Od internacjonalnej do własnej historii – mniejszość białoruska w Polsce
From international history to one’s own history – Belarusian minority in Poland

Summary/Abstract: After World War II the Belarusians who did not leave Poland could gain upward mobility only if they avoided displaying their national and cultural distinctiveness. Belarusians made a political choice which coincided with a vision of history and thus accepted a historical narrative spread by communist circles. The narrative constructed by the Belarusian minority was consistent with the officially proclaimed state ideological narrative. It contained mostly the history of the Communist Party of Western Belarus and described a difficult situation of Belarus in the Second Polish Republic and during World War II (especially the Great Patriotic War). The Belarusian community made first attempts to rebuild the current vision of the world in 1980–1981. Students tried to create an alternative historical narrative that contradicted the communist one. However, it was a gradual collapse of the communist system that became an impetus for more active development of the Belarusian minority in Poland, and consequently, the creation of its own national vision of history. The Belarusian heritage has been based on the Belarusian People's Republic and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and not, as it was in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus or after 1994, on the Republic of Belarus and the victory in the Great Patriotic War.

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