Polish minority in Belarus
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Andżelika Borys, leader of Union of Poles in Belarus
|
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (294.549-700.000 Poles) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Hrodna voblast · Minsk Region | |
| Languages | |
| Belarusian · Polish | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Roman Catholicism, Few Eastern Orthodox Church |
The Polish minority in Belarus numbers officially about 294,549 according to 2009 census. It forms the second largest ethnic minority in the country after the Russians, at 3.1% of the total population. An estimated 180,905 Belarusian Poles live in large agglomerations and 113,644 in smaller settlements, with the number of women exceeding the number of men by about 33,000. Some estimates by Polish non-governmental sources in the U.S. are higher, citing the previous poll held in 1989 under the Soviet authorities with 413,000 Poles recorded.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the emergence of sovereign Republic of Belarus, the situation of the Polish minority has been steadily improving. The politics of Sovietization pursued by decades of indoctrination, went down in history. Poles in Belarus began re-establishing the Polish language schools and their legal right of participating in the religious life. However, the attitude of new authorities to Polish minority are not very consistent. The new laws are insufficient, and the local levels of Belarusian government are largely unwilling to accept the aspirations of their own ethnic Poles, making them into new targets for state-sanctioned intolerance, according to 2005 report by The Economist.
Polish ethnic and cultural presence in modern Belarus are an intricate part of its history. The lands of modern Belarus are the birthplace of Mickiewicz and Domejko among others. The proto-Belarusian language, called Ruthenian or Old Belarusian was protected by law in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and used as local vernacular, while both Polish and Latin languages were the lingua franca of the throne. "As the 16th century drew to a close" – wrote Andrew Savchenko about the local nobles, they had to contend with "an increasingly stark choice: to strengthen their ties with Poland or to suffer disastrous military defeat and subjugation" by the Russian Empire, thus leading to their 'voluntary' "Polonization". Throughout the 19th century, "the mass of unassuming peasants was subjected to 'active' Russification" by the Tsarist authorities including the abolition of the Uniate Church created by the Union of Brest, a uniquely Belarusian institution and the cornerstone of the Belarusian nation.
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Wikipedia