Peterski
10-31-2017, 09:14 PM
fails to include Poles from Vilnius region? Lol.
Yeah that is weird. And these Poles even proclaimed autonomy in 1991:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_National-Territorial_Region
There are still lots of Poles in Lithuania and Belarus, even though most of them were deported after WW2:
About the resettlement of Poles from Lithuania and Belarus:
Today at least 15% of citizens of Poland have ancestry from former Kresy, from what is now Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, Latvia and Russia. Here is a Polish thread about Kresowiaks in various regions:
http://www.historycy.org/index.php?showtopic=153392&hl=
In English: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.historycy.org%2Findex.php%3Fsho wtopic%3D153392%26hl%3D
There are also a lot of ethnic Poles who still live in Belarus and Lithuania, because only around 1/2 of Poles were deported from those areas to Poland between 1944 and 1959 (from Ukraine a higher percent):
A comparison of the situation of Polish minority in Lithuania and Lithuanian minority in Poland:
http://s7.postimg.org/4v7wtmasr/PL_in_LT_LT_in_PL.png
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3JiS-6kFG4
But despite such discrimination, Polish national identity in Lithuania is only growing stronger:
http://s15.postimg.org/aq3276p2j/AWPL.png
Soviet 1959 census (already after the post-war expulsion of around 1/2 of local Poles):
http://images70.fotosik.pl/207/d393f526745778ae.jpg
http://s8.postimg.org/4xhxjah7p/Belarus_Changes.png
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfg4Xo6zpDM
Ethnic & religious structure of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1789 (before the 2nd Partition):
Total population ------- ca. 3,85 million
Religious structure:
Uniates -------------- 39% (1,5 million)
Roman Catholics ---- 38% (1,47 million)
Jews ----------------- 10% (0,385 million)
Orthodoxes ---------- 7% (0,25 million)
Old Believers -------- 3,6% (0,14 million)
Protestants ---------- 1,5% (0,06 million)
Muslims & Karaites - 1,0% (0,04 million)
Ethnic structure:
Belarusians --------- 37% (1,42 million)
Poles ---------------- 26% (1,01 million)
Lithuanians --------- 20% (0,77 million)
Jews ---------------- 10% (0,385 million)
Russians ------------ 3,6% (0,14 million)
others* ------------- 3,4% (0,13 million)
*Mostly Germans, Karaites and Latvians.
In areas lost by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Russia in 1772 (First Partition) there were 1,2 million people and 82% of them were Belarusians (3,4% were Russians).
Another estimate says that Lithuanians were almost 35% of the population of the Grand Duchy in 1790 (around 155,000 Lithuanian households out of 451,132 households in total), and less than 25% before 1772 (when mostly ethnically Belarusian lands were lost).
In 1790 the nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania inhabited 100 palaces, 494 urban houses, 9331 large manor houses and 13890 rural houses.
====
Sources:
Pages 30-31: https://ngoteka.pl/bitstream/handle/item/280/Pod_wspolnym_niebem-MK-WT.pdf?sequence=1
Pages 262-264: http://zbc.uz.zgora.pl/Content/20013/Przemiany_druk.pdf
====
The number of ethnic Lithuanians in the Russian Empire in 1795 was 818,800 according to V. M. Kabuzan. Vast majority were Roman Catholics. Three decades later - in a book from 1825 - S. Plater wrote that in late 1810s there were 1,080,000 Lithuanians in the Russian Empire and 200,000 Lithuanians in East Prussia. But those in East Prussia were Lutherans, not Catholics.
Official Prussian/German census data shows that the % of Lithuanians in East Prussia was declining:
1825 - 139,268 (12,13% of the total population of East Prussia)
1837 - 148,301 (11,49%)
1848 - 150,580 (10,26%)
1871 - 139,450 (7,65%)
1878 - 131,415 (6,91%)
1890 - 121,345 (6,19% of the total population of East Prussia)
Compare this with ca. 200,000 (18,52%) Prussian Lithuanians in late 1810s according to S. Plater.
====
Ethnic structure of the Russian Empire in 1795:
https://s3.postimg.org/4i1a8rjv7/Russian_pop.png
https://s3.postimg.org/4i1a8rjv7/Russian_pop.png
https://s17.postimg.org/4bwiz8uj3/Kabuzan_1.png
https://s3.postimg.org/gqad6028j/Kabuzan_2.png
Number of Poles deported by railway from Western Belarus after WW2:
1945 – 135,654
1946 – 136,419
1947 – 2,090
=========
1955 – 10,067
1956 – 30,639
1957 – 46,634
1958 – 13,290
Number of Poles deported by railway from Lithuania after WW2:
1945 – 73,042
1946 – 123,443
1947 – 671
=========
1955 – 5,849
1956 – 17,825
1957 – 16,044
1958 – 6,834
In total 274,163 from Western Belarus (areas which on 01.09.1939 belonged to Poland) and 197,156 from Lithuania in first repatriation (1944-1948) as well as 100,630 from Western Belarus and 46,552 from Lithuania in second repatriation (1955-1959).
However, as Polish geographer and historian - Piotr Eberhardt - noticed in article about ethnic Poles from Belarus:
"According to official data 274,2 thousand Poles came from Western Belarus to Poland . But in fact a lot more came. Official data does not include all categories of Polish people who left former eastern Polish territories. During the German occupation many Poles from those Eastern territories were transported to Germany [as compulsory labour workers, prisoners of POW camps, concentration camp inmates, etc.]. They stayed in the West and after WW2 returned directly to Poland within its new borders, not to their former homes. Official data also did not include flights and groups of refugees, people recruited to the Polish Army [including Polish People's Army], as well as those who in 1942 left the Soviet Union with the Army of gen. Anders. After counting all these categories of people we can conclude, that the broadly understood first repatriation from Western Belarus affected over 400 thousand people of Polish nationality, who as the result abandoned forever the territory of Belarus. (…) In further years (1948-1959) remaining Polish population in Belarus experienced considerable natural growth. It was, however, entirely reduced by another repatriation conducted in years 1955-1959, which included around 250,000 [245,501] people permanently leaving the Soviet Union."
What can be added is that official data for first repatriation given above included deportations by railway, in addition to them also deportations by trucks took place – they transported in total 22,815 Poles from the Soviet Union to Poland, but no breakdown is given so we don't know how many of them were from Western Belarus and from Lithuania.
Numbers of Poles deported by railway from Eastern Belarus (pre-1939 Soviet Belarus) are also not included in those figures given above – they are included among Poles deported from „other parts of the Soviet Union”, who amounted to 266,833 in period 1944-1949 and 22,260 more in period 1955-1959 (these numbers also include Poles deported from pre-1939 Soviet Ukraine – while numbers of Poles deported from Western Ukraine were 787,674 in 1944-1948 and 76,059 more in 1955-1959).
The real number of Poles who left Western Belarus in 1944-1959 was therefore over 500,000 (including over 400,000 in 1944-1947) and the number of those who left Lithuania over 250,000 up to 300,000 (including over 200,000 up to 250,000 in 1944-1947).
We don't know how many left or were deported from Eastern Belarus – but according to pre-WW2 official Soviet census of 1926 Polish minority in Soviet Belarus numbered around 100 thousand people at that time (97,500). Add to this natural increase until WW2, and the number was much higher in the 1930s. Another question is how many of them survived Soviet pre-war persecutions (see the Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937 - 1938) and then WW2. Anyway - according to 1959 census Eastern Belarus had a smaller number of Poles (see below).
Official data for number of Poles deported by railway and trucks – as already explained above - is not the full picture because apart from repatriation there were other ways how Poles from Kresy migrated to Poland after WW2. Already until 01.01.1947 almost 560,000 people who came through ways other than repatriation (including refugees, demobilized soldiers, those who before WW2 lived east of the Curzon Line but who after WW2 came from camps & forced labour in Germany and settled west of the CL, etc.). In total on 1 January 1947 there were 2,05 million „Soviet Poles” in new borders of Poland. And in December 1950 - 2,2 million „Soviet Poles”.
On 1 January 1947 out of those 2,05 million „Soviet Poles” – 1,7 million lived in former German territories (of them around 1,24 million deported by railway and trucks, 190 thousand who came from the west – for example from forced labour in Germany, POW camps, etc. - 200 thousand who were refugees from the Volhynian-Galician Genocide and similar events and around 70 thousand demobilized soldiers, mostly from the Polish People's Army) and 0,35 million in other parts of Poland (here we can estimate that no more than 0,25 million were officially deported and the rest of them were forced labourers returning from Germany, refugees, POWs, etc.).
In December 1950 out of 2,2 million „Soviet Poles” around 1,6 million lived in former German territories (Western Poland) and around 0,6 million in other parts of new Communist Poland (Central Poland). So proportion of those living in Central Poland increased).
Despite all those events – wartime deaths and post-war deportations, flights, emigration, evacuations, etc. of hundreds of thousands of Poles from former Polish territories, after WW2 belonging to the Soviet Union – the official Soviet census of 1959 still counted 1,380,282 Poles in the Soviet Union, with 768,988 of them (so over half of the total number) in Belarusian SSR and Lithuanian SSR.
Even if we go by this official Soviet 1959 census data, which – most probably – underestimated the number of remaining Polish minority in the Soviet Union, the following area had absolute Polish majority, and was still ethnically Polish in 1959, even though less so than before WW2:
Areas still inhabited by ethnic Polish majority as of 1959, after removal of most of ethnic Polish population:
http://images70.fotosik.pl/207/d393f526745778ae.jpg
According to official Soviet Union's 1959 census there were still 538,881 Poles in Belarus, of whom 454,348 (84,3%) were rural population – as flights and deportations of 1944-1959 as well as previous wartime mortality affected urban Poles more than rural Poles.
Number of Poles in Belarus by Oblast according to 1959 census:
In provinces located entirely in what used to be Polish part of Belarus before WW2:
Grodno Oblast – 332,300
Brest Oblast – 42,100
In provinces located mostly in former Polish territory, but partially in Soviet Belarus:
Vitebsk Oblast – 83,800
Minsk Oblast – 64,400
And in provinces located entirely in what was Soviet Belarus before WW2:
Gomel Oblast – 7,200
City Minsk – 5,600
Mogilev Oblast – 3,500
Districts of North-Western Belarus with highest percentages (between 90% and 30%) of Poles according to 1959 census (and there were many more districts in 1959 with between 15% and 30% Poles, but I won't list them here. Many of them had over 50% Poles in 1938):
Radun - 25,842 Poles (87,4%) and 1,705 Belarusians
Voranava – 16,117 Poles (86,8%) and 1,342 Belarusians
Ivyanets – 27,529 Poles (75,6%) and 7,830 Belarusians
Svir – 20,898 Poles (72,0%) and 6,320 Belarusians
Astravyets – 17,966 Poles (65,5%) and 6,831 Belarusians
Lida – 40,117 Poles (55,1%) and 22,048 Belarusians
Vidzy – 9,468 Poles (51,2%) and 5,176 Belarusians
Shchuchyn – 19,032 Poles (50,4%) and 14,781 Belarusians
Vasilishki – 16,496 Poles (49,9%) and 15,648 Belarusians
=================
Pastavy – 18,912 Poles (43,3%) and 17,173 Belarusians
Braslaw – 14,873 Poles (40,6%) and 14,482 Belarusians
=================
Dunilovichi – 13,857 Poles (47,0%) and 14,024 Belarusians
Ivye – 12,877 Poles (41,5%) and 16,552 Belarusians
Grodno – 50,159 Poles (38,1%) and 51,570 Belarusians
Valozhyn – 14,063 Poles (37,8%) and 21,652 Belarusians
Vawkavysk – 21,924 Poles (35,4%) and 32,140 Belarusians
Zelva – 11,175 Poles (29,1%) and 26,001 Belarusians
In total according to 1959 census these 17 districts had 713,988 inhabitants, including 351,305 Poles, 275,275 Belarusians, 66,537 Russians and 20,871 people of other nationalities (including the Romani people and others brought in to replace expelled Poles).
=================================================
According to official Soviet Union's 1959 census there were still 230,107 Poles in Lithuania of whom 161,523 (70,2%) were rural population - as flights and deportations of 1944-1959 as well as previous wartime mortality affected urban Poles more than rural Poles.
Districts with highest percentages of Poles according to 1959 census:
City Vilnius – 47,226 Poles (20,0%) and 79,363 Lithuanians (33,6%)
=================
Vilnius – 64,467 Poles (80,3%) and 5,546 Lithuanians (6,9%)
Salcininkai – 37,182 Poles (85,2%) and 2,918 Lithuanians (6,7%)
=================
Trakai (+ Elektrenai) – 24,332 Poles (43,4%) and 5,103 Lithuanians (9,1%)
Svencionys – 18,158 Poles (45,7%) and 5,901 Lithuanians (14,9%)
In total according to 1959 census these 6 districts had over 455,000 inhabitants, including 191,365 Poles, 98,831 Lithuanians and about 165,000 other people (mostly Russian immigrants, as well as for example the Romani and others brought in to replace expelled Poles).
====================================
In total those 23 districts of Western Belarus and Lithuania according to 1959 census had ca. 1,170,000 inhabitants including - according to official data - ca. 543,000 Poles (or over 70% of all ethnic Poles living in these two Soviet republics at that time), despite previous ethnic cleansing.
All of Belarus and Lithuania had 768,988 ethnic Poles according to official 1959 data - including 615,871 rural people (80,1% of the total) and 153,117 urban people (19,9% of the total) - even though before WW2 ethnic Poles in Belarus and Lithuania were more urbanized than all other ethnic groups living in these regions, with the only exception of Jews. That was because post-war deportations and wartime losses affected ethnic Poles in cities (such as for example Vilnius and Grodno) more heavily than ethnic Poles in the countryside. Due to that expulsion of Poles from cities (and from villages as well, only to a lesser extent) and replacement by other ethnic groups, in 1959 Poles were actually the least urbanized (only 19,9%) of all ethnic groups in Belarus and Lithuania (the opposite of the 1938 situation, when Poles were the 2nd most urbanized group after Jews).
Soviet authorities left a larger % of rural Poles, hoping that Polish peasants were easier to De-Polonize (Lithuanize/Russify/Belarusify).
On the other hand a larger % of urban Poles - with a higher level of national consciousness (sense of Polishness) - got deported.
=========================================
Despite this, modern studies carried out recently by the Grodno University and by the Minsk University show that vast majority of Roman Catholics in Belarus identify as Poles and an even larger percent declare Polish ancestry (i.e. some no longer identify as fully Poles, but still declare Polish ancestry).
For research carried out by Grodno University, which shows that 83,3% of Roman Catholics in the Grodno Oblast identify as fully Poles (the rest of Roman Catholics there identify as both Poles and Belarusians or just Belarusians) and even more - because 95% - declare Polish ancestry (including also mixed Polish-Belarusian ancestry) check this source:
https://i.imgur.com/l0WhAId.png
In another survey from 2003, as many as 82% of Catholics in Belarus declared that they have Polish ancestry, including 66% with fully Polish ancestry and 16% from mixed families. In the westernmost Diocese of Grodno 95% of Catholics declared Polish ancestry, while in the easternmost Archdiocese of Minsk-Mogilev still as many as 73%.
This 2003 survey found out that 80% of Catholics in the Diocese of Grodno identify as fully Poles - so slightly less than according to that 2000 research by the University of Grodno (which showed 83,3%). In other dioceses percentages of Roman Catholics who identify as fully Polish are 70% in the Diocese of Pinsk, 57% in the Diocese of Vitebsk and just 35% in the Archdiocese of Minsk-Mogilev (compared to 73% who declared Polish ancestry in the Archdiocese of Minsk-Mogilev).
In the nationwide scale (entire Belarus on average), 63% of Roman Catholics identify as fully Poles (2003 data), 66% declare fully Polish ancestry, and 16% declare mixed Polish-Belarusian or Polish-other ancestry (in total 82% declare Polish ancestry). Regional breakdowns above.
There are also a lot of Non-Catholic (Atheist, Orthodox, etc.) Poles in Belarus, because in some regions % of Poles is higher than % of Catholics.
Belarusians are slowly becoming Russians.
In 1959 census only 6,8% of people who declared Belarusian ethnicity declared that Russian is their native language.
By comparison, in 1999 census only 41,3% of people who declare Belarusian ethnicity declared that they speak Belarusian in daily life (among urban population who declare Belarusian ethnicity, only 23% spoke Belarusian in daily life in 1999).
=================================================
Below some data illustrating the effects of post-war deportations on ethnic Polish population in the Grodno-Vilna areas of Belarus:
This data is from an article written (in Polish) by a Belarusian from Grodno - Siarhiej Tokć:
http://kamunikat.fontel.net/pdf/bzh/22/03.pdf
Examples from three raions (counties) - Wasiliszki, Wołkowysk and Skidel. If we count these three counties altogether then their total population in 1945-1947 (Skidel in 1947, the other two counties in 1945) was - according to Belarusian data - 124.451 including 60.615 Poles, 61.295 Belarusians, 1.407 Russians and 1.134 others. By 1959 their population was 136.382 including 43.356 Poles, 80.307 Belarusians, 9.637 Russians and 3.082 others. So as we can see the percentage of Russians among the population increased from 1.13% in 1945-1947 to 7.07% in 1959.
In 1945 Poles were an absolute majority in Wasiliszki and Wołkowysk. By 1959 they were still a relative majority (49.2%) only in Wasiliszki:
https://i.imgur.com/RQV1rdk.png
National-linguistic and religious structure of North-East Poland in 1931 census (but it is possible that the number of Non-Catholic Poles was inflated, as national identity of those people was "uncertain"):
http://s4.postimg.org/qisk5fc1p/Kresy1.png
http://s17.postimg.org/g3mfdsxbj/Kresy2.png
[B]Number of Poles in former Kresy according to official census data:
1a+b = North-East Poland ------ 1,663,888 Poles (1931 Polish census)
2 = South-East Poland ---------- 2,249,703 Poles (1931 Polish census)
1.2 = Soviet Belarus ------------ 97,498 Poles (1926 Soviet census)
2.2 = Soviet Ukraine ------------ 476,435 Poles (1926 Soviet census)
1.3 = Lithuania ------------------ 202,026 Poles (1923 elections results)
1.4 = Latvia --------------------- 59,374 Poles (1930 Latvian census)
3 = Soviet Russia --------------- 197,827 Poles (1926 Soviet census)
TOTAL ---------------------------- 5 million people (1926-1931 data)
http://s1.postimg.org/c0z5vvxjj/Kresy.png
Ethnic Poles around 1900-1920:
https://s3.postimg.org/9w5ybn10x/The_Poles_Map.png
https://s3.postimg.org/9w5ybn10x/The_Poles_Map.png
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.3 Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.