Polacy u progu niepodległości

Abstrakt

Poles on the Brink of Independence

Due to the final fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, its inhabitants were pushed for 123 years into three completely different and essentially hostile state organisms. In such diverse conditions, a few succeeding generations experienced deep and multilateral civilizational transformations occurring in the 19th century and in the version typical for this part of Europe. In other words, modernity formed here bygone inhabitants and citizens of the Republic in various ways. It was important for further existence of the Polishness and nationality without the state. In this context, the key question arises: who of them, successors of the First Republic tradition, in the time of the Polish state revival, felt still Polish, ready for the construction and defence of the state? In other words, what social capital had the reviving Polish state – the Second Polish Republic – at its disposal in the time of its beginnings? Based on source materials, and primarily on data from the last population censuses and their statistical studies before the First World War, the author tried to estimate the potential number of Poles on the brink of independence. The analysis was connected with an important assumption that primarily these people would be both the main beneficiaries of this radically changed statehood and persons ready to co-shape it actively. The obtained results fit into few similar estimations made until now, constituting material for further reflections.