page_title: Polonization
section_title: Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)
hierarchical_section_title: Polonization / Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)
caption_attribution_description: English: Index of Marek Szapiro, a Polish Jew student with Ghetto benche seal 1934 Polski: Indeks Marka Szapiry (1934), studenta Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego narodowości żydowskiej, z ostemplowanym miejscem w getcie ławkowym
context_page_description: Polonization is the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular the Polish language. This was experienced in some historic periods by the non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially under the influence of Poland. With other examples of cultural assimilation, it could either be voluntary or forced and is most visible in the case of territories where the Polish language or culture were dominant or where their adoption could result in increased prestige or social status, as was the case of the nobility of Ruthenia and Lithuania. To a certain extent Polonization was also administratively promoted by the authorities, particularly in the period following World War II.
context_section_description: By the times of Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) much of Poland's previous territory, which were historically mixed Ruthenian and Polish, had Ukrainian and Belorussian majorities. Following the post-World War I rebirth of the Polish statehood, these lands again became disputed but the Poles were more successful than the nascent West Ukrainian People's Republic in the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918. Approximately one third of the new state's population was non-Catholic, including a large number of Russian Jews who immigrated to Poland following a wave of Ukrainian pogroms which continued until 1921. The Jews were entitled by a peace treaty in Riga to choose the country they preferred and several hundred thousand joined the already large Jewish minority of the Polish Second Republic.
  The issue of non-Polish minorities was a subject of intense debate within the Polish leadership. Two ideas of Polish policy clashed at the time: a more tolerant and less assimilationist approach advocated by Józef Piłsudski, and an assimilationist approach advocated by Roman Dmowski and Stanisław Grabski.
  Linguistic assimilation was considered by National Democrats to be a major factor for "unifying the state." For example, Grabski as Polish Minister for Religion and Public Education in 1923 and 1925–1926, wrote that "Poland may be preserved only as a state of Polish people. If it were a state of Poles, Jews, Germans, Rusyns, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Russians, it would lose its independence again"; and that "it is impossible to make a nation out of those who have no 'national self-identification,' who call themselves 'local' (tutejszy)." Grabski also said that "the transformation of the state territory of the Republic into a Polish national territory is a necessary condition of maintaining our frontiers."
  In internal politics, Piłsudski's reign marked a much-needed stabilization and improvement in the situation of ethnic minorities, which formed almost a third of the population of the Second Republic. Piłsudski replaced the National-Democratic "ethnic-assimilation" with a "state-assimilation" policy: citizens were judged by their loyalty to the state, not by their ethnicity. The years 1926–1935 were favourably viewed by many Polish Jews, whose situation improved especially under the cabinet of Piłsudski's appointee Kazimierz Bartel. However a combination of various reasons, from the Great Depression, through the Piłsudski's need for support from parties for the parliament's election to the vicious spiral of terrorist attacks by Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and government pacifications meant that the situation continued to degenerate, despite Piłsudski's efforts.
  However, Polonization also created a new educated class among the non-Polish minorities, a class of intellectuals aware of the importance of schooling, press, literature and theatre, who became instrumental in the development of their own ethnic identities.
caption: 1934 Student ID of Jewish student in Poland with Ghetto bench seal.
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