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Beyond Ideology: Reassessing the Threat of Belarusian Opposition in Interwar Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2020

Daniel Fedorowycz Open the ORCID record for Daniel Fedorowycz [Opens in a new window]
Daniel Fedorowycz*
Affiliation:
Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Yale University
*
*Corresponding author. Email: daniel.fedorowycz@yale.edu
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Abstract

The historical literature on interwar Polish policy on Belarusians and other minorities focuses primarily on the relationship between the regime in power and minority groups as a single block, failing to note instances in which regime policies toward specific organizations have not been uniform. Despite the fact that Belarusian ethnic identity was ambiguous and national consciousness low, no fewer than 13 political organizations in interwar Poland claimed to represent the minority. The most influential organization was the Belarusian Peasants’ and Workers’ Union Hromada. Less than two years after the organization’s inception, it was banned in 1927. This article examines why an organization like Hromada, which did not resort to violence and in fact took pains to operate within the legal framework of the Polish constitution, was shuttered by the state, while other organizations with similar profiles were allowed to operate. The article reveals that Hromada was not banned strictly due to what the government considered its radical ideology or because it was an antisystem party, but rather it was banned for its ability to suppress organizational pluralism among Belarusian organizations. The article advances the existing literature by (a) shifting away from analyzing the dynamics between a state and an ethnic group as a whole, by disaggregating the level of analysis to focus on minority political organizations, and by (b) going beyond ideology as the main explanatory variable dictating state policies toward minorities.

Keywords

nationality policiesethnic minority organizationsinterwar PolandBelarusian minority
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 49 , Issue 5 , September 2021 , pp. 893 - 910
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

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