The Polish Diaspora in Belarus

Abstract As a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, an independent Belarus came into being, with a large Polish diaspora within its borders. Initially, the country embarked on a path of democratic and market reforms, and cooperation with Poland seemed promising. In 1994, Alexander Lukashenko won the presidential election. From that point on, a shift toward an authoritarian political system and a reversal of market reforms began. Poland and Belarus began to diverge in terms of their chosen political and economic systems and strategic foreign partners. It became increasingly difficult for Warsaw to “get along” with Minsk. The Polish diaspora became somewhat hostage to the international situation and the Belarusian dictator. This article presents the basic problems faced by the Polish diaspora in Belarus under Lukashenko's rule in terms of preserving its national identity, culture, and language, and it establishes prospects for further developments. We analyze current (independent and official) news, official Belarusian statistics, estimates from independent experts, and relevant literature (primarily Polish and Belarusian). We present the genesis of the Polish diaspora and attempt to determine its current size. We discuss the Poles’ changing situation under Lukashenko's rule, his personal attitude toward the Polish minority, and the role of the Polish diaspora in the regime's propaganda. We devote significant space to the issue of freedom of education in the Polish language as, in our opinion, one of the most important conditions for preserving national identity. We reference recent events triggered by the wave of mass public protests that followed the 2020 presidential election, which involved an escalation of the Lukashenko regime's actions against the Polish diaspora. We hypothesize that the conditions for the functioning of the Polish diaspora are currently the worst since the establishment of the Belarusian state, and the continued persistence of such a situation seriously threatens the linguistic and cultural distinctiveness of Poles in Belarus.