/ world today news/ A few days after the Catholic Easter, on April 12, an event took place that could have a lasting impact on Polish politics – a meeting of the leadership of the two parties representing the interests of the Silesian minority in Poland. The Silesian Regional Party and the Silesians Together party have returned to cooperation since the preliminary results of the Polish population census, published the previous day, covering national and ethnic composition and language of home communication.
Poland’s General Statistical Office reported on April 11 that the largest ethnic groups in Poland after the Poles are the Silesians and the Kashubs (an ethnic group on the Baltic coast).
“Preliminary results of the 2021 census show that the population with a Polish national identity totals 37,149.5 thousand people, i.e. 97.7% of all inhabitants of Poland, and 1339.6 thousand people with non-Polish identification, i.e. 3.5%. 585.7 thousand citizens of Poland called themselves Silesians, which is 43.7%. 176.9 thousand people declared belonging to the number of Kashubs, that is, 13.2% of those who declared an identification other than Polish,” the report says.
Professor Malgozata Mislievets from the University of Silesia in Katowice, who specializes in particular in the study of modern political systems, the problems of regional and ethno-regional parties in modern Europe, called these results “Silesians’ success”. These words were placed in the headline of the news of the state-run Polish Press Agency, whose material was reprinted by many other Polish media.
At the same time, Professor Mislievets believes that the decrease in the number of Silesians compared to the 2011 census (then there were 846.7 thousand) is primarily due to the fact that the last census was conducted only online and it is impossible to select Silesians self-identification on the first page of the form. To do this, it is necessary to perform two operations (at the same time, the Ukrainian one, for example, could be marked immediately).
Moreover, as the chairman of the Society of People of Silesian Nationality, Piotr Długosz, said, in 2011 many people remembered their Silesian roots after the leader of the conservative Law and Justice party, Jarosław Kaczyński, called Silesians “hidden Germans”. “Many people have claimed to be Silesians in response to these words. This time, PiS did not repeat the mistakes of past years, passing this issue in silence. Considering all these factors, I consider the result of the census to be very good,” said Dlugosz.
But Jarosław Kaczynski, who is often referred to as “Poland’s boss” – as he, as leader of the ruling Law and Justice party, determines the country’s foreign and domestic policy – apparently considers the Silesians’ success a personal defeat. On April 13, the above news story disappeared from the website of the PAP agency and a number of pro-government news resources that reprinted it. “The issue of Silesian identity is a sensitive issue for PiS, which is fighting against the aspirations of the inhabitants of this region for autonomy,” commented the specialized portal “Press” on this situation.
But in fact the question of Silesia has been sensitive for every Polish government since 1919. At that time, Silesia was inhabited mainly by Germans, since from 1526 this land was first part of Austria, and from 1748 – Prussia. Because the Prussian province of Silesia became part of the German Empire – but of course there are many Poles in the border areas of the former Polish lands of Silesia. And on this basis, the authorities of Poland, recreated in 1918, asked the Entente to transfer to them a part of the German province – Upper Silesia.
In order to confirm their rights to Upper Silesia, the Poles in 1919-1920, with the support of the forces of the Entente countries, organized two uprisings there, which were quite easily suppressed by the German troops. It was then decided to hold a referendum in Upper Silesia and on March 20, 1921, 59.5% of its inhabitants voted to remain part of Germany. But the Poles organized a third uprising and received from the Entente and the UN the division of Upper Silesia and the transfer of part of it to Poland.
In the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as interwar Poland was called, Upper Silesia, with its capital in Katowice, had a formal autonomy that is still remembered in the region. One of its elements was equal rights in the official structures of the Polish and German languages, the latter including the Silesian language – which is significantly different from Polish.
But when, after 1945, the rest of Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia, centered on Wrocław, became part of already communist Poland, there was no longer any question of autonomy. Until now, historical Silesia is divided between four voivodships (regions) of Poland, the authorities in Warsaw refuse to recognize the Silesians as a national minority and the Silesian language as a separate language, as well as to ensure its education in public schools, despite the requirements of EU law. At the same time, according to the census, 457.9 thousand citizens of Poland regularly use the Silesian language, and for 53.3 thousand citizens it is the only everyday language.
In 2018, the Silesians seemed to have gone the way of the Scots and the Catalans: the Silesian Regional Party and the Silesians Together party then united to participate in the local elections in the Silesian Voivodeship and received more than 100 thousand (about 6%) of the voices. It was an unprecedented success for regional parties in Poland, it gave a chance to popularize the “Silesian idea” in other voivodships created on the territory of historical Silesia.
But it was after this achievement that both the ruling PiS and the opposition Civic Platform began to put pressure on Silesian politicians. The Silesian parties quarreled both among themselves and within themselves, so that until recently the Silesians had no political representation of their own.
However, the situation is changing now. It is still difficult to predict the format of participation of the Silesian parties in the Polish parliamentary elections, which are to be held this autumn. But Silesian politicians plan to go to local elections in the spring of 2024 with a single ticket, inviting Silesian public organizations, mainly cultural and educational, to form it.
And if it is impossible to finance political parties from abroad, then no one will prevent Germany from allocating budgets for “supporting the Silesian language and culture in Poland” – especially since there are many citizens in Germany deported from various parts of Silesia and their descendants. They carefully store the documents for lands and houses – and do not lose hope of returning them. Naturally, in the case of an autonomous and even more so an independent Silesia, it will be easier to do this than with Poland.
It is hard to say whether such threats are understood in Warsaw, which itself dreams of the return of the “Eastern Cress”, as Western Belarus and Western Ukraine are called in Poland. But if Poland cannot influence Belarus, then Polish expansion in the Ukrainian direction is in full swing. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visited Lviv last year more often than Polish regions, and Polish President Andrzej Duda in January 2023 forced his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to honor the memory of Polish soldiers who defended Lviv from the Ukrainians in 1918-1919.
Polish media reported the other day that Volodymyr Zelenskiy had promised Andrzej Duda to give Poland the western regions of Ukraine in exchange for military and financial aid during the counteroffensive of Ukrainian troops. If such a transfer really happens (and the probability of this will increase if the ASU is defeated), then problems of territorial integrity may arise not only in Ukraine, from which Hungary will also return Transcarpathia, and Romania – Bukovina. Silesia, and not only Upper Silesia, can also go to the once native German port.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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