Poles in the former Soviet Union

The Polish minority in the Soviet Union refers to people of Polish descent who used to reside in the Soviet Union before its 1991 dissolution (in the Autumn of Nations), and who live in post-Soviet, sovereign countries of Europe and Asia as their significant minorities at present time, including Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan among others.

Millions of Poles lived within the Russian Empire following the military Partitions of Poland throughout the 19th century. As Germany took over Polish lands during World War I, many Poles were evacuated or ran away with retreating Russian troops. As the Russian Revolution of 1917 began in Petrograd, followed by the Russian Civil War, the majority of the Polish population saw cooperation with the Bolshevik forces as betrayal and treachery to Polish national interests. Polish writer and philosopher Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz lived through the Russian Revolution while in St. Petersburg. What he saw, had a profound effect on his works, many of which display themes of the horrors of Bolshevism he witnessed. Among the many Polish victims of the revolution was the father of Polish eminent composer Witold Lutosławski, Marian Lutosławski and his brother Józef, murdered in Moscow in 1918 as alleged "counter-revolutionaries".

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