Przesiedlenia z Białoruskiej Socjalistycznej Republiki Radzieckiej do Polski w latach 1944-1946. Wybór źródeł
Journal Title: Przegląd Wschodni - Year 2014, Vol 13, Issue 49
Abstract
Mass migrations, which Polish lands became the scene of in the 1940s, are a relatively intensively researched problem. Attention is not only focused on the fate of the Polish population, but also other national ethnic groups in the area. A part of this extensive research field is the resettlements that took place from the Eastern lands of the Second Polish Republic, annexed by the Soviet Union. On 9 and 11 September 1944, the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) along with the governments of the Soviet republics of Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania, signed an agreement concerning the resettlement of Poles and Jews (until 1939, Polish citizens) westward and Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lithuanians eastward. These organized migration actions encompassed about two million people on both sides of the border. Officially they were designated evacuations and repatriations. In historiography, in the last few decades, the term “resettlement” has entrenched itself, as it most accurately describes the movement of Poles to the west from their locations up to that point. The state of research on resettlement from behind the then-new eastern border is quite varied. Already during the People’s Republic of Poland, there appeared a certain number of publications to do with migrations and settlement in the new western part of Poland, but the subject of Poles leaving the east belonged to those deemed politically sensitive. The fall of communism created new and more advantageous working conditions for historians as political barriers were removed and many archives were opened up to researchers. This brought with it a clear advance in historiography. The resettlements were part of the contextually wider subject of population processes on the former eastern frontier of the Second Polish Republic in the first half of the 20th century. They also found a place in the field of research on selected parts of former Polish eastern provinces. They were also considered in the basic analysis of ethnic and population changes in what is now Western Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s. A separate area was reserved for Poles resettled from what are now Lithuanian lands. The edition of source materials, which not only contain selected documents from Polish, but also Ukrainian archives, should also be mentioned. The resettlement of the Polish population from Belarus and vice versa, though, has not yet received separate due attention. A major limitation in Polish research conducted until the end of the 20th century was the relatively small number of source materials available. Only during research enquiries carried out by the author at the National Archive of the Republic of Belarus in Minsk, starting in 2001, it turned out that not only did it contain material drafted by the Soviet administration, resettlement apparatus and various party committees, but also a serious of acts created by the main proxy of the Polish government responsible for evacuation of Poles from the BSSR. They were previously unknown and thus unused by scholars. Materials concerning the resettlements can also be found in periphery archives. Close to 535,000 Poles expressed the wish to move to their newly reshaped motherland from what is now Eastern Belarus. This was more or less half the Polish population which inhabited the area before the start of the Second World War. Of those registered, only around 231,000 left Belarus. The question remains why so few left. The answer to this and various other questions can be found in the materials contained in the Belarusian archives. The small selection contained here shows their diversity and informational value, which will be fully utilized and presented in a future historical study.
Authors and Affiliations
Małgorzata Ruchniewicz
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