The image of ''Ruthenians'' presented in the national-democratic press between 1918 and 1926
The image of ''Ruthenians'' presented in the national-democratic press between 1918 and 1926

Summary/Abstract: The National Democrats, following Roman Dmowski, supported the incorporation concept of rebuilding the Polish state. For this reason, their attitude towards the Slavic minorities was unambiguous. They called for their Polonization, and presented arguments for institutional assimilation in the press. The aim of the research was to reconstruct the image of Ruthenians in the most popular magazines related to the National Democracy. The analysis of the content of the periodicals allowed to indicate that the image of the Ruthenians evolved from perceiving them as a docile people, prone to Polonization, to aggressive political opponents. The image of Ruthenians in the national-democratic press had several dimensions: 1) civilization, 2) political, and 3) image-relate on. In the civilization dimension, it was pointed out that Ruthenians are at a lower level of development than Poles, hence cultural assimilation will be a civilization advance for them. In the political dimension, Ruthenians were portrayed as destroyers of public order. They were accused of collaborating with Poland's enemies. Along with the development of the political representation of the Ruthenians and their accession to the National Minority Bloc, the number of articles showing them as separatists, calling for the overthrow of the borders of the Polish state, increased.

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