Ethnic Composition of Polish Society

ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF POLISH SOCIETY. (Abstract)

During the interwar period, Polish society was very heterogenic in the ethnic and religious sense. At the same time, there was a clear hierarchy and ethnic inequalities were clear. Due to the war, the holocaust and extermination of millions of Poles, due to the the border shifts and ethnic cleansing, due to the post-war movement of population, the ethnic composition of Polish society became much "simpler" than in any period in Polish history. Ethnicity hardly existed in the public consciousness. The situation changed due to democratization of the turn of the 1980s and later to the access to the European Union. However, it is very difficult to say that we do know much more than before about the ethnic composition of Polish society.