Nowogródek Voivodeship (1919–1939) located in the administrative territorial entity Second Polish Republic
Location and area
The voivodeship covered 22,966 km2 (8,867 sq mi). It was located in north-eastern part of the country, bordering Soviet Union to the east, Białystok Voivodeship to the west, Polesie Voivodeship to the south and Wilno Voivodeship to the north. The landscape was flat and heavily wooded, lying within the Neman River basin.Population
Nowogródek Voivodeship consisted of 8 cities, 8 powiats (districts) subdivided further into futory and kolonie, and 89 villages. The Polish census of 1921 data reveals that the voivodeship was inhabited by 800,761 people, and the population density was 35.3 persons per km2. A decade later, the Polish census of 1931 results showed a steady increase in population at 1,057,200 inhabitants, of whom 82% were engaged in agricultural activities.  In 1921, 55% of persons over the age of 10 were illiterate due to repressive policies of the Russian Empire. In the reborn Polish Republic, the number of public schools greatly increased, and the illiteracy dropped to 35% by 1931.The Polish government conducted two official surveys 10 years apart in order to determine the economic and minority status of the country. Both censuses asked respondents for their religious affiliations. The ethnic composition findings have been disputed especially after World War II. The 1921 census in accordance with guidelines of the 1918 League of Nations Minority Treaties, asked about nationality prompting many respondents of different ethnic backgrounds living in Poland, to declare Polish by default. The 1931 census replaced this question with a more specific one regarding the respondents' "mother tongue" which in turn, prompted many respondents to simply call it "local".According to the published and official results of 1931 Polish census, of the 1,057,147 inhabitants of the Nowogródek Voivodeship, 553,859 spoke Polish, 413,466 spoke Belarusian, 69,782 spoke Yiddish, 7,243 spoke Hebrew, 6,794 spoke Russian, and 2,499 spoke Lithuanian. The remainder spoke Ukrainian, Rusyn, German, Czech and others. In percentage points this translates into an estimate of 53% of the population who identified their mother tongue as Polish, 39% as Belarusian, 7% as Yiddish and 1% as Russian. According to assessment by Tadeusz Piotrowski (1998) the census recorded the number of Poles as greater only because the language spoken wasn't defined unambiguously, thus quoting figures adjusted by Jerzy Tomaszewski (1985) as follows: the Nowogródek Voivodeship was home to about 616,000 ethnic Belarusians, or 38% of the total population of Polish lands later annexed by Stalin. The number of ethnic Belarusians (including tutejsi) exceeded the number of ethnic Poles by eight percentage points according to him. Similarly, the Jewish population statistics were allegedly reduced by about 4% in the actual number of dependants. The chairman of the Polish census statistical office, Edward Szturm de Sztrem stated after World War II that the returned forms might have been tampered with by the executive power, but to what extent is not known. Jerzy Tomaszewski categorizes the largest non-Polish component as Belarusian and Ukrainian at 58.37% combined; and 7.85% as Jewish (as quoted by Teichova & Matis).
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