Constructing a Lemko identity: tactics of belonging

In their efforts to organize as a recognized minority within the Polish state, the Lemkos have faced a number of obstacles, both internal and external to the community. This article explores three aspects of self-representation of the Lemko community - group membership, victimhood and “speakerhood” – and examines how these representations are contested on a number of levels.

2020

Kinga Kuszak, Katarzyna Sadowska, Polish language as an element of identity (on the example of statements by Poles and Russians from Kaliningrad Oblast). Culture – Society – Education no. 2(18) 2020, Poznań 2020, pp. 129–141, Adam Mickiewicz University Press. ISSN 2300-0422. DOI 10.14746/kse.2020.18.5.2. The article discusses the issue of Polish language as an element of identity of Poles and Russians living in Kaliningrad. The authors, during a visit to the University of Immanuel Kant, had the opportunity to do interviews with Poles and Russians living in Kaliningrad, for whom Polish is an important element of identity. The authors divided the respondents into two groups for whom Polish is an element of inherited identity and for whom Polish is an element of identity acquired in the education process. These analyzes precede reflections on the specifics and history of Kaliningrad and the kaliningrad district.

European History Quarterly, 2021

Drawing on ethnographic and archival materials, this paper examines the ethnic politics of the Second Polish Republic by taking into account the experiences of the Lemko-Rusyn population, a minority East Slavic group inhabiting the peripheral mountainous area in southern Poland. It illustrates the changing policies towards Lemko-Rusyns and discusses the different responses of the local population to these policies, demonstrating the inadequacy of categories imposed from above as well as manifold motivations behind people's political views, choices of national identification, and religious conversions. In so doing, the article has three main objectives. First, in line with recent critical scholarship on nationalism in the Second Polish Republic, it attempts to problematize thefrequently exaggerateddifference between 'federational' and 'assimilationist' conceptions, exposing the discriminatory nature of interwar minority politics, as experienced locally. Second, moving beyond the interwar period, the article presents the long-term consequences of the interwar policies and the events of the Second World War, including a series of ethnic cleansings that took place in the aftermath of the war as well as present-day discourses on and policies towards ethnic and national minorities. And third, in discussing state actors' agency in the domain of minority policies, it calls for a more thorough recognition of the agency of the people who are the target of those policies. The article considers all these issues by presenting a history of a Lemko-Rusyn locality and its inhabitants, as recorded in school records, state reports, and oral histories.

Poland, from the United States’ perspective, is the matter of Eastern Europe, while for Western Europe it constitutes eastern borders of European Union. In turn, Polish neighbors – the Czechs (J. Kroutvor, M. Kundera, J. Křen, etc.) – are attached to the concept of Central Europe, what in the 1980s and 1990s found many followers in Poland. However, at present, the opinion that Poland is situated in East-Central Europe predominates in this country. All these terms bear various traditions and evoke different connections. Firstly, the objective of this paper is to show in what manner Central and East-Central Europe is perceived in Poland, secondly – to point at cultural and historical background and socio-political meaning of particular ideas. Since all these notions are casual and conditioned both politically and historically, and they also correspond with affairs of certain political, business and academic groups. What is more, ideas hidden behind these notions are intellectual constructs and as such they are often subjected to manipulations. In this context there are at least two pivotal questions: how these heritages form the present Polish identity? What kind of author’s strategies of contriving the problems mentioned above are possible? In the paper I will take into consideration different discourses in comparison, among the others historical/historiographical (Halecki, Kłoczowski, Wandycz, Piotrowski), cultural “activists” or “the practitioners of ideas” (Giedroyć, Czyżewski) and writers (Miłosz, Stasiuk). The paper is extension of my recent book Europa w dyskursie polskim, czeskim i chorwackim. Rekonfiguracje krytyczne [Europe in Polish, Czech and Croatian Discourse. Critical Reconfigurations, Toruń 2011] where I focus on transnational dimensions of the category of “Europe”, whereas herein I would like to take a step backwards to the Polish context, but with a deeper interpretation in junction with the problem of identity in the society in transition.

2018

Minority cultures and associated efforts to maintain and promote their linguistic varieties in situations of unbalanced multilingualism face many challenges. Pressure to adapt to modernity and globalization mean that cultural and linguistic minorities are having to find new and creative ways to express their identities and collective sense of community. This article examines the situation of the Lemko language in Poland, estimated to be spoken by around 11,000 people (Przynaleznośc narodowo-etniczna ludności, GUS. 2011. Material na konferencje prasową w dniu 29. 01. 2013. p 3. Accessed on 6 Mar 2013). Educational programmes, such as the Russian-with-Lemko degree taught at the University of Cracow, or the teaching of Lemko in selected schools in the traditional Lemko areas, are complemented by events and festivals which might equip younger generations of speakers of the language with the cultural material they require in order to achieve ‘authentic speakerhood’. This concept will be ...

2011

Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, University of Kansas, 25 September 2018

W. Kuligowskiego, R. Papp (eds.) 2015. Sterile and Isolated? An anthropology today in Hungary and Poland , p. 111-127, Poznań-Wielichowo., 2015