Sytuacja języka polskiego na Litwie, Ukrainie i Białorusi
The situation of the Polish language in Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus

Summary/Abstract: The history of the Polish language within the present territory of Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus is comprised in several, chronologically diverse, historical periods of these lands and countries: 1) the 14th–18th centuries – the phase of political and cultural expansion of the Kingdom of Poland; 2) 1795–1918 – the phase of the partitions of Poland and, what followed, dominance of Russia; 3) 1918–1939 – the phase of political dominance of Poland and Soviet Russia; 4) 1939–1945 – the phase of the Second World War and occupation; 5) 1945–1990 – the phase of dominance of the USSR; 6) the phase of political sovereignty of Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. What bears particular significance for the contemporary situation of Polish in Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus is its history of the second half of the 20th century. Its development was regressive at that time, since it lost its earlier rank of an interlect in favour of Russian and remained merely a language used by an ethnic minority. Hence, while the prestige and social range of Polish gradually increased in those areas (from the 16th c.), the phase of dominance of the USSR (1945–1990) changed that situation to the disadvantage of the Polish language. At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st c., the situation of the Polish language in the three countries – Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus – is diverse, yet its common intralinguistic, extralinguistic and nonlinguistic considerations can be observed.

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