Perception and preservation of national heritage in historically conditioned regions

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present an author’s proposal to distinguish regions based on the analysis of historical borders (from the last 400 years, mainly the borders crossing Poland in the 19th and the 20th century) and to verify the hypothesis that those historical borders diversify our country in the sphere of perception and preservation of national heritage and in relation to the analysed social indicators. The study contains statistical data on the perception and preservation of national heritage generalised for the elaborated historically conditioned regions from the cyclic, multidimensional Social Cohesion Survey conducted by Statistics Poland in 2015. In addition, data on monuments of the National Heritage Board of Poland and population data based on National Official Register of the Territorial Division of the Country (TERYT) were also taken into account. The largest differences in relation to the country’s average values of the analysed indicators occurred in the western and northern territories of Poland, the Śląskie voivodship area in Poland before the World War II, as well as Galicia and the eastern part of Russian partition within the present borders of Poland — east of the Vistula, Narew and Pisa rivers.