Ruda O. National Education Policy of the Polish governments regarding the population of Galicia in the 1920s and 1930s: implementation and receptions

In the interwar polyethnic Polish state, over a third of its citizens was national minorities. The perception by the government and the Polish public of poly-ethnicity as a threat to the sovereignty of the state led to a consistent polonization and assimilation policy towards those national groups that, in their opinion, could damage the internal security and integrity of Poland. The state national policy of the 20-30s of the 20th century was characterized by inconsistency and intemperance, and its main task was to prevent the predominance of the non-Polish component in the newly annexed territories, mainly in Galicia, where the Poles were in the minority. At the state and especially at the local levels, the norms of the Polish legislation were often violated, which led to many contradictions in the implementation of language and educational policies. As a consequence, national education and language policies had a negative impact on the general education status of non-Polish population, leading to a reduction in the number of schools with minority languages of study. The government’s implementation of national or state concepts of education was perceived by the non-Polish population as a threat of denationalization. Transformation of schools into utraquist schools, or the elimination of minority language teaching institutions, only strengthened peoples’ aspirations for education in their mother tongue. Given this, Ukrainian, Jewish and German political parties, cultural and educational societies, socio-political figures and clergy focused on establishing of a national schooling.