Между дегерманизацией и славянизацией: концепции интеграции Возвращенных польских земель после Второй мировой войны

Abstract

The article examines the integration concepts of “recovered territories” (former German lands) as part of the post-war Poland, proposed by various political forces represented in the Polish Resistance Movement during World War II, in order to determine their influence on the subsequent development of the state, whose borders in 1945 changed radically. This study is based on acts and memoranda of the Polish government in exile, documents of new authorities created by the Communists and their allies in the liberated territory, programs of political and public organizations, press materials, and memoirs. The author pays special attention to the terms “de-Germanisation” and “Slavianisation”, which the program settings of the government in exile in London and its supporters, as well as the plans of the Polish communists, contain. The article traces the gradual transition to a common understanding of the mechanism of future integration processes as “re-Polonisation”. First of all, it was a radical change of population in the newly annexed territories and at the same time the forced deportation of German citizens to Germany and the settlement of the vacated spaces by Poles from the central voivodships of the country and repatriates from the USSR. On the other hand, the local Poles (former German citizens) were not deported. According to the Polish authorities, this autochthonous Polish population was subjected to forced Germanisation for many centuries, they needed to return their native language and Polish appearance in full. As a result, various groups of inhabitants of Polish origin with diverse cultural backgrounds had to transform into a homogeneous ethnocultural community, which was to become part of a single Polish nation. Re-Polonisation also implied a whole range of measures aimed at changing the cultural landscape and national symbols, restoring the former Slavic toponyms, and identifying and consolidating historical and cultural evidence of the Polish past of the new territories in the public consciousness. However, the analysis of the integration concepts of the opposing Polish political movements shows serious differences in the understanding of the term “re-Polonisation”, in the development and application of specific mechanisms for its implementation in the new Polish territories. Polish emigrant circles in London gave priority to the national-cultural aspects of integration, while the left-wing forces finally came to the conclusion that socialist-type transformations would become a universal means of integration for all groups of Polish society. With the victory of the Communists, the latter approach prevailed, which led to the underestimation of many factors and errors in the sphere of the national-cultural policy in the newly annexed lands in the first post-war years.