When the territories of Western Belarus, Western Ukraine and the Wilno region were incorporated into Poland after the Treaty of Riga, Poland rejected its international obligations to grant autonomy to eastern Galicia[10], which she had never intended to honor.[49] Linguistic assimilation was considered by National Democrats to be a major factor for "unifying the state." For example, Stanisław Grabski, Polish Minister for Religion and Public Education in 1923 and 1925–1926, wrote that "Poland may be preserved only as a state of Polish people. If it were a state of Poles, Jews, Germans, Rusyns, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Russians, it would lose its independence again"; and that "it is impossible to make a nation out of those who have no 'national self-identification,' who call themselves 'local' (tutejszy)."[citation needed]. Grabski also said that the aim of Polish policy should be "the transformation of the Commonwealth into Polish ethnic territory."[50][51]
Some officials denied the existence of the Ukrainian and Belarusian nations altogether
A law issued in 1924 banned usage of any language but Polish in governmental and municipal paperwork. It the area of public education it was postulated that state schools could be only Polish language schools.[41] Local populations could have private local language schools, but only in territories "loyal to the Polish state"[citation needed]. Specifically with respect to the Eastern territories (known as Kresy Wschodnie, or "Eastern Borderlands") it was recognized that "schools can become an instrument of the cultural development in Eastern lands only if Polish teachers will work there"[citation needed]. It turned out to be infeasible for implementation and, in particular cases, bilingual schools ("utraquist schools", szkoły utrakwistyczne) were proposed, while in reality those schools were functionally the Polish language ones
The attitude of Ukrainians of that time is well shown in the statements by the reputable Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, who noted negative influence of Polish policies on the Ukrainian culture:
"the four centuries of Polish rule had left particularly destructive effects (...) economic and cultural backwardness in Galicia was the main "legacy of historical Poland, which assiduously skimmed everything that could be considered the cream of the nation, leaving it in a state of oppression and helplessness".
The land reform designed to favour the Poles in mostly Ukrainian populated Volhynia, the agricultural territory where the land question was especially severe, brought the alienation from the Polish state of even the Orthodox Volhynian population who tended to be much less radical than the Greek Catholic Calicians
After the Polish legislative election, 1930, Belarusian representation in the Polish parliament was reduced and since the early 1930s the Polish government started to introduce policies intended to Polonize the minorities.
In 1938 about 100 abandoned Orthodox churches were destroyed or converted to Roman Catholic in the eastern parts of Poland.[56] The use of Belarusian language was discouraged. There wasn't a Belarusian school in the spring of 1939, and only 44 schools teaching Belarusian language existed in Poland at the beginning of World War
Situation of Lithuanians also was getting worse. During the interwar period of the 20th century (1920-1939) Lithuanian-Polish relations were characterised by mutual enmity. Starting with the conflict over the city of Vilnius (Wilno), and the Polish-Lithuanian War shortly after the First World War, both governments - in the era nationalism was sweeping through Europe - treated their respective minorities harshly.[57] [58] [59] Beginning 1920, after the staged mutiny of Lucjan Żeligowski Lithuanian cultural activities in Polish controlled territories were limited; closure of newspapers and arrest of editors occurred.[60] One of them - Mykolas Biržiška was accused of state treason and sentenced to a death penalty, only direct intervention by the League of Nations saved him from this fate. He was one of 32 Lithuanian and Belarussian cultural activists formally expelled from Vilnius on September 20, 1922 and turned over to Lithuanian army.[60] In 1927, as tensions between Lithuania and Poland arose furthermore 48 Lithuanian schools were closed and another 11 Lithuanian activist were deported. [57] Following Piłsudski's death in 1935, Lithuanian minority in Poland again became an object of Polonisation policies, more intensive this time. 266 Lithuanian schools were closed since 1936 and almost all organizations were banned. Further Polonisation was ensued as the government encouraged settlement of Polish army veterans in disputed regions. [61] About 400 Lithuanian reading rooms and libraries were closed in Poland in 1936-1938
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