Region czy regiony? Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne 1945−1989

This book is not a publication with a thesis and – as it turned out during its preparation – it does not give a final answer to the titular question. Rather, it is an attempt to deal with this issue. Its purpose is to provide data for the analysis of the question and to show possible answers, as well as being an attempt to approach this problem dynamically; that is, taking into account changes over time and different perspectives. Admittedly, these data are analyzed in a traditional way, but sometimes with surprising results. In addition, and importantly, a book constructed in this way also aims to provide information for a wide spectrum of analyses related to the post-war history of the Western and Northern Territories, which is why the volume contains many texts presenting a variety of data, including statistical information. The basic question that guided us when designing our work on this publication was whether the Western and Northern Territories (the so-called Recovered Territories) are one region or many regions. This was supplemented with an auxiliary question concerning the extent to which the former German territories incorporated into Poland after World War II are, were and/or periodically were internally coherent. It seems that researchers too often treat the Western and Northern Territories as a kind of monolith and make overly far-reaching generalizations, writing about common political, social and cultural processes for the entire area, and do not see the risks associated with such simplifications. Which phenomena can, therefore, be considered universal and common for the Western and Northern Territories, and which were completely different in particular parts of these lands (provinces)? In this respect, it is worth re-examining the concept of post-migration areas, which is to define the area of interest. And if it really was the case that for a certain period these areas were internally coherent, then when and how (and in what categories) did polarization take place leading to several regions being clearly distinguished instead of one region? What phenomena and processes distinguished (or still distinguish) this area from the rest of the Polish lands? Finally, to what extent is the concept of the Western and Northern Territories (or Recovered Territories) still useful in research? Understood in this way, this work can be placed in the context of the achievements of 75 years of research; at the same time, this might encourage new inspiration and the search for less obvious contexts. The analyses presented in this volume show that the Western and Northern Territories are a phenomenon worth noting. Above all, they are bound internally (but at the same time distinct from their surroundings) by one of the most crucial historical events, World War II. As a result, significant processes took place here, the consequences of which are still evident today: the change in the national allegiance of these areas and their borders (external and internal); the almost complete replacement of the population (here, Silesian Opole should be treated as a separate issue); the change in the ethnic (primarily Polonization) and religious structure, and therefore also a change in the language, cultural codes, political strategies, etc. There remained the natural and cultural landscape, and heritage, often tracing its roots back to the Middle Ages and earlier epochs, as well as the reasonably large, despite the destruction, economic potential. The continuity of memory was then broken, or rather the existing memory was replaced with new narratives, overwritten like a palimpsest, but, as it turns out, which it is possible to read and restore. We attempt to consider all these issues in this book from six, as it seems to us, key perspectives (which correspond to individual chapters): space (historical geography), demography, economy, religion, culture / society and historical politics. Geographical and historical regions of medieval origin were included in the Western and Northern Territories. Listing these from the south-west, these were: Silesia, the Lubusz Land (under various concepts shaped over many centuries), Western Pomerania (formerly the eastern part of the Pomeranian Duchy /Pomeranian Duchies), Gdańsk Pomerania (formerly Royal Prussia) and East Prussia (born out of a long historical process dating from the arrival of the Teutonic Order in Prussia). In 1945, after the actual incorporation of the former German lands into the Republic of Poland, along the line of the Odra and Nysa Łużycka rivers, the territorial structure was completely different: within Silesia, the historically well-established Upper and Lower Silesia and the increasingly distinct – especially after the Silesian Uprisings – Silesian Opole functioned as separate areas; Lubusz Land, or central Nadodrze, identified more with the New Marck (the eastern part of Brandenburg); Gdańsk Pomerania, within which was incorporated the territory of the former Free City of Gdańsk, formally not part of Germany, but subject to a number of regulations common to the so-called Recovered Territories; and Warmia, Masuria and Powiśle, that is the southern part of East Prussia. On this basis, the first post-war administrative division was created (corrected in 1950), and this significantly influenced the structure of the book. Until 1975, there were 7 voivodships in the Western and Northern Territories: Opole, Wrocław, Zielona Góra, Szczecin, Koszalin, Gdańsk and Olsztyn. As part of each chapter, for detailed analyses, we have adopted a contractual territorial division into: Silesian Opole, Lower Silesia, Lubusz Land, Western Pomerania, Warmia and Masuria and the Territory of the Free City of Gdańsk. This division, although imperfect, turned out to be the most useful due to the source data that were created by state units and institutions and often related to voivodships. It was different in this respect with regard to the issue of religion, as some churches and religious associations collected and processed information about themselves within their own territorial units. The Western and Northern Territories – a region or regions? We are aware that even with this adopted structure for the volume, it was necessary to make certain generalizations appropriate for the synthesis, in which some nuances important for small local communities might have disappeared. Consequently, we encourage readers to continue their exploration on the most local levels. We have tried to show that all the processes and phenomena that interest us here vary over time, because they did, which is clearly visible, among others, in the sets of figures presented in individual parts of the book. Here, the dichotomy between the concepts of “continuity” and “change” were an important point of reference for us. In some areas, it was also useful to use the terms “stability” and “instability”, which were important especially for the chronological starting point of these considerations, which was the year 1945. We end the analysis in 1989, when important geopolitical and social changes took place, which enormously increased the dynamics of “regionalization” processes that had been germinating for years. It is worth emphasizing that this book – unlike many previous collective monographs on the Western and Northern Territories – is not a post-conference collection, which, despite their unquestionable value, often have large gaps in terms of a comprehensive approach to a given topic. The structure of the presented publication was discussed for a long time within the editorial team, and after it was decided upon, individual issues were proposed for investigation, and assigned to specialists for elaboration. We did not suggest the direction of their deliberations or the answers we expected, rather we only requested they asked the same questions. The main assumption behind the structure of the book is a comparative approach in relation to the specified regions (voivodships) at least within individual thematic chapters. As indicated in the introduction, the presented analyses do not provide a single, clear answer, so we decided not to publish a common set of conclusions for the whole discussion; instead, each chapter concludes with an attempt to answer the title question. The book also provides a large amount of data that can be used in further research. Ninety tables summarize the most important statistics for demography and religion, and five maps show the territorial coverage of the Western and Northern Territories, as well as the administrative structures and their evolution. The idea for this book was born during a discussion entitled “Recovered? Postulated? Integrated?” organized by the Network of Western and Northern Territories in Wrocław on 3 March 2017, and attended by Andrzej Sakson, Grzegorz Strauchold, Robert Traba and Wojciech Kucharski. The participants then debated the very concept of the Western and Northern Territories and drew attention to the dangers of generalization. Important questions were also raised as to whether the Western and Northern Territories existed at all (if and when they existed), and whether (and since when) it was the case that only regions with some common past experience functioned in this area. Those present also discussed whether the inhabitants of these territories associated (or had ever associated) their identity with the notion of the Western and Northern Territories, or rather with a given cultural region and state.