Polish culture in the Interbellum

Polish culture in the interwar period witnessed the rebirth of Polish sovereignty. The nationhood along with its cultural heritage was no longer suppressed by the three foreign partitioners. The cultural development saw the retreat of the 19th century elite cultures of nobility as well as the traditional folk culture, and the rise of a new mass culture integrating Polish society closer to the new intelligentsia educated in the practice of democracy.

Aside from the economic paralysis caused by the century of partitions, one of the most severe consequences of the foreign rule was illiteracy, affecting 33.1% of Poland's citizens in 1921, with the worst situation existing in the former Russian Empire. The territories of the Prussian Partition were most developed, although Poles were also subject to the most ruthless Germanization policies of Kulturkampf and Hakata. Meanwhile, the eastern and southern territories – parts of the former Russian Partition and Austrian Partition – were among the least developed regions in Europe. Even though the level of economic, cultural and political development between the three former zones of occupation differed substantially, over time, the cultural hubs of Warsaw, Kraków, Wilno (modern Vilnius) and Lwów (modern Lviv) raised themselves to the level of vital European cities.

While the term Polish culture refers primarily to the Polish-language culture in Poland, the Second Polish Republic also had numerous vibrant national minorities, most notably Jewish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian and German. It was a multicultural society whose ethno-cultural makeup was shaped over a period of centuries. In 1921 according to the first-ever national census, the Catholic Poles constituted 69.2% of the population, the Ukrainians 14.3%, the Jews 7.8%, the Belarusians 3.9% and the Germans 3.9%. The minorities amounted to 30.8% of the total. The rise of new intelligentsia resulted in the development of a record number of political parties, lobbies and societies. In a dozen or so years the newspaper readership doubled. In 1919, new universities opened in Poznań, Wilno, and Lublin. Universities in Kraków and Lwów were polonized already five years earlier. The Elementary School Teachers Union was formed in 1919. In the first ten years of Poland's redevelopment, the total number of schools increased by almost 10,000 thanks to the official decree on public education. By the time of the Nazi-Soviet invasion of 1939, some 90% of children were in schools across the country, the number limited only by the shortage of qualified staff and lack of adequate locales especially in the villages.

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