity of notable figures
As a consequence of the process of cultural Polonization, disputes occur as to the ethnicity of some notable persons such as Tadeusz Kościuszko, Adam Mickiewicz and Ignacy Domeyko, who are claimed as national celebrities by Poles, Belarusians and Lithuanians alike.
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Further reading
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