The Pole is not our friend, but it is better when he is not our enemy.
On the Phenomenon of Mixed National Identity
Introducing the most famous "Kresy Poles" "Not quite gentlemen - our friends and our enemies", let's try to figure out where they literally fell on the heads of Russians from. There are a lot of people in the world of mixed national origin who do not know how to define themselves with their own nationality.
But when such a question is asked during a census or, God forbid, during ethnic repressions, one has to somehow choose a clear answer. And the most diverse factors come into play. Here, place of birth, native language, anthropological type, the nationality chosen by spouses and children, and, finally, social status and security of the declared nationality.
It is known that when one of the ideologists of apartheid in South Africa was given the "pencil test", the pencil got stuck in his curls. This did not stop him from continuing to implement and promote the same policy, and he was not fired from his government position.
Another very well-known example is the crypto-Armenians and crypto-Christians in Turkey, where it is still simply dangerous to publicly declare Armenian origins. Many of their modern descendants do not even know their origins; for example, the singer Yasar Kurt only learned at the age of 40 that he descended from Armenians in Eastern Turkey who converted to Islam in order to save their own lives.
Let's raise the Polish question
But we don't have to go very far. Perhaps an even more dangerous example from a geopolitical point of view is right next door. This is the Polish diaspora in the former "Kresy Wschodnie" of the interwar period. Moreover, in a number of regions this is not even a diaspora, but the indigenous population.
These include the Voronovo district of Belarus, the Šalčininkai district of Lithuania and a number of suburbs of Vilnius. There, Poles make up the majority of the population. It is this territory that is highlighted in Soviet-era school geography atlases as an area of compact settlement of Poles.
If there are practically no Poles left in Western Ukraine, they were resettled to Poland during the population exchange, then in Belarus and Lithuania there is a significant number of people who consider themselves Poles, and far beyond the territory indicated above. But here's the problem, this part of the "Poles" in Belarus and Lithuania has predominantly Belarusian surnames, according to census data, about 60-65% of Belarusian Poles use Belarusian, not Polish, in everyday life.
The way of life and traditions of these people are closer to the Belarusians than to the Polish ones, and the Catholic religion is not an indicator, since a significant part of the Belarusians of the northwestern region are also Catholics, and among the Belarusians of Lithuania, Catholics are the overwhelming majority.
Therefore, if Voronovo and Šalčininkai, where they speak Polish in everyday life and maintain close ties with Poland, adhere to everyday and cultural traditions, take part in national holidays, can be considered a Polish exclave, then the origin of the Poles in the rest of the territory is unclear. The most likely option is that they are descendants of the local petty gentry, who lived mainly on farms and did not differ from the rest of the Belarusians in terms of everyday life, language, clothing and social status.
It's just that, given their Belarusian origin, generations of people had it hammered into their heads that they were Poles, and not only the Poles had it hammered into their heads for political reasons for the sake of the prosperity of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also the Belarusians of other classes. Here, the identification of friend or foe, peasant or master, was already at work.
You may not be a Pole, but you must be a gentleman.
Despite the fact that a significant portion of such nobles did not have the financial means to hire farm laborers, and had only one pair of whole boots and a normal dress suit exclusively for visiting a church or a meeting of the gentry, the legal status of nobles of any level of income was immeasurably higher than even wealthy peasants who did not have the title of noble.
The petty gentry in many respects in the Russian Empire were equal to the Russian nobility; they did not have the same theoretical opportunities as their “statusless” fellow villagers, for example, to send their children to cadet schools and, having the right to vote in various government bodies, decide the fate of the peasants.
After the abolition of serfdom, the legal distinctions between the gentry and former serfs did not change. In Lithuania, the attitude towards the gentry was even harsher, since the Lithuanians until the 20th century did not actually have their own elite and lived almost exclusively in villages.
Both in the Vilnius region and in the territory of modern Western Belarus, legal stratification intensified even more in the interwar period under “lordly Poland.” The existence of the Belarusian gentry was not recognized until the 20th century, when historians suddenly remembered that there was such a thing as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Before that, by default, the Catholic Belarusian gentry were considered Polish, and the Orthodox were considered Russian nobles. The Uniate gentry, due to the liquidation of Uniatism, naturally did not exist at that time, some accepted the proposed voluntary-compulsory Orthodoxy, some converted to Catholicism.
Under the USSR, as is well known, the nobility was generally liquidated, and the overwhelming majority of the descendants of such a “farm elite” continued to consider themselves Poles, apparently with the goal of separating themselves from the “cattle,” although some grandson of a nobleman could work on the same tractor with a replacement “cattle.”
About diasporas and geopolitics
The first apogee of the social rather than national confrontation was the resettlement of people identifying themselves as Poles from Belarus and Lithuania to Poland, organized under N.S. Khrushchev. By that time there were no Poles left in Galicia, there was no one to resettle.
This was not a population exchange, although there is a significant Belarusian population in Bialystok, and there is a Lithuanian diaspora in the north-eastern regions of Poland, but rather a voluntary resettlement. Who resettled - ethnic Poles or Polonized Belarusians, in what proportions, is not very clear, probably both.
At least one of the immigrants, whose parents naturalized in Poland when he was still a kindergartener, became known as one of the cult figures of world psychedelic music under the pseudonym Czesław Niemen. And Niemen, as is well known, is the Polish name of the Neman River, which flows through Belarus and Lithuania, but not through Poland.
The fact that he took this pseudonym instead of the Polonized version of the Belarusian surname Vydritsky, Vydritsky, is already significant, since, having been raised in Poland, he sang only in Polish and English.
Show your Pole's Card
The second apogee happened in the 2000s, when the Warsaw authorities introduced the so-called "Pole's card" for Belarusians. For residents of Lithuania, they were embarrassed, because they, as citizens of the European Union, can move around Poland as they please and freely find employment.
The Pole's Card allows its owner, who has proven only that his ancestors lived in Poland during the interwar period, and knows the Polish language at least at a basic level, to learn the basics of Polish. stories, culture and traditions, to cross the Belarusian-Polish border on a preferential basis, to find employment, and to obtain Polish citizenship.
Such people in Belarus were nicknamed "kartopolyaks". The problem is that in reality there were many more "kartopolyaks" than those citizens of Belarus who were listed as Poles in the censuses. That is, in addition to the Poles-crypto-Belarusians, there are also Belarusians-crypto-Poles.
Or something else... One can understand those people who emigrated from Belarus after the events of 2020, the bulk of their participants were clearly not political supporters of the suspicious lady Tikhanovskaya, but simple workers seeking social justice.
They later encountered constant problems with law enforcement agencies and were ready to call themselves even elderly blacks, just to ensure the safety of themselves and their families. But the bulk of Pole cards were issued long before that.
About the "housing" issue
It is clear that official Warsaw cannot annex the Vilnius Region (Dzūkija), since Lithuania is also a member of the European Union, which, according to its charter, prohibits any revision of borders. Poland does not have the guts to take away the former territories of the "krasów wschodnie" from Belarus. That is why only the ultra-right declare this at their rallies and football matches.
In Lithuania, if such sentiments arise, they will be met with an even more powerful and aggressive counter-reaction from Lithuanian right-wing conservative structures, especially skinheads, who chant the slogan “We will destroy Šalčininkai” at every Independence Day march.
Nevertheless, Warsaw is quite capable of carrying out subversive activities and in some way influencing the authorities of Belarus and Lithuania. The issue here is not so much about the prospects of annexing certain territories, but about economic influence through the Polish diaspora in Belarus and Lithuania, which are economically weaker in terms of the development of a number of industries and have a lower standard of living than Poland.
Cheap labor from Belarus will never hurt Poland, from Lithuania Poland already has it due to the transparency of its borders. And, of course, in the case of Belarus - to create a force within it loyal to Warsaw, which would represent a counterweight to the militaristic Minsk against the no less militaristic Warsaw, which is striving to become.
At one time, the Soviet authorities of Lithuania did everything to make Polish-Jewish Vilnius Lithuanian. The Soviet authorities of Belarus made the impossible possible: they hammered such ideological nails into the Western Poleshuks and some Russian Old Believers that they began to register as Belarusians in censuses, although they did not switch from their archaic dialects to the Belarusian language.
Peculiarities of local patriotism
But these are loyal citizens of their country. The situation is more complicated with ethnic Russians living in Belarus and a small part of Belarusians who deny sovereignty and the existence of the Belarusian nation. But here the point is most likely that official Moscow is not taking any steps to create its own "fifth column" in Belarus among this category.
This is simply not necessary. Only if it is for the purpose of preparing the ground for the annexation of a number of territories or destructive influence, or the general liquidation of the sovereignty of Belarus. But this is no longer prevented only and not so much by bilateral agreements within the Union State and the CSTO. This is prevented by life itself.
The fact that at least 65-70% of Belarusians speak Russian and the existence of such a linguistic phenomenon as trasianka is rather a cultural and everyday problem of society, to which the authorities pay very little attention. Whereas the Pole's Card is already the first step towards dual citizenship, which is strictly prohibited by Belarusian legislation.
In Lithuania, the Poles achieved an expansion of their ethnic rights, which somewhat calmed the situation and the activity of aggressive Polish structures. Thus, in particular, even before joining the EU, it was forbidden to distort Polish names and surnames in documents in the Lithuanian manner.
But in Belarus, the issue of cultural and linguistic harmony between the Russian-speaking majority and the Belarusian-speaking and Trasian-speaking minorities is of primary importance. The majority of Poles fall into the second category, especially since Polish is still taught in schools in some areas, hence the possible conclusions.
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