Białoruś Zachodnia w interpretacji polskiej: wybrane wątki historyczne i motywy liryczne. Część I: Czynnik białoruski w historii państwa polskiego (od dawnych czasów do końca II Rzeczy Pospolitej)
Western Belarus in the Polish interpretation: selected historical topics and lyrical themes. Part I: Belarusian factor in the history of the Polish state (from ancient times to the end of the Second Commonwealth)

Summary/Abstract: The history of the areas (incorporated to the Belarusian SSR in 1939), which in the Belarusian and Russian historiography adopted the geopolitical term “Western Belarus,” in Polish historiography is seen as an integral part of the overall history of the multinational Polish State. Regardless of the form of the state, which have evolved in the course of historical development (i.e. as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, founded in the 16th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth– which from the late 18th to the early 20th century was under Russian domina-tion; finally revived in 1918 as the Second Polish Republic of interwar era, which has become a victim of Nazi on the one hand and on the other hand, the Stalinist aggression in September 1939) the history of “Eastern Borderlands”, including ar-eas inhabited mostly by Belarusian peasants, is recognized in Polish literature in the paradigm of “our common and only homeland”, to which the love, affection, compassion are inseparable from the whole Polish patriotism. The distinction be-tween methodological principles of Polish and Russian-Belarusian (tsarist, Soviet and post- Soviet times) lies in the fact that in the last so-called “Western Belarus” occurs as an entity independent of the fate of Poland, subject of research and le-gal entity (on the basis of which, among others, it was incorporated in the Bela-rusian SSR), while in Polish studies and assessments of all aspects of the history and culture of the people of this country and its political transition are present-ed through the prism of Polish historical issues. This applies to threads, causing debates (for example, about the borders approved by the Treaty of Riga in 1921), grief, accusations of treason by a certain group of Belarusian activists of interwar era, a sad irony in relation to the so-called national enthusiasm with which Belarusians erected “welcome gates” for the Red Army. The first part of the arti-cle concerns texts by Józef Mackiewicz, Kazimierz Podlaski, Sokrat Janowicz and other authors who in Poland and in exile dealt with the history of “Western Be-larus” until 1939.

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