Suwałki Region

Suwałki Region (Polish: Suwalszczyzna, Lithuanian: Suvalkų kraštas) is a small region around the city of Suwałki (known in Lithuanian as Suvalkai) in northeastern Poland near the border with Lithuania. The territory was disputed between Poland and Lithuania after World War I. This dispute was the main cause of the brief Polish-Lithuanian War and the Sejny Uprising. The conflict was later overshadowed by a much larger and more serious Polish-Lithuanian dispute over the Vilnius Region. The Suwałki Region remains a major center of the Lithuanian minority in Poland.

Originally the territory named Suwałki Region was inhabited by Yotvingian Prussian tribes.

After 1815 the Suwałki Region was part of Congress Poland, in turn a part of the Russian Empire. The Suwałki Governorate, which also included part of present-day Lithuania according to a Russian census conducted during the 1880s, was about 58% Lithuanian.

In the wake of World War I, both countries were established as independent states, but their borders were contested. In 1918 the Suwałki Region was claimed by re-established independent Lithuania based on cultural heritage and later 1920 peace treaty with Soviet Russia, but Poland officially insisted on dividing the area along the ethnic lines. In the aftermath the Suwałki Region was left on the Polish side of the border, with a Lithuanian majority in the countryside around the Polish-dominated cities of Sejny (Lithuanian: Seinai) and Puńsk (Lithuanian: Punskas) in the northeastern part of the region.

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