Przemysław Olstowski

Separatism, regionalism and unification in the Second Republic of Poland (1918–1939): Problems of the state and society’s integration after the regaining of independence

The rebuilding of an independent Polish state after the First World War meant, above all, the urgent necessity of unification of three formerly partitioned lands, especially in context of law, economy and administration. This integration process in the Second Republic as a whole, although long and difficult, was successful. Real problems for the state authorities were separatist tendencies and regional antagonisms. The consequences of more than a hundred years of functioning of three partitioned lands within the Prussian (German), Austrian and Russian states resulted in both national and cultural heterogeneity. Interwar Poland was inhabited by a nationally and ethnically diverse population of various faiths. Germans in former Prussian Poland and in Polish part of Upper Silesia had hopes of rejoining the Reich. Ukrainians in south-eastern districts of Poland wanted to win provincial autonomy and –in the future –their own independent state. Moreover, the social and economic consequences of First World War in different regions of Poland, and the reality of the reborn Polish state, created the ground for conflicts, disappointments, and for regional antagonisms, sometimes even evoking separatist moods, especially in the western provinces. The conundrum of national minorities remained unresolved to the end of the Second Polish Republic in 1939. The question of social and national awareness of members of ethnic groups within the Polish society (Kashubians, Silesians, Masurians), like antagonisms between inhabitants of formerly partitioned lands, was a part of the nation-creating process and integration of the country. The gradual unification of different regional populations within the all-Polish social, cultural, political and economic life in the interwar period was cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War.