Cieślarova platforma – národnostná otázka v Tešínsku v období stalinizmu
Cieślar’s platform – nationality issue in the Teschen Silesia (Śląsk Cieszyński) region in the Stalinist period

Summary/Abstract: In the Communist era, the so-called Cieślar Platform was the only program addressing nationality issues in the Czech part of the Teschen Silesia inhabited by the Polish minority. Its author was Paweł Cieślar, member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and Polish autochthon, who prepared several memorandums containing a plan for the regulation of nationality issues in the territory inhabited by Poles. His assumption was that the whole indigenous population in the region, who used the local dialect, were Polish, regardless of their official nationality. According to Cieślar, the population censuses that prior to the establishment of the Czechoslovak State had reported the prevalence of the Czech population did not reflect the actual state of affairs and he accounted for the declining number of Poles in the Czechoslovak population census by national oppression. His main ambition was to establish autonomy in the counties of Karviná and Český Těšín. He proposed further that all members of the autochthonous population sent their children to schools with Polish as language of instruction. Schools with the Czech language of instruction, where the Polish language would be regarded as an obligatory subject, would be intended only for the incomers. Cieślar regarded his program as one that would redress grievances and as the only fair solution. Cieślar expressed his views only before the regional authorities of CPC in Ostrava in 1950, at their behest, but did not publish them. Due to the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPC, his “platform”, represented in a distorted manner, was publicly denounced at a regional conference in Český Těšín in April 1951. Cieślar was labelled as „bourgeois nationalist”, stripped of all party posts, and was expelled from the Party in February 1952. The propaganda campaign against him served as a means for strengthening the Party control over the Polish minority organisations and for swallowing up of Polish youth organisations by their state counterparts.

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