Polish National District

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Polish National District" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Polish National Districts (called in Russian "полрайоны", polrajony, an abbreviation for "польские национальные районы", "Polish national raions") were national districts of the Soviet Union in the interbellum period providing national autonomy for Polish minorities in the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics of the USSR. They were created in an attempt to live up to the postulate of Leninism about the rights of nations for self-determination. Also, creation of these regions served one of purposes of the Bolsheviks to export the revolution since after their defeat in the Polish-Soviet War, the Soviets did not give up their idea of creating a Soviet Republic in Poland. Polish National Districts were supposed to be the origin of future Soviet Poland.^[1] They both were disbanded in mid-1930s and a significant part of their populations ("anti-Soviet and unreliable elements") was deported to Kazakhstan during the Great Purge.