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For other places with the same name, see Kresy (disambiguation).
Eastern Borderlands
Kresy Wschodnie
Part of the Second Polish Republic
In the 1939 German-Soviet Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact the Eastern Borderlands (grey) were annexed directly into the Soviet Union. The Soviet gains east of the Curzon line devised in 1919 were confirmed (with minor adjustments in the areas around Białystok and Przemyśl) by the Western Allies at the Tehran Conference, the Yalta conference and the Potsdam conference. In 1945 most of Germany's territory east of the Oder–Neisse line (pink) was ceded to what remained of Poland (white), both of which would compose the newly created People's Republic of Poland
Historical region
Period1919–1939; 1945
AreaTerritories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union in the Invasion of Poland of 1939
Today part of Ukraine
 Belarus
 Lithuania
Territorial evolution of Poland
in the 20th century
Pre-World War II
World War II
Post World War II
Areas
Demarcation lines
Adjacent countries

Eastern Borderlands[1] (Template:Lang-pl) or simply Borderlands (Template:Lang-pl, Polish pronunciation: [ˈkrɛsɨ]) was a term coined for the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period (1918–1939). Largely agricultural and extensively multi-ethnic with a Polish minority,[2] it amounted to nearly half of the territory of interwar Poland. Historically situated in the eastern Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, following the 18th-century foreign partitions it was divided between the Empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary, and ceded to Poland in 1921 after the Treaty of Riga. As a result of the post-World War II border changes, all of the territory was ceded to the USSR, and none of it is in modern Poland.

The Polish plural term Kresy corresponds to the Russian okrainy (окраины), meaning "the border regions".[3] During the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Kresy only referred to the borderlands of the Kingdom of Poland and not the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.[4] Kresy is also largely co-terminous with the northern areas of the Pale of Settlement, a scheme devised by Catherine II of Russia to limit Jews from settling in the homogenously Christian Orthodox core of the Russian Empire, such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The Pale was established after the Second Partition of Poland and lasted until the Russian Revolution in 1917, when the Russian Empire ceased to exist. In the aftermath of the Polish wars against Ukraine, Lithuania and Soviet Russia, the latter of which was ended by the Treaty of Riga, large parts of the Austrian and Russian partitions became part of Poland. As many as 12 million inhabitants lived in the Eastern Borderlands, but ethnic Poles only were a third of that population, with another third being Ukrainian.[4][5] Most small towns in the Borderlands were shtetls.[5]

Administratively, the Eastern Borderlands territory was composed of Lwów, Nowogródek, Polesie, Stanisławów, Tarnopol, Wilno, Wołyń, and Białystok voivodeships (provinces). Today, all these regions are divided between Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and south-eastern Lithuania, with the major cities of Lviv, Vilnius, and Grodno no longer in Poland. During the Second Polish Republic, the Eastern Borderlands denoted the lands beyond the Curzon Line proposed after World War I in December 1919 by the British Foreign Office as the eastern border of the re-emerging sovereign Polish Republic, after over a century of partition. In September 1939, after Germany invaded Poland and follow-up invasion by Soviet Union, in accordance with Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact all Eastern Borderlands territories were incorporated into the Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, often by means of terror.[6]

Soviet territorial annexations during World War II were later ratified by the Allies at the Conferences of Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam and most of Poles here were expelled after the end of World War II in Europe. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was no change to the post-World War II borders. Despite the former provinces of the Eastern Borderlands no longer being part of Poland, a Polish minority remains.

Etymology

Typical landscape view of the Kresy, marked by low-lying rolling hills and grasslands (location Sielec, Drohobych Raion, western Ukraine)
Polish voivodeships 1922–1939. One can consider the six easternmost voivodeships as roughly equivalent with Kresy.

The Polish word kresy ("borderlands") is the plural form of the word kres meaning 'edge'. According to Zbigniew Gołąb, it is "a medieval borrowing from the German word Kreis", which in the Middle Ages meant Kreislinie, Umkreis, Landeskreis ("borderline, delineation or circumscribed territory").[7] Samuel Linde in his Dictionary of the Polish Language gives a different etymology of the term. According to him, kresy meant the borderline between Poland and the Crimean Khanate, in the region of the lower Dnieper. The term kresy appeared for the first time in literature in Wincenty Pol poems, "Mohort" (1854) and "Pieśń o ziemi naszej". Pol claimed that Kresy was the line between the Dniester and Dnieper rivers, neighbouring the Tatar borderland.[8] Coincidentally in relation to Jewish settlement in the macro region, the notion of the pale is an archaic English term derived from the Latin word palus, (which in Polish exists as pal and also means a stake), extended in this instance to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.[9]

At the beginning of the 20th century, the meaning of the term expanded to include the lands of the former eastern provinces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, east of the Lwów–Wilno line. In the Second Polish Republic, Kresy equated to historically Polish settled lands to the east of the notional Curzon line. Currently, the term applies to all the eastern lands of the Second Polish Republic that are no longer within the frontiers of modern Poland, together with lands further east, that had been integral to the Commonwealth before 1772, and where Polish communities continue to exist.[10]

History

Polish eastern settlements date back to the dawn of Poland as a state. In 1018, King Bolesław I the Brave invaded Kievan Rus' (see Bolesław I's intervention in the Kievan succession crisis, 1018), capturing Kyiv, and annexing the Cherven Cities. In 1340, Red Ruthenia came under Polish control, which intensified defensive Polish settlement and the introduction of Catholicism. After the Union of Lublin 1569, more Polish settlers moved into the eastern borderlands of the vast Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Most of them came from the Polish provinces of Mazovia and Lesser Poland. They had moved gradually eastwards settling in sparsely populated areas, inhabited by earlier inhabitants such as Lithuanians and Ruthenians. Moreover, the indigenous upper classes of Kresy accepted Polish religion, culture and language, resulting in their assimilation and Polonization.

The Partitions of Poland

The year 1772 marked the first partition of the Commonwealth of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (see Partitions of Poland). By 1795, the whole eastern half of the state had been annexed by the Russian Empire in concert with the Habsburgs and Prussia's Hohenzollerns. The dramatic westward expansion of the Russian Empire through the annexation of Polish-Lithuanian territory substantially increased the new "Russian" Jewish population. Kresy and the superimposed Pale, in the former Polish and Lithuanian territories, had a Jewish population of over five million, and represented the largest community (40%) of the world Jewish population at that time.

From the Polish perspective, the lands came to be called the "Stolen Lands". Even though Poles were a minority in those areas, owing to forced depopulation, the "Stolen Lands" remained an integral part of Polish national identity, with Polish cultural centres and seats of learning in Vilnius University, Jan Kazimierz University and Krzemieniec Lyceum among many others. Since many local educated inhabitants had actively participated in Polish–Lithuanian national insurgencies (November Uprising, January Uprising), the Russian authorities resorted to intensified persecution, confiscations of property and land, penal deportation to Siberia, and the systematic attempt at Russification of Poles and their traditional culture and institutions.

The Pale of Settlement

Main article: Pale of Settlement
The Pale of Settlement

From the Russian perspective the "Pale of Settlement" included all of Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova, much of present-day Ukraine, parts of eastern Latvia, eastern Poland, and some parts of western Russia, generally corresponding to the Kresy macroregion and the modern-day western border of Russia. It extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line, to the Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia (later the German Empire) and Austria-Hungary. It also comprised about 20% of the territory of European Russia and largely corresponded to historical lands of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Cossack Hetmanate, and the Ottoman Empire (with Crimean Khanate).

The area included in the Pale, with its large Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic and Jewish populations, was acquired through a series of military conquests and diplomatic manoeuvres, between 1654 and 1815. While the religious nature of the edicts creating the Pale is clear: conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion, released individuals from the strictures - historians argue that the motivations for its creation and maintenance were primarily economic and nationalistic in nature.[11]

Economic decline of Kresy

Leon Wyczółkowski "Ploughing in the Ukraine"

The Russian Empire had abandoned Kresy to decline as a vast rural backwater after the original Polish–Lithuanian landowners had been disposed of in the wake of insurrections and the Abolition of serfdom in Poland in 1864. The devastation of country estates put a halt to large scale economic activity which had depended on agriculture, forestry, brewing and small scale industries. Paradoxically, the Southern Kresy (present-day Ukraine) was famous for its fertile soil and was known as the "bread basket of Europe". Towards the end of the 19th century, the decline was so acute that trade and food supplies became problematic and large scale emigration from towns and villages began as Jewish communities, in particular, began heading West, to Europe and the United States. By the time of a newly resurgent Polish state, the provinces had been additionally disadvantaged by having the lowest literacy levels in the country, since education had not been compulsory during Russian rule.[12][13][14] The regions had suffered a legacy of decades of neglect and underinvestment so were generally less economically developed than the western parts of interwar Poland.

Between the World Wars

The years 1918–1921 were especially turbulent for Kresy, due to the resurgence of the Polish nation-state and the formation of new borders. At that time, Poland had fought three wars to establish its eastern frontier: with Ukraine, Lithuania and Soviet Russia. In all three conflicts, Poland made territorial conquests, and as a result, it seized territories east of the Curzon line that were previously conquered by Russia, in addition to the land formerly part of the Austrian Galicia. The Kresy was the most war-devastated area in the whole of interwar Poland.[15] The region later formed the eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic.

Territories included in the Kresy during the interbellum period comprised the eastern parts of the Voivodeships of Lwów and Białystok and the whole of the Nowogródek, Polesie, Stanisławów, Tarnopol, Wilno, Wołyń Voivodeships. The Polish government undertook an active policy of Polonizing the Kresy to alter its ethnic profile in favour of the Poles.[15] One of the ways to do so was through the Osadnik colonists.[15] These military colonists were one of the most "emotionalized" parts of the Polish government's policy in the Kresy and elicited opposition from the locals.[16] The German historian Bernhard Chiari [de] said that the Kresy were "the poorhouse of Poland", while the Yad Vashem historian Leonid Rein even wrote that "it would not be a great exaggeration to say it was the poor-house of the whole of Europe."[17] This led to frequent conflicts with Ukrainian nationalists in the southeastern part of Kresy, which led to the pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia.

Numerous Polish communities continued to live beyond the eastern border of the Second Polish Republic, especially around Minsk, Zhytomyr and Berdychiv. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Soviet authorities created two Polish National Districts in Belarus and Ukraine, but during the Polish Operation of the NKVD, most of the Poles in those areas were murdered, while those remaining were forcibly resettled in Kazakhstan (see also Poles in the Soviet Union).

During and after World War II

See also: Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
Members of the German Ordnungspolizei shooting naked women and children in the Mizoch Ghetto, October 1942
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia in 1943. Most Poles of Volhynia (now in Ukraine) had either been murdered or had fled the area.

As a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, on 17 September 1939, the Kresy territories were annexed by the Soviet Union (see Soviet invasion of Poland), and a significant part of the ethnic Polish population of Kresy was deported to other areas of the Soviet Union including Siberia and Kazakhstan.[18] The new border between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was re-designated by the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, signed on 29 September 1939. After the elections to the People's Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, communist governments for Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were formed and immediately announced their intention of joining their respective republics to the Soviet Union (see also Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union). After the German invasion of the USSR, the southeastern part of Kresy was absorbed into Greater Germany's General Government, whereas the rest was integrated with the Reichskommissariats Ostland and Ukraine. In 1943–1944, units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, with the help of Ukrainian peasants, carried out mass exterminations of Poles living in southeastern Kresy (see Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia).

In January 1944, Soviet troops had reached the former Polish–Soviet border, and by the end of July 1944, they again re-annexed the whole territory that had been taken by the USSR in September 1939 into their control. During the Tehran Conference in 1943, a new Soviet-Polish border was established, in effect sanctioning most of the Soviet territorial acquisitions of September 1939 (except for some areas around Białystok and Przemyśl), ignoring protests from the Polish government-in-exile in London. The Potsdam Conference, via substantive recognition of the pro-Soviet Polish Committee of National Liberation, implicitly consented to the deportation of Polish people from Kresy (see Polish population transfers (1944–1946)). Most Polish inhabitants of Kresy were ordered by the Soviets to migrate west to Germany's former eastern provinces, newly emptied of their German population and renamed as the "Recovered Territories" of the Polish People's Republic, based on Polish medieval settlement of the areas. Poles from the southern Kresy (now Ukraine) were forced to settle mainly in Silesia, while those from the north (Belarus and Lithuania) moved to Pomerania and Masuria. Polish residents of Lwów settled not only in Wrocław, but also in Gliwice and in Bytom. Those cities had not been destroyed during the war. They were relatively closer to the new eastern border of Poland, which could become significant in case of a sudden hoped for a return to the East.[19]

Frequently, whole Kresy villages and towns were deported in a single rail transport to new locations in the west. For instance, the village of Biała, near Chojnów, is still divided into two parts: Lower Biała and Upper Biała. Lower Biała was settled by people who used to live in a Bieszczady village of Polana near Ustrzyki Dolne (this area belonged to the Soviet Union until 1951: see 1951 Polish–Soviet territorial exchange), while inhabitants of the village Pyszkowce near Buczacz moved to Upper Biała. Every year in September, Biała is the scene of an annual festival called Kresowiana.[20] In Szczecin and Polish West Pomerania, in the immediate postwar period, one-third of Polish settlers were either people from Kresy or Sybiraks.[21] In 1948, people born in the Eastern Borderlands made up 47.5% of the population of Opole, 44.7% of Baborów, 47.5% of Wołczyn, 42.1% of Głubczyce, 40.1% of Lewin Brzeski, and 32.6% of Brzeg. In 2011, people with Kresy background made up 25% of the population of the Opole Voivodeship.[22] The town of Jasień was settled by people from the area of Ternopil in late 1945 and early 1946,[23] while Poles from Borschiv moved to Trzcińsko-Zdrój and Chojna.[24] The situation was completely different in Wschowa and its county. In 1945–1948, more than 8,000 people moved there. They came from different areas of the Kresy — Ashmyany, Stanislawow, Równe, Lwów, Brody, Dzyatlava District, and Ternopil.[25]

Altogether, between 1944 and 1946, more than a million Poles from the Kresy were moved to the Recovered Territories, including 150,000 from the area of Wilno, 226,300 from Polesia, 133,900 from Volhynia, 5,000 from Northern Bukovina, and 618,200 from Eastern Galicia.[26] The so-called First Repatriation of Poles (1944–1946) was carried out in a chaotic, disorganized way. People had to spend weeks, even months at railroad stations, waiting for transport. During that time, they were robbed of their belongings by either locals, Soviet soldiers or Soviet rail workers. For lack of railroad cars, in Lithuania at some point the "one-suitcase policy" was introduced, which meant that Poles had to leave behind all their belongings. They travelled in freight or open wagons, and the journeys were long and dangerous, as there was no protection from the military or the police.[19] In the years 1955–1959, the second mass repatriation of Poles from Kresy took place. As a result, in the years 1945–1960, over 2 million Polish people left Kresy. About 1-2 million more remained in the Kresy after 1960 (especially in the territories of the Lithuanian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR). Even today, Poles constitute the majority of inhabitants in many regions in the Grodno and Vilnius regions. Poles appear in the most recent national censuses as follows - Lithuania 183,000 (2021) ; Belarus 288,000 (2019) ; Ukraine 144,000 (2001) - the Belarus and Ukraine numbers firmly disputed in Poland.

In the immediate postwar period, Polish Communists, who ceded the Eastern Borderlands to the Soviet Union, were universally regarded as traitors, and Władysław Gomułka, First Secretary of the Polish Workers' Party, was fully aware of it. People who moved from the East to the Recovered Territories talked amongst themselves about their return to Lwów and other eastern locations, and the German return to Silesia, as a result of World War III, in which Western Allies would defeat the Soviets. One of the adages of the postwar period was: "Just one atom bomb, and we will be back in Lwów again. Just second one is small but strong and we will be back in Wilno again." ("Jedna bomba atomowa i wrócimy znów do Lwowa. Druga mała, ale silna i wrócimy znów do Wilna").[27][28] Polish settlers in former German areas were insecure about their future there until the 1970s (see Kniefall von Warschau). Eastern settlers did not feel at home in Lower Silesia, and as a result, they did not care about the machinery, households and farms abandoned by Germans. Lubomierz in 1945 was in good condition, but in the following years, Polish settlers from the area of Chortkiv in Podolia let it run down and become a ruin. The Germans were aware of it. In 1959, German sources wrote that Lower Silesia had been ruined by the Poles. Zdzisław Mach, a sociologist from the Jagiellonian University, explains that when Poles were forced to resettle in the West, which they resented, they had to leave the land they considered sacred and move to areas inhabited by the enemy. In addition, Communist authorities did not initially invest in the Recovered Territories because, like the settlers, for a long time they were unsure about the future of these lands. As Mach says, people in Western Poland for years lived "on their suitcases", with all their belongings packed in case of return to the East.[29]

Interwar population

The population of Kresy was multi-ethnic, primarily comprising Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and Belarusians. According to official Polish statistics from the interwar period, Poles formed the largest linguistic group in these regions, and were demographically the largest ethnic group in the cities. Other national minorities included Lithuanians and Karaites (in the north), Jews (scattered in cities and towns across the area), Czechs and Germans (in Volhynia and East Galicia), Armenians and Hungarians (in Lviv) and also Russians and Tatars.[30]

Map of interwar Poland based on the most spoken native language in each powiat: Polish (white), Ukrainian (green), Belarusian (red) and "local language" such as Polesian or other dialects (grey). Shaded denotes subdivisions where the difference in share between the first and second most spoken languages is less than 5%. Data extracted from the Polish census of 1931.

The proportions of different native languages in each voivodeship in 1931, according to the Polish census of 1931, were as follows:

In addition to ethnic Poles in former eastern Poland, there were also large Polish communities in the USSR and in the Baltic states. Polish population east of the Curzon Line before World War II can be estimated by adding together figures for Former Eastern Poland and for pre-1939 Soviet Union:

Linguistic (mother tongue) and religious structure of Northern Kresy (today parts of Belarus and Lithuania) according to the Polish census of 1931
1. Interwar Poland Polish mother tongue (of whom Roman Catholics) Source (census) Today part of:
South-Eastern Poland 2,243,011 (1,765,765)[32][33] 1931 Polish census[34]  Ukraine
North-Eastern Poland 1,663,888 (1,358,029)[35][36] 1931 Polish census Belarus and Lithuania
2. Interwar USSR Ethnic Poles according to official census Source (census) Today part of:
Soviet Ukraine 476,435 1926 Soviet census  Ukraine
Soviet Belarus 97,498 1926 Soviet census  Belarus
Soviet Russia 197,827 1926 Soviet census  Russia
rest of the USSR 10,574 1926 Soviet census
3. Interwar Baltic states Ethnic Poles according to official census Source (census) Today part of:
Lithuania 65,599 [Note 1] 1923 Lithuanian census  Lithuania
Latvia 59,374 1930 Latvian census[37]  Latvia
Estonia 1,608 1934 Estonian census  Estonia
TOTAL (1., 2., 3.) 4 to 5 million ethnic Poles
  1. ^ Polish sources estimated, based on the percentage of votes for Polish parties in the 1923 Lithuanian parliamentary election, that the real number of ethnic Poles in interwar Lithuania in 1923 was 202,026.


Two tables below show the linguistic (mother tongue) and religious structure of interwar South-Eastern Poland (nowadays part of Western Ukraine) and interwar North-Eastern Poland (nowadays part of Western Belarus and southern Lithuania) by county, according to the 1931 census.

South-East Poland:

Linguistic and religious structure of South-East Poland in 1931[38][39][40][41][42]
County Pop. Polish % Yiddish & Hebrew % Ukrainian & Ruthenian % Other language

[Note 1]

% Roman Catholic % Jewish % Uniate & Orthodox % Other religion

[Note 2]

%
Dubno 226709 33987 15.0% 17430 7.7% 158173 69.8% 17119 7.6% 27638 12.2% 18227 8.0% 173512 76.5% 7332 3.2%
Horokhiv 122045 21100 17.3% 9993 8.2% 84224 69.0% 6728 5.5% 17675 14.5% 10112 8.3% 87333 71.6% 6925 5.7%
Kostopil 159602 34951 21.9% 10481 6.6% 105346 66.0% 8824 5.5% 34450 21.6% 10786 6.8% 103912 65.1% 10454 6.6%
Kovel 255095 36720 14.4% 26476 10.4% 185240 72.6% 6659 2.6% 35191 13.8% 26719 10.5% 187717 73.6% 5468 2.1%
Kremenets 243032 25758 10.6% 18679 7.7% 196000 80.6% 2595 1.1% 25082 10.3% 18751 7.7% 195233 80.3% 3966 1.6%
Liuboml 85507 12150 14.2% 6818 8.0% 65906 77.1% 633 0.7% 10998 12.9% 6861 8.0% 65685 76.8% 1963 2.3%
Lutsk 290805 56446 19.4% 34142 11.7% 172038 59.2% 28179 9.7% 55802 19.2% 34354 11.8% 177377 61.0% 23272 8.0%
Rivne 252787 36990 14.6% 37484 14.8% 160484 63.5% 17829 7.1% 36444 14.4% 37713 14.9% 166970 66.1% 11660 4.6%
Sarny 181284 30426 16.8% 16019 8.8% 129637 71.5% 5202 2.9% 28192 15.6% 16088 8.9% 132691 73.2% 4313 2.4%
Volodymyr 150374 40286 26.8% 17236 11.5% 88174 58.6% 4678 3.1% 38483 25.6% 17331 11.5% 89641 59.6% 4919 3.3%
Zdolbuniv 118334 17826 15.1% 10787 9.1% 81650 69.0% 8071 6.8% 17901 15.1% 10850 9.2% 86948 73.5% 2635 2.2%
Borshchiv 103277 46153 44.7% 4302 4.2% 52612 50.9% 210 0.2% 28432 27.5% 9353 9.1% 65344 63.3% 148 0.1%
Brody 91248 32843 36.0% 7640 8.4% 50490 55.3% 275 0.3% 22521 24.7% 10360 11.4% 58009 63.6% 358 0.4%
Berezhany 103824 48168 46.4% 3716 3.6% 51757 49.9% 183 0.2% 41962 40.4% 7151 6.9% 54611 52.6% 100 0.1%
Buchach 139062 60523 43.5% 8059 5.8% 70336 50.6% 144 0.1% 51311 36.9% 10568 7.6% 77023 55.4% 160 0.1%
Chortkiv 84008 36486 43.4% 6474 7.7% 40866 48.6% 182 0.2% 33080 39.4% 7845 9.3% 42828 51.0% 255 0.3%
Kamianka-Buzka 82111 41693 50.8% 4737 5.8% 35178 42.8% 503 0.6% 29828 36.3% 6700 8.2% 45113 54.9% 470 0.6%
Kopychyntsi 88614 38158 43.1% 5164 5.8% 45196 51.0% 96 0.1% 31202 35.2% 7291 8.2% 50007 56.4% 114 0.1%
Pidhaitsi 95663 46710 48.8% 3464 3.6% 45031 47.1% 458 0.5% 38003 39.7% 4786 5.0% 52634 55.0% 240 0.3%
Peremyshliany 89908 52269 58.1% 4445 4.9% 32777 36.5% 417 0.5% 38475 42.8% 6860 7.6% 44002 48.9% 571 0.6%
Radekhiv 69313 25427 36.7% 3277 4.7% 39970 57.7% 639 0.9% 17945 25.9% 6934 10.0% 42928 61.9% 1506 2.2%
Skalat 89215 60091 67.4% 3654 4.1% 25369 28.4% 101 0.1% 45631 51.1% 8486 9.5% 34798 39.0% 300 0.3%
Ternopil 142220 93874 66.0% 5836 4.1% 42374 29.8% 136 0.1% 63286 44.5% 17684 12.4% 60979 42.9% 271 0.2%
Terebovlia 84321 50178 59.5% 3173 3.8% 30868 36.6% 102 0.1% 38979 46.2% 4845 5.7% 40452 48.0% 45 0.1%
Zalishchyky 72021 27549 38.3% 3261 4.5% 41147 57.1% 64 0.1% 17917 24.9% 5965 8.3% 48069 66.7% 70 0.1%
Zbarazh 65579 32740 49.9% 3142 4.8% 29609 45.2% 88 0.1% 24855 37.9% 3997 6.1% 36468 55.6% 259 0.4%
Zboriv 81413 39624 48.7% 2522 3.1% 39174 48.1% 93 0.1% 26239 32.2% 5056 6.2% 49925 61.3% 193 0.2%
Zolochiv 118609 56628 47.7% 6066 5.1% 55381 46.7% 534 0.5% 36937 31.1% 10236 8.6% 70663 59.6% 773 0.7%
Dolyna 118373 21158 17.9% 9031 7.6% 83880 70.9% 4304 3.6% 15630 13.2% 10471 8.8% 89811 75.9% 2461 2.1%
Horodenka 92894 27751 29.9% 5031 5.4% 59957 64.5% 155 0.2% 15519 16.7% 7480 8.1% 69789 75.1% 106 0.1%
Kalush 102252 18637 18.2% 5109 5.0% 77506 75.8% 1000 1.0% 14418 14.1% 6249 6.1% 80750 79.0% 835 0.8%
Kolomyia 176000 52006 29.5% 11191 6.4% 110533 62.8% 2270 1.3% 31925 18.1% 20887 11.9% 121376 69.0% 1812 1.0%
Kosiv 93952 6718 7.2% 6730 7.2% 79838 85.0% 666 0.7% 4976 5.3% 7826 8.3% 80903 86.1% 247 0.3%
Nadvírna 140702 16907 12.0% 11020 7.8% 112128 79.7% 647 0.5% 15214 10.8% 11663 8.3% 113116 80.4% 709 0.5%
Rohatyn 127252 36152 28.4% 6111 4.8% 84875 66.7% 114 0.1% 27108 21.3% 9466 7.4% 90456 71.1% 222 0.2%
Stanyslaviv 198359 49032 24.7% 26996 13.6% 120214 60.6% 2117 1.1% 42519 21.4% 29525 14.9% 123959 62.5% 2356 1.2%
Stryi 152631 25186 16.5% 15413 10.1% 106183 69.6% 5849 3.8% 23404 15.3% 17115 11.2% 108159 70.9% 3953 2.6%
Sniatyn 78025 17206 22.1% 4341 5.6% 56007 71.8% 471 0.6% 8659 11.1% 7073 9.1% 61797 79.2% 496 0.6%
Tlumach 116028 44958 38.7% 3677 3.2% 66659 57.5% 734 0.6% 31478 27.1% 6702 5.8% 76650 66.1% 1198 1.0%
Zhydachiv 83817 16464 19.6% 4728 5.6% 61098 72.9% 1527 1.8% 15094 18.0% 5289 6.3% 63144 75.3% 290 0.3%
Bibrka 97124 30762 31.7% 5533 5.7% 60444 62.2% 385 0.4% 22820 23.5% 7972 8.2% 66113 68.1% 219 0.2%
Dobromyl 93970 35945 38.3% 4997 5.3% 52463 55.8% 565 0.6% 25941 27.6% 7522 8.0% 59664 63.5% 843 0.9%
Drohobych 194456 91935 47.3% 20484 10.5% 79214 40.7% 2823 1.5% 52172 26.8% 28888 14.9% 110850 57.0% 2546 1.3%
Horodok 85007 33228 39.1% 2975 3.5% 47812 56.2% 992 1.2% 22408 26.4% 4982 5.9% 56713 66.7% 904 1.1%
Yavoriv 86762 26938 31.0% 3044 3.5% 55868 64.4% 912 1.1% 18394 21.2% 5161 5.9% 62828 72.4% 379 0.4%
Lviv City 312231 198212 63.5% 75316 24.1% 35137 11.3% 3566 1.1% 157490 50.4% 99595 31.9% 50824 16.3% 4322 1.4%
Lviv County 142800 80712 56.5% 1569 1.1% 58395 40.9% 2124 1.5% 67430 47.2% 5087 3.6% 67592 47.3% 2691 1.9%
Mostyska 89460 49989 55.9% 2164 2.4% 37196 41.6% 111 0.1% 34619 38.7% 5428 6.1% 49230 55.0% 183 0.2%
Rava-Ruska 122072 27376 22.4% 10991 9.0% 82133 67.3% 1572 1.3% 22489 18.4% 13381 11.0% 84808 69.5% 1394 1.1%
Rudky 79170 38417 48.5% 4247 5.4% 36254 45.8% 252 0.3% 27674 35.0% 5396 6.8% 45756 57.8% 344 0.4%
Sambir 133814 56818 42.5% 7794 5.8% 68222 51.0% 980 0.7% 43583 32.6% 11258 8.4% 78527 58.7% 446 0.3%
Sokal 109111 42851 39.3% 5917 5.4% 59984 55.0% 359 0.3% 25425 23.3% 13372 12.3% 69963 64.1% 351 0.3%
Turka 114457 26083 22.8% 7552 6.6% 80483 70.3% 339 0.3% 6301 5.5% 10627 9.3% 97339 85.0% 190 0.2%
Zhovkva 95507 35816 37.5% 3344 3.5% 56060 58.7% 287 0.3% 20279 21.2% 7848 8.2% 66823 70.0% 557 0.6%
South-East Poland 6922206 2243011 32.4% 549782 7.9% 3983550 57.6% 145863 2.1% 1707428 24.7% 708172 10.2% 4387812 63.4% 118794 1.7%


North-East Poland:

Linguistic and religious structure of North-East Poland in 1931[43][44][45][46][47]
County Pop. Polish % Yiddish & Hebrew % Belarusian, Poleshuk & Russian % Other language [Note 3] % Roman Catholic % Jewish % Orthodox & Uniate % Other religion

[Note 4]

%
Baranavichy 161038 74916 46.5% 15034 9.3% 70627 43.9% 461 0.3% 45126 28.0% 16074 10.0% 99118 61.5% 720 0.4%
Lida 183485 145609 79.4% 14546 7.9% 20538 11.2% 2792 1.5% 144627 78.8% 14913 8.1% 23025 12.5% 920 0.5%
Nyasvizh 114464 27933 24.4% 8754 7.6% 77094 67.4% 683 0.6% 22378 19.6% 8880 7.8% 82245 71.9% 961 0.8%
Novogrudok 149536 35084 23.5% 10326 6.9% 103783 69.4% 343 0.2% 28796 19.3% 10462 7.0% 109162 73.0% 1116 0.7%
Slonim 126510 52313 41.4% 10058 8.0% 63445 50.2% 694 0.5% 23817 18.8% 12344 9.8% 89724 70.9% 625 0.5%
Stowbtsy 99389 51820 52.1% 6341 6.4% 40875 41.1% 353 0.4% 37856 38.1% 6975 7.0% 54076 54.4% 482 0.5%
Shchuchyn 107203 89462 83.5% 6705 6.3% 10658 9.9% 378 0.4% 60097 56.1% 7883 7.4% 38900 36.3% 323 0.3%
Valozhyn 115522 76722 66.4% 5261 4.6% 33240 28.8% 299 0.3% 61852 53.5% 5341 4.6% 47923 41.5% 406 0.4%
Braslaw 143161 93958 65.6% 7181 5.0% 37689 26.3% 4333 3.0% 89020 62.2% 7703 5.4% 29713 20.8% 16725 11.7%
Dzisna 159886 62282 39.0% 11762 7.4% 85051 53.2% 791 0.5% 56895 35.6% 11948 7.5% 88118 55.1% 2925 1.8%
Molodechno 91285 35523 38.9% 5789 6.3% 49747 54.5% 226 0.2% 21704 23.8% 5910 6.5% 63074 69.1% 597 0.7%
Oshmyany 104612 84951 81.2% 6721 6.4% 11064 10.6% 1876 1.8% 81369 77.8% 7056 6.7% 15125 14.5% 1062 1.0%
Pastavy 99907 47917 48.0% 2683 2.7% 49071 49.1% 236 0.2% 50751 50.8% 2769 2.8% 44477 44.5% 1910 1.9%
Švenčionys 136475 68441 50.1% 7654 5.6% 16814 12.3% 43566 31.9% 117524 86.1% 7678 5.6% 1978 1.4% 9295 6.8%
Vilyeyka 131070 59477 45.4% 5934 4.5% 65220 49.8% 439 0.3% 53168 40.6% 6113 4.7% 70664 53.9% 1125 0.9%
Vilnius-Trakai 214472 180546 84.2% 6508 3.0% 9263 4.3% 18155 8.5% 201053 93.7% 6613 3.1% 2988 1.4% 3818 1.8%
Vilnius City 195071 128628 65.9% 54596 28.0% 9109 4.7% 2738 1.4% 125999 64.6% 55006 28.2% 9598 4.9% 4468 2.3%
Brest 215927 50248 23.3% 32089 14.9% 115323 53.4% 18267 8.5% 43020 19.9% 32280 14.9% 135911 62.9% 4716 2.2%
Drahichyn 97040 6844 7.1% 6947 7.2% 81557 84.0% 1692 1.7% 5699 5.9% 6981 7.2% 83147 85.7% 1213 1.3%
Kamin-Kashyrskyi 94988 6692 7.0% 4014 4.2% 75699 79.7% 8583 9.0% 6026 6.3% 4037 4.3% 83113 87.5% 1812 1.9%
Kobryn 113972 10040 8.8% 10489 9.2% 71435 62.7% 22008 19.3% 8973 7.9% 10527 9.2% 93426 82.0% 1046 0.9%
Kosava 83696 8456 10.1% 6300 7.5% 68769 82.2% 171 0.2% 7810 9.3% 6333 7.6% 68941 82.4% 612 0.7%
Luninyets 108663 16535 15.2% 7811 7.2% 83769 77.1% 548 0.5% 13754 12.7% 8072 7.4% 85728 78.9% 1109 1.0%
Pinsk 184305 29077 15.8% 25088 13.6% 128787 69.9% 1353 0.7% 16465 8.9% 25385 13.8% 140022 76.0% 2433 1.3%
Pruzhany 108583 17762 16.4% 9419 8.7% 81032 74.6% 370 0.3% 16311 15.0% 9463 8.7% 82015 75.5% 794 0.7%
Stolin 124765 18452 14.8% 10809 8.7% 92253 73.9% 3251 2.6% 6893 5.5% 10910 8.7% 105280 84.4% 1682 1.3%
Grodno 213105 101089 47.4% 35354 16.6% 69832 32.8% 6830 3.2% 89122 41.8% 35693 16.7% 87205 40.9% 1085 0.5%
Volkovysk 171327 83111 48.5% 13082 7.6% 74823 43.7% 311 0.2% 76373 44.6% 13283 7.8% 80621 47.1% 1050 0.6%
North-East Poland 3849457 1663888 43.2% 347255 9.0% 1696567 44.1% 141747 3.7% 1512478 39.3% 356632 9.3% 1915317 49.7% 65030 1.7%

Largest cities and towns

In 1931, according to the Polish National Census, the ten largest cities in Polish Eastern Borderlands were: Lwów (pop. 312,200), Wilno (pop. 195,100), Stanisławów (pop. 60,000), Grodno (pop. 49,700), Brześć nad Bugiem (pop. 48,400), Borysław (pop. 41,500), Równe (pop. 40,600), Tarnopol (pop. 35,600), Łuck (pop. 35,600) and Kołomyja (pop. 33,800).

In addition, Daugavpils (pop. 43,200 in 1930) in inter-war Latvia was also a major Polish community with 21% ethnic Polish inhabitants.

Ethnolinguistic structure (mother tongue) of the population in 24 largest cities and towns in Kresy according to the censuses of 1931[34] and 1930[48]
City Pop. Polish Yiddish & Hebrew German Ukrainian & Ruthenian Belarusian Russian Lithuanian Other Today part of:
Lwów 312,231 63.5% (198,212) 24.1% (75,316) 0.8% (2,448) 11.3% (35,137) 0% (24) 0.1% (462) 0% (6) 0.2% (626)  Ukraine
Wilno 195,071 65.9% (128,628) 28% (54,596) 0.3% (561) 0.1% (213) 0.9% (1,737) 3.8% (7,372) 0.8% (1,579) 0.2% (385)  Lithuania
Stanisławów 59,960 43.7% (26,187) 38.3% (22,944) 2.2% (1,332) 15.6% (9,357) 0% (3) 0.1% (50) 0% (1) 0.1% (86)  Ukraine
Grodno 49,669 47.2% (23,458) 42.1% (20,931) 0.2% (99) 0.2% (83) 2.5% (1,261) 7.5% (3,730) 0% (22) 0.2% (85)  Belarus
Brześć 48,385 42.6% (20,595) 44.1% (21,315) 0% (24) 0.8% (393) 7.1% (3,434) 5.3% (2,575) 0% (1) 0.1% (48)  Belarus
Daugavpils 43,226 20.8% (9,007) 26.9% (11,636) - - 2.3% (1,006) 19.5% (8,425) - 30.4% (13,152)  Latvia
Borysław 41,496 55.3% (22,967) 25.4% (10,538) 0.5% (209) 18.5% (7,686) 0% (4) 0.1% (37) 0% (2) 0.1% (53)  Ukraine
Równe 40,612 27.5% (11,173) 55.5% (22,557) 0.8% (327) 7.9% (3,194) 0.1% (58) 6.9% (2,792) 0% (4) 1.2% (507)  Ukraine
Tarnopol 35,644 77.7% (27,712) 14% (5,002) 0% (14) 8.1% (2,896) 0% (2) 0% (6) 0% (0) 0% (12)  Ukraine
Łuck 35,554 31.9% (11,326) 48.6% (17,267) 2.3% (813) 9.3% (3,305) 0.1% (36) 6.4% (2,284) 0% (1) 1.5% (522)  Ukraine
Kołomyja 33,788 65% (21,969) 20.1% (6,798) 3.6% (1,220) 11.1% (3,742) 0% (0) 0% (6) 0% (2) 0.2% (51)  Ukraine
Drohobycz 32,261 58.4% (18,840) 24.8% (7,987) 0.4% (120) 16.3% (5,243) 0% (13) 0.1% (21) 0% (0) 0.1% (37)  Ukraine
Pińsk 31,912 23% (7,346) 63.2% (20,181) 0.1% (45) 0.3% (82) 4.3% (1,373) 9% (2,866) 0% (2) 0.1% (17)  Belarus
Stryj 30,491 42.3% (12,897) 31.4% (9,561) 1.6% (501) 24.6% (7,510) 0% (0) 0% (10) 0% (0) 0% (12)  Ukraine
Kowel 27,677 37.2% (10,295) 46.2% (12,786) 0.2% (50) 9% (2,489) 0.1% (27) 7.1% (1,954) 0% (1) 0.3% (75)  Ukraine
Włodzimierz 24,591 39.1% (9,616) 43.1% (10,611) 0.6% (138) 14% (3,446) 0.1% (18) 2.9% (724) 0% (0) 0.2% (38)  Ukraine
Baranowicze 22,818 42.8% (9,758) 41.3% (9,423) 0.1% (25) 0.2% (50) 11.1% (2,537) 4.4% (1,006) 0% (1) 0.1% (18)  Belarus
Sambor 21,923 61.9% (13,575) 24.3% (5,325) 0.1% (28) 13.2% (2,902) 0% (4) 0% (4) 0% (0) 0.4% (85)  Ukraine
Krzemieniec 19,877 15.6% (3,108) 36.4% (7,245) 0.1% (23) 42.4% (8,430) 0% (6) 4.4% (883) 0% (2) 0.9% (180)  Ukraine
Lida 19,326 63.3% (12,239) 32.6% (6,300) 0% (5) 0.1% (28) 2.1% (414) 1.7% (328) 0% (2) 0.1% (10)  Belarus
Czortków 19,038 55.2% (10,504) 25.5% (4,860) 0.1% (11) 19.1% (3,633) 0% (0) 0.1% (17) 0% (0) 0.1% (13)  Ukraine
Brody 17,905 44.9% (8,031) 35% (6,266) 0.2% (37) 19.8% (3,548) 0% (5) 0.1% (9) 0% (0) 0.1% (9)  Ukraine
Słonim 16,251 52% (8,452) 41.1% (6,683) 0.1% (9) 0.3% (45) 4% (656) 2.3% (369) 0% (2) 0.2% (35)  Belarus
Wołkowysk 15,027 49.6% (7,448) 38.8% (5,827) 0% (7) 0.1% (10) 6.9% (1,038) 4.6% (689) 0% (3) 0% (5)  Belarus

Polish minority after World War II

Despite the expulsion of most of ethnic Poles from the Soviet Union between 1944 and 1958, the Soviet census of 1959 still counted around 1.5 million ethnic Poles remaining in the USSR:

Republic of the USSR Ethnic Poles in 1959 census
Belarusian SSR 538,881
Ukrainian SSR 363,297
Lithuanian SSR 230,107
Latvian SSR 59,774
Estonian SSR 2,256
rest of the USSR 185,967
TOTAL 1,380,282

According to a more recent census, there were about 295,000 Poles in Belarus in 2009 (3.1% of the Belarus population).[49]

Notable people

Main article: List of Kresy-born Poles

[disputed – discuss]

A number of influential figures in Polish history were born in the area of kresy (note: the redirected list does not include Poles born in the cities of Lwów (Lviv), and Wilno (Vilnius) - see List of Leopolitans, List of people from Vilnius). The family of former President of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski, allegedly hails from northern Lithuania.[50] The mother of Bogdan Zdrojewski, Minister of Culture and National Heritage is from Boryslav,[51] and the father of former First Lady Jolanta Kwaśniewska was born in Wołyń, where his sister was murdered in 1943 by the Ukrainian nationalists.[52]

Cradle of Polish culture

Map of areas where Polish was used as a primary language in 1916
Map of the Polish population living in Lithuania on the basis of elections to the parliament of Lithuania in 1923, censuses in 1921 and elections to the Polish parliament in 1922

Since some of the most distinguished names of Polish literature and music were born in Kresy, e.g. Mikołaj Rej, Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Karol Szymanowski or Czesław Miłosz, Eastern Borderlands have featured repeatedly in the Polish Literary canon. Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz begins with the Polish language invocation, "O Lithuania, my fatherland, thou art like good health...." Other notable works located in Kresy, are Nad Niemnem, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, With Fire and Sword, Fire in the Steppe. In Communist Poland, all Kresy-related topics, such as Poland's eastern centuries old heritage, including ecclesiastical architecture, country houses and stately homes down to the Massacres of Poles in Wołyń were banned from publication for Soviet propaganda reasons, because these lands now belonged to the Soviet Union. In official documents, people born in the Eastern Borderlands were declared as born in the Soviet Union, and very few Kresy-themed books or films were passed by the state censor at that time.[53] One of the exceptions was the immensely popular comedy trilogy by Sylwester Chęciński (Sami swoi from 1967, Nie ma mocnych from 1974, and Kochaj albo rzuć from 1977). The trilogy tells the story of two quarreling families, who after the end of the Second World War were resettled from current Western Ukraine to Lower Silesia, after Poland was shifted westwards.

After the collapse of the Communist system, the old Kresy returned as a Polish cultural theme in the form of historical polemics. Numerous books and albums were published about the Eastern Borderlands, frequently with original photos from the prewar era. Examples of such publications include:

  • Roman Aftanazy. Dzieje rezydencji na dawnych kresach Rzeczypospolitej. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, 1991–1997. History of Residences in Poland's Former Eastern Borderlands, (1991–1997), listing and describing in a monumental eleven volume work the cultural heritage contained in the myriad estates and grand residences in the once Polish Kresy and Inflanty regions.
  • Kresy in Photos of Henryk Poddębski, published in May 2010 in Lublin, with a foreword by people with a Kresy background - Anna Seniuk, Krzesimir Dębski and Maciej Płażyński[54]
  • The World of Kresy, with numerous photos, postcards and maps[55]
  • Sentimental Journeys. Travel across Kresy with Andrzej Wajda and Daniel Olbrychski[56]
  • The Encyclopedia of Kresy, with 3600 articles, and foreword by another famous person from Kresy, Stanisław Lem.[57] Articles about the Eastern Borderlands frequently appear in Polish newspapers and magazines. The local office of Gazeta Wyborcza in Wrocław in late 2010 began a Kresy Family Album, stories and photos of those who were forced to move from the East.

In the first half of 2011, Rzeczpospolita daily published a series called "The Book of Eastern Borderlands" (Księga kresów wschodnich).[58] The July 2012 issue of the Uważam Rze Historia magazine was dedicated to the Eastern Borderlands and their importance in Polish history and culture.[59]

Present day

Grey: Areas with majority Polish population in modern Lithuania. Red: pre-World War II Polish-Lithuanian border

The territory known to Poles as Kresy is now partitioned off between the states of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Ethnic Poles still live in those areas: in Lithuania, they are the largest ethnic minority in the country (see Poles in Lithuania), in Belarus, they are the second largest ethnic minority in the country after Russians (see Poles in Belarus), and in Ukraine, they officially number 144,130, but some Polish organizations claim that the number of Poles in Ukraine may be as many as 2 million, most of them assimilated.[60] (see Poles in Ukraine). Furthermore, there is a 50,000 Polish minority in Latvia. In Lithuania and Belarus, Poles are more numerous than in Ukraine. This is the result of the Polish population transfers (1944–1946)[61] as well as Massacres of Poles in Volhynia. Those Poles who survived the slaughter begged for the opportunity to emigrate.[19]

Many Polish organizations are active in the former Eastern Borderlands, such as the Association of Poles in Ukraine, Association of Polish Culture of the Lviv Land, the Federation of Polish Organizations in Ukraine, Union of Poles in Belarus, and the Association of Poles in Lithuania. There are Polish sports clubs (Pogoń Lwów, FK Polonia Vilnius), newspapers (Gazeta Lwowska, Kurier Wileński), radio stations (in Lviv and Vilnius), many theatres, schools, choirs and folk ensembles. Poles living in Kresy are helped by a government-sponsored organization Fundacja Pomoc Polakom na Wschodzie, and by other organizations, such as the Association of Help of Poles in the East Kresy (see also Karta Polaka). Money is frequently collected to help those Poles who live in Kresy, and there are several annual events, such as "Christmas Package for a Polish Veteran in Kresy", and "Summer with Poland", sponsored by Association "Polish Community", in which Polish children from Kresy are invited to visit Poland.[62] Polish language handbooks and films, as well as medicines and clothes are collected and sent to Kresy. Books are most often sent to Polish schools which exist there — for example, in December 2010, University of Wrocław organized an event called "Become a Polish Santa Claus and Give a Book to a Polish Child in Kresy".[63] Polish churches and cemeteries (such as Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów) are renovated with money from Poland. For example, in Nysa, money is collected to renovate the Roman Catholic church in Łopatyn near Lviv,[64] while residents of Oława collect funds to renovate the church in Sasiv, also in the area of Lviv.[65] Also, physicians from Kraków's organization Doctors of Hope regularly visit Eastern Borderlands, and the Polish Ministry of Education runs a special program, which sends Polish teachers to the former Soviet Union. In 2007, more than 700 teachers worked in the East, most of them in Kresy.[66] Studio East of Polish TV Wrocław organizes an event called "Save your grandfather's tomb from oblivion" (Mogiłę pradziada ocal od zapomnienia), during which students from Lower Silesia visit Western Ukraine, to clean Polish cemeteries there. In July 2011, about 150 students cleaned 16 cemeteries in the areas of Lviv, Ternopil, Podolia and Pokuttya.[67]

Despite wars and ethnic cleansing many treasures of Polish culture still remain in the East. In Vilnius, there is the Wróblewski Library, with 160,000 volumes and 30,000 manuscripts, which now belong to the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. In Lviv, there is the Ossolineum, one of the most important Polish culture centres. Adolf Juzwenko, current president of Wrocław's office of the Ossolineum, says that in 1945, there was a mass public campaign in Poland, aimed at transporting the whole Ossolineum to Wrocław. It succeeded in recovering only 200,000 volumes, as the Soviets decided that the bulk of the library had to remain in Lviv.[68]

In contemporary Poland

% of Kresy Poles in modern Poland by voivodeship

Even though Poland lost its Eastern Borderlands in the aftermath of World War II, Poles connected with the Kresy still have some affection for those lands. Since Poles from current Western Ukraine mostly moved to Silesia. The cities of Wrocław and Gliwice are regarded as miasta lwowskie (cities of Lwów affinity), while Szczecin, Gdańsk and Olsztyn are regarded as miasta wileńskie (cities of Wilno affinity).[69] Lwów's Ossolineum Foundation, its collections and famous library are now located in Wrocław. Polish academics from Lwów established the Polish University of Wrocław (taking over from the old German University of Breslau) and Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice. At the same time, Polish academics from Vilnius founded Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (even though Toruń belonged to Poland before the outbreak of World War II before 1939).

There are numerous Kresy-oriented organizations, with the largest one, World Congress of Kresy Inhabitants (Światowy Kongres Kresowian), located in Bytom, and branches scattered across Poland, and abroad. The Congress organizes annual World Convention and Pilgrimage of Kresy Inhabitants to Jasna Góra Monastery.[70]

Other important Kresy organizations, active in contemporary Poland, include:

  • Polskie Towarzystwo Miłośników Miasta Krzemieńca i Ziemi Krzemienieckiej (Polish Association of Lovers of Krzemieniec and Krzemieniec Land) from Poznań.
  • Stowarzyszenie Kresowe "Podkamień" (Kresy Association "Podkamien") from Wołów,
  • Stowarzyszenie Odra-Niemen (Association Odra - Niemen) from Wrocław,
  • Stowarzyszenie Przyjaciół Ziemi Drohobyckiej (Association of Friends of Drohobycz Land) from Legnica,
  • Stowarzyszenie Rodzin Osadników Wojskowych i Cywilnych Kresów Wschodnich (Association of Families of Osadniks of Eastern Borderlands) from Warsaw,
  • Towarzystwo Miłośników Kultury Kresowej (Association of Friends of Kresy Culture) from Wrocław,
  • Towarzystwo Miłośników Wołynia i Polesia (Association of Lovers of Wołyn and Polesie) from Warsaw,
  • Towarzystwo Miłośników Lwowa i Kresów Południowo-Wschodnich (Association of Lovers of Lwów and Southeastern Kresy) from Wrocław, with branches in Brzeg, Bydgoszcz, Bytom, Chełm, Gdańsk, Jelenia Góra, Kłodzko, Kraków, Leszno, Lublin, Poznań, Szczecinek, Świdwin, Warszawa, Węgliniec and Zabrze,
  • Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Grodna i Wilna (Association of Friends of Grodno and Wilno), with branches in Białystok, Ełk, Gdańsk, Giżycko, Lublin, Łódź, Ostrołęka, Stargard Szczeciński, Warszawa, Węgorzewo, Wrocław,
  • Związek Sybirakow (Association of Sybiraks) from Warsaw, with branches scattered across Poland and abroad.
the Skirmunt estate, Moładaŭ, by Napoleon Orda 1875

Every year, in the Masurian town of Mrągowo, there is a Festiwal Kultury Kresowej (Festival of Kresy Culture), sponsored among others by the Senate of the Republic of Poland and the Minister of Culture, with the patronage of the First Lady. The Festival is broadcast by TVP2 and TVP Polonia, and in 2011 it was organized for the 17th time. Among participants of the 2011 Festival, there were such artists, as Folk Ensemble Mozyrzanka from Mozyr, Children and Youth Band Tęcza from Minsk, Folk Band Kresowianka from Ivyanets, Polish Academic Choir Zgoda from Brest, Instrumental Band Biedronki from Minsk, Vocal Duo Wspólna wędrówka from Minsk, Children's Polonia Ensemble Dolinianka from Stara Huta (Ukraine), Ensemble Fujareczka from Sambir, Ensemble Boryslawiacy from Boryslav, Ensemble Niebo do Wynajecia from Stralhivci (Ukraine), Polish Dance and Song Ensemble Wilenka from Vilnius, Dance and Song Band Troczenie from Trakai, Band Wesołe Wilno from Vilnius, Song and Dance Ensemble Kotwica from Kaunas, and Folk and Polish Folklore Dance and Song Ensemble Syberyjski Krakowiak from Abakan in Siberia.[71]

Other notable Kresy-oriented festivals are:

In Lubaczów is a Museum of Kresy, and there is a project, supported by local government, to create a Museum of Eastern Borderlands in Wrocław, the city where a number of Poles from Kresy settled after World War II.[77] Numerous photo albums and books, depicting cities, towns and landscapes of Kresy are published every year in Poland. In Chełm, there is Kresy Bicycle Marathon, Polish Radio Białystok every week broadcasts Kresy Magazine, dedicated to the history and present times of the Eastern Borderlands. Every Sunday, Polish Radio Katowice broadcasts a program based on famous prewar Lwów's Merry Wave, every Tuesday, Polish Radio Rzeszów broadcasts a program Kresy Landscapes. In Wrocław, the Association of Remembrance of Victims of Ukrainian Nationalists publishes Na Rubieży (On the Border) magazine. Among best known Kresy activists of contemporary Poland are Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, and Dr. Tadeusz Kukiz, father of popular singer Paweł Kukiz. Since 2007, annual medals Heritage of Eastern Borderlands are awarded in Wrocław. The 2011 recipient was emeritus Archbishop of Wrocław, Henryk Gulbinowicz.[78] Participants of annual Katyń Motorcycle Raid (Motocyklowy Rajd Katyński) always visit Polish centers in Kresy, giving presents to children, and meeting local Poles.[79]

The program of 2011 Days of Kresy Culture (October 22–23) in Brzeg covered such events, as: Kresy themed cabaret, promotion of Kresy books, Eastern Borderlands cuisine, mass in a local church, meetings with Kresy activists and scholars, and theatre shows of Brzeg's Garrison Club as well as Lwów Eaglets Middle School number 3 in Brzeg. Organizers of the festival assured that for the two days Brzeg would turn into the "capital of interwar Polish Kresy".[80]

In January, February and March 2012, Centre for Public Opinion Research did a survey, asking Poles about their ties to Kresy. It turned out that almost 15% of the population of Poland (4,3 - 4,6 million people) declared that they either were born in the Kresy, or have a parent or a grandparent from that region. The number of Kresowiacy is high in northern and western Poland – as many as 51% of inhabitants of Lubusz Voivodeship, and 47% of inhabitants of Lower Silesian Voivodeship stated that their family has ties to the Kresy. Furthermore, Kresowiacy now make 30% of the population of Opole Voivodeship, 25% of the population of West Pomeranian Voivodeship, and 18% of the population of Warmian–Masurian Voivodeship.[81]

Polish regional dialects

Since Poles have lived in Kresy for hundreds of years, two groups of Kresy Polish dialects emerged: the northern (dialekt północnokresowy), and the southern (dialekt południowokresowy).[82] Both dialects have been influenced either by Ukrainian, Belarusian or by Lithuanian. To Polish speakers in Poland, Kresy dialects are easy to distinguish, as their pronunciation and intonation are markedly different from standard Polish.[83] Before World War II, the Kresy provinces were part of Poland, and both dialects were in common usage, spoken by millions of ethnic Poles. After the war and Soviet annexation of Kresy, however, the majority of ethnic Poles were deported westward, resulting in a severe decline in the number of native speakers. The northern Kresy dialect is still used along the Lithuanian-Belarusian border, where Poles still live in large numbers, but the southern Kresy dialect is endangered, as Poles in western Ukraine do not form a majority of the population in any district. Particularly notable among the Kresy dialects is the Lwów dialect which emerged early in the 19th century and was spoken in the city gaining much recognition in the 1920s and 1930s, partly due to the countrywide popularity of numerous Kresy-born and trained actors and comedians whose native speech it was (see also: Dialects of the Polish language).

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Includes German and Czech, etc.
  2. ^ Includes Protestants, Old Believers, etc.
  3. ^ Includes Lithuanian and Ukrainian, etc.
  4. ^ Includes Old Believers, Protestants, etc.

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Bibliography

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