Suchergebnisse

: The subject of Borderlands situated further away and close by is presented not by accident. In the Polish historical narrative, we usually remember only about the Eastern Borderlands. Created by Henryk Sienkiewicz's "Trilog", known from the pages of Polish history, being a place of birth to Polish poets, they are inevitably memorable and integral part of Poland's national tradition. This notion is so strong that the word 'Borderlands' is associated only with the formed eastern territories of Poland. We do not use this terminology for other areas. We think only of the eastern borderlands which were gradually lost between the 17th and 20th century. This article also mentions this fact. Nevertheless, the article presents a slightly different perspective, i.e. it tries to present the Borderlands that were distant because they were unknown or known very little, the Borderlands which did not manage to enter the Polish narratives and Polish historical memory for good. They entered Poland for a very short time and disappeared for it very quickly. Nowadays they are abroad and they are practically unknown. The distant, unknown former Polish western Borderlands was Trans-Olza (Zaolzie). The Silesian residents living there in the 19th century shaped mostly Polish national identity, i.e. at the time when the then modern European nations were establishing. Undoubtedly, this was influenced by a strong economic development of the territory of Cieszyn Silesia. On the one hand, it was a blessing, but on the other hand, it turned out to be its curse, causing the rivalry over this land between the Poles and Czechs. The conflict over this territory, where the ethnic issues played no significant role for the powers considering this matter. Moreover, it inscribed into different types of territorial conflicts that Europe experienced after the First World War. For the borders established by the victorious allied forces as part of the Versailles treaty were not entirely fair in any place, which, in turn, is an obvious matter because it is never possible to set borders that would fully satisfy all the parties of the conflict. This was also the case of the Polish-Czech conflict over Cieszyn Silesia. The rivalry did not cease with the borders being established by the allied forces in July 1920, and both countries were still interested in the population living there. The population faced assimilative activities as the so-called 'Polonized Moravians' by the Czechoslovakian Republic. On the other hand, this population became a causation for Poland when reclaiming this area in autumn 1938.
In the second part of the article presents the realities of life in Trans-Olza in the second half of the 1930s, which were witnessed by Paweł Hulka-Laskowski. He collected material for his monumental work on Trans-Olza Silesia. This work is practically unknown today, but it is an equivalent of the results of Melchior Wańkowicz's travels around East Prussia in the book Na tropach Smętka. Who has ever heard in Poland of the work by Paweł Hulka-Laskowski Śląsk za Olzą Similarly, who has the knowledge of the long-forgotten Western Borderlands? This article introduces readers to this subject matter.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Swiss political parties were formed. Basic press organs also crystallized, which became the official nationwide titles of particular trends. Regardless of internal discrepancies, most of these bodies pursued a fairly consistent propaganda policy regarding the future of multicultural lands after the end of the First World War. One of the issues that fit into this theme was the issue of the Polish-Ruthenian-Lithuanian borderland. The entire Helvetic public opinion was of the opinion that it was necessary to create a federal state in Central Europe, which was to be an antidote to emerging nationalist movements. The promotion of such a solution was related to the desire to disseminate in Europe its own, Swiss constitutional solutions, which had proven to function efficiently for half a century. In the conditions of the borderland of Central Europe, such a vision turned out to be unrealistic. Revealing nationalist tendencies and ineffective attempts to find a compromise solution between the representatives of the emigration of nations in question present in Switzerland led to the collapse of the idea of promoting the Slavic federation in the Helvetic press in autun 1918.

The purpose of this research is to illustrate the phenomenon of common crime in the eastern areas of Poland from 1921-1925. In the text, the author gives examples of this and its cause and effect on the functioning of the young Polish state. The timeline of the study covers the period from the signing of the Riga Treaty ending the Polish-Soviet War in 1921, to 1925 when the Bolsheviks temporarily gave up their aggressive attempts to spread communism in Europe. The author of the study focused on the most important type of crimes characteristic of the borderland such as robbery and smuggling, using the literature on the subject, source publications, and archival resources, mainly from the Central Military Archives, the Border Guard Archives in Szczecin, and Ukrainian archives in Lviv and Tarnopol. The research aims to show the characteristic types of common crimes, their connection with anti-Polish activities on the part of the USSR and Lithuania, and the intertwining of political crime with criminal offences. In the work, the author uses the critical analysis of sources, literary analysis, and the comparative method.

The author addresses the issue of ethno-business, which has been largely unresearched to date. In the approach proposed by the author, ethnobusiness is understood as a wide range of practices and behaviours related to the deliberate use of existing regulations going beyond the intentions of legislators that guarantee cultural and political privileges for national and ethnic minorities. Various activists and leaders gathered around ethnic organizations and co-creators of the discussed phenomenon most often pursue their private material or political interests. However, ethno-business is closely linked to the established Romanian legislation on national minorities. Thus, the author investigates the roots of this phenomenon, introducing readers to the regulations on minorities in Romania, and points to the social consequences of ethno-business. The analysis of the discussed problem is supplemented and illustrated by examples of specific behaviours observed by the author during his long-term and extensive ethnographic field research carried out on the Romanian-Ukrainian borderland between 2009 and 2010. Although this research project focused on aspects of ethnic and national identity among the Slavic-speaking community of the Maramures region, it also gave an opportunity to spot a number of behaviours that can be interpreted in the context of ethno-business. The ethnographic examples given in the article show how the policies related to the protection of national minorities in Romania can be exploited in various circumstances by different individuals who have relevant knowledge of the rights of national minorities.