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The Religious Situation in ‘Eastern Poland’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2024

Donald Attwater
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The annexation by Soviet Russia of certain territory which after 1920 had again been part of the Polish State is now a thing not only accomplished in fact but recognised by those powers strong enough to have a say in the matter. We have heard a great deal about it (and doubtless shall hear more) from the several sides and from various aspects. The only people whose views we have not been able to hear are those most affected, the inhabitants of ‘Eastern Poland ’; the great powers have not asked them to express their choice.

It is not easy to estimate what would have been the result of a free plebiscite (a really free plebiscite would probably have been un attainable in the circumstances). The people east of the Curzon Line are mixed, and accurate statistics of the ethnic elements are not easy to come by. A Polish estimate (quoted by Konovalov in Russo-Polish Relations, Cresset Press), based on the 1931 Polish census, gives a total population of 10¾ millions, of whom 36.4 per cent, were Poles, 40.6 per cent. Ukrainians, 11.8 per cent. Byelorussians, 8.4 per cent. Jews and 2.8 per cent, others. These groups are largely, but not entirely, localised : Byelorussians in the north, Ukrainians in the south, Poles in both; in the provinces of Stanislawow, Volhynia and Polesia, Poles are a minority of under 25 per cent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 26 , Issue 301 , April 1945 , pp. 149 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © 1945 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The plebiscite ‘ carried out on a broad democratic basis ‘ by the occupying Russians in 1939 can in the circumstances hardly be accepted as an unconstrained and considered expression of the people's desire.

2 ‘ White Russians,’ but not as such anything to do with the ‘ white ‘ Russians who opposed the ‘ reds.’ Their official Polish label is ‘ White Ruthenians.'

3 Hence a small minority of Catholic Byelorussians to-day. The present Catholic Ukrainians are in Eastern Galicia, which in the partition passed, not to Russia, but to Austria.