Polish Autonomous District

Polish Autonomous Districts (called in Russian "полрайоны", polrajony, an abbreviation for "польские районы", "Polish raions") were national raions in the interbellum period possessing some form of a national autonomy in the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics of the USSR. They were created in an attempt to live up to the postulate of Leninism about the rights of nations for self-determination. Also, creation of these regions served one of purposes of the Bolsheviks - to export the revolution, since after their defeat in the Polish-Soviet War, the Soviets did not give up their idea of creating a Soviet Republic in Poland. Polish Autonomous Districts were supposed to be the origin of future Soviet Poland, however, they both were disbanded in mid-1930s, and their populations expelled to Kazakhstan, with many of them killed during the Great Purge.

The possibility of granting autonomy to Polish-populated areas of the Soviet Union was discussed during the Polish-Soviet war by key persons involved in the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee. However, there were no plans to create whole districts; autonomy would be granted to separate villages. In 1925 it was decided that a district would be created in Soviet Ukraine, where, according to the 1926 survey, 476,435 Poles lived. This was 1.6% of the Ukrainian population, but in the Zhitomir Oblast, their number reached 10%. Among persons who supported the district were Soviet communists of Polish origin, such as Feliks Kon, Julian Marchlewski, Feliks Dzierżyński and Tomasz Dąbal. Thus Marchlewszczyzna was created, and later Dzierżyńszczyzna.

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