Poles in Belarus

Polish minority in Belarus
Office of the Union of Poles in Belarus in Grodno
Total population
288,000 (2019 census) – 1,100,000 (Polish estimates)[1][2][3]
Regions with significant populations
Grodno Region
Languages
Belarusian · Russian · Polish[1]
Religion
Predominantly Roman Catholicism
Polish majority (dark brown) and plurality (light brown) in communes of Belarus
Poles in Grodno region

The Polish minority in Belarus (Polish: Polacy na Białorusi; Belarusian: Палякі ў Беларусі, romanized: Paliaki w Bielarusi) numbers officially 288,000 according to 2019 census.[1] However, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland the number is as high as 1,100,000.[3] It forms the second largest ethnic minority in the country after the Russians, at around 3.1% of the total population according to the official census. According to the official census, an estimated 205,200 Belarusian Poles live in large agglomerations and 82,493 in smaller settlements, with the number of women exceeding the number of men by 33,905.[1] Some estimates by Polish non-governmental sources in the U.S. are higher, citing the previous poll held in 1989 under the Soviet authorities with 413,000 Poles recorded[2] and the census of 1959 with 538,881 Poles recorded in Belarus.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the emergence of sovereign Republic of Belarus, the situation of the Polish minority has been steadily improving. The politics of Sovietization pursued by decades of indoctrination, went down in history. Poles in Belarus began re-establishing the Polish language schools and their legal right of participating in the religious life. However, the attitude of new authorities to Polish minority are not very consistent. The new laws are insufficient, and the local levels of Belarusian government are largely unwilling to accept the aspirations of their own ethnic Poles,[4] making them into new targets for state-sanctioned intolerance, according to 2005 report by The Economist.[5][6]

  1. ^ a b c d "Statistics from belstat.gov.by (бюллетень)". p. 22. Archived from the original on 2010-09-17.. Listing total population of Belarus with population by age and sex, marital status, education, nationality, language and livelihood ("Общая численность населения; численность населения по возрасту и полу, состоянию в браке, уровню образования, национальностям, языку, источникам средств к существованию") (in Belarusian)
  2. ^ a b Boris Kleyn (1994), Poles in Belarus: Revival of Heritage and Search for Ancestors. PolishRoots. The Polish Genealogy Source. Chapter: History. Accessed August 8, 2011.
  3. ^ a b Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Poland. "Tweet". Twitter. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
  4. ^ Prof. Piotr Eberhardt, "Polacy na Białorusi." Świat Polonii. Stowarzyszenie Wspólnota Polska. Archived 2014-02-23 at the Wayback Machine Accessed August 6, 2011.
  5. ^ "Bordering on madness: Belarus mistreats its Polish minority." The Economist, June 16, 2005.
  6. ^ Witryna Związku Polaków na Białorusi (Association of Poles in Belarus). Archived 2011-08-02 at the Wayback Machine Stowarzyszenie Wspólnota Polska. Accessed August 6, 2011.