Suchergebnisse

The aim of this article is to analyse the Polish authorities' policy towards national and ethnic minorities after 1989, after the collapse of real socialism in Poland. The author gives an overview of the historical and sociopolitical situation of these minorities in Poland. The main point of consideration is the position and functioning of national and ethnic minorities on the basis of law, their political activity in parliamentary and local elections, as well as the attitude of leading Polish political parties towards the issues of national and ethnic minorities. National and ethnic minorities are, by definition, less numerous than the rest of the Polish population, but remain Polish citizens and at the same time are aware of their historical community. The article uses the following methods: descriptive and institutional-legal.

This article raises the issue of how the Russian Federation could benefit from the instrumental use of ethnic heterogeneity to pursue its geopolitical interests. The paper focuses on the recent case of a Polish-Ukrainian historical memory dispute which affected relations between Warsaw and Kyiv. The research focus is on how vulnerable Poland and Ukraine are to Russian active measures which potentially target not only national minorities but also groups of people who are only temporarily present in these states, such as economic migrants and tourists. An analysis is conducted of Russia's geopolitical objectives and its strategy toward Polish-Ukrainian relations in the broader context of the rivalry between Russia and the West. The analysis is conducted within the framework of the neorealist theory of international relations. The case study of specific events discloses how Russia could exacerbate tensions between nations and the role of ethnic heterogeneity in this regard. Against this backdrop, the author shows how Russia may challenge other states of the Euro-Atlantic community with similar active measures.

The article analyses the current situation in Estonia and Lithuania in the context of the position of both states and their public relations strategy and image since 1991, as well as the role of national minorities in this process. The authors emphasize that even though Estonia and Lithuania tend to be treated as very similar state organisms, they chose different ways of building their legal and democratic structures. Despite many similarities between the two states, such as location, size, small population, common historical background and, above all, ethnic divisions, one should pay attention to successful attempts to strengthen the statehood of Estonia and Lithuania.

The purpose of this article is to present the processes of assimilation of ethnic and linguistic groups (Polish – Warmians and Mazurians, Lithuanian – Lithuanians of Prussia) living in East Prussia in the second half of the 19th century. It should be noted that among the Mazurian, Warmian and Lithuanian populations in East Prussia, at no stage of the development of the above-mentioned groups were there any prerequisites for the formation of their own nation or assimilation into the Polish or Lithuanian nations. After 1870, the ethnic feeling of the non-German population in Prussia became an anachronism dating back to an earlier, pre-national stage of development. The process of assimilation, supported by a number of factors and carried out quite consistently, though not absolutely, towards non-German groups, created a Prussian-German identity among them. They became an example of ethnic groups forming their identity against a linguistic and cultural background.

The issues of national and ethnic minorities are one of the elements of the state's security policy as well as the determinant of security on an international scale. This is a particularly important issue at the time of increased migration on the European continent. The purpose of this article is to present the assumptions of the management for Polish national and ethnic minorities' safety system, define its legal and institutional framework, as well as assess the effectiveness of this system, taking into account indicators and statistical data developed by the Ministry of the Interior in confrontation with the demands raised by the minority communities. The purpose of the publication is to identify the weakest elements of this system and to indicate their possible causes.

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.

The aim of the article is to present the specific nature of research on the issues of national relations in a totalitarian state based on the example of the lands of Central and Eastern Europe under the Soviet occupation from 1939-1941. In order to achieve this, the literature on the subject (in English and Polish) was reviewed as well as the most important methodological problems encountered by researchers. The research program was also outlined, along with a proposal for their conceptualization in the form of signalling the main aspects of the above-mentioned issues, including the specificity of the Soviet occupation of 1939-1941, social and ethnic relations in this area, and the Soviet nationalities policy. Several research methods and postulates were proposed, as well as perspectives and theoretical approaches that could facilitate the study of this complex and controversial subject, e.g., the interdisciplinary nature of research, methods of bottom-up formation of political attitudes of the population (the so-called "bottom-up" method), application of theories of the totalitarian state, and different theories of ethnicity. As a result, an interdisciplinary program of comparative studies of ethnic relations in Central and Eastern Europe under Soviet rule (1939-1941) was outlined, taking into account the transnational character of historical processes and the need to conduct micro historic analyses and case studies that would allow capturing of the diversity of ethnic relations and verify the effectiveness of the policy of the central Soviet authorities. The article argues that it seems obvious that the specificity of the analysed problematics can be properly grasped only by consideration it in the historical and theoretical context, adopting a comparative and transnational approach, from a micro-historical as well as everyday-life perspective that highlights the most important social factors which facilitated changes in interethnic relations.

The main purpose of the article is to present the evolution of legal regulations regarding national minorities in Ukraine, the structure of these minorities and the dynamics of demographic change. The authors analyzed the geographical distribution as well as the political, cultural and educational activity of the most numerous national minorities. They presented the main reasons for the increase or decrease in the size of the largest national groups. The political and legal foundations of minority activities, the specificity of the organization of their educational institutions, national-cultural associations and ethnic parties were analyzed. Particular attention was paid to the problematic provisions of the new Education Act (2017), which reduced the status of languages of national minorities in education and led to the deterioration of relations with individual countries with which minorities are associated. The authors discussed the most severe problems in bilateral relations arising from Ukraine's policy towards minorities and some ideas on how to solve them. The main methods of improving nationality policy in contemporary Ukraine were also presented.