“Eastern Borderlands” in the Political Thought of Leon Wasilewski

Abstract

The article examines the views of the Polish political and public figure Leon Wasilewski (1870–1936) on the formation of the eastern border of the Polish state, recreated after the First World War, and analyzes his publications on the national question of the peoples living on the “eastern borderlands” of the interwar Poland. Leon Wasilewski as an associate of Jozef Pilsudski was a recognized expert on the national question. The position on Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian issues, formed at that time by Polish publicists including Wasilewski, was influenced by historical relations between the Poles and these peoples. Polish politicians considered it fair to restore the border of the “historical Poland” in the east to the state before the partitions of 1772–1795. Such a historical approach contradicted the position of the victorious powers, which, when creating the Polish state, sought to include only ethnographically Polish territories in its composition. However, after the end of the Polish-Soviet war, according to the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921, the ethnographically Ukrainian and Belarusian territories were recognized as part of Poland, and in 1922 the Vilnius region was annexed by Poland. L. Wasilewski’s journalism devoted to Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian problems reflects his recognition of independent national existence for these peoples, but his attitudes towards Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lithuanians were completely different.

Received: 21.12.2024.
Revised: 31.01.2025.
Accepted: 18.03.2025.

Citation
Pavlov P. A. “Eastern Borderlands” in the Political Thought of Leon Wasilewski // Slavic Almanac. 2025. No 1–2. P. 65–81 (in Russian). DOI: 10.31168/2073-5731.2025.1-2.03