APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
In modern times literary Polish has been the standard speech of the educated upper classes in all Polish cities. Members of the urban lower classes, mainly of recent peasant origin, retain many of the characteristics of their regional dialects. Among the distinctive features of educated speech is the use of the third person singular, as in Italian and Spanish, in the polite forms of address (i.e., for "you"; pan ) is used to a man and pani (madame), to a woman.
Before World War II, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Byelorussian, Lithuanian, and German were the principal non-Polish languages. They were spoken by nearly all of the minorities, who made up about one-third of the total prewar population. Wartime decimation of the Jewish minority, postwar population and territorial shifts, and Communist policies of assimilation have reduced the use of non-Polish minority languages to negligible proportions. Their use among the remaining minority groups totaling about 1.5% of the population is increasingly confined to the elderly, while the younger members of minorities are either bilingual or entirely Polish-speaking.
German probably remains the principal Western language spoken by the older as well as some members of the younger generation, although its use is resented and shunned by older nonprofessionals. The second language of most Communist party leaders, both old and young, probably is Russian, although some among them shared in the general tendency of professional people and intellectuals educated in the interwar period to look to French as a vehicle for social, cultural, and political intercourse with other European peoples. Communist party leader Edward Gierek, for example, reportedly speaks only poor Russian but is fluent in French, having spent much of World War II within the Communist resistance movements in France and Belgium.
In the postwar period, knowledge of Russian has increased through compulsory teaching in the schools. Since 1956, however, English has become the most popular and widely studied Western language among the younger generation, followed closely by French and German. Three-fourths of all Polish students of foreign languages other than Russian studied English in 1970. The result of this trend has become evident in the lower and middle levels of the party and government bureaucracy, where increasing numbers of the younger professionals possess a knowledge of English, German, or French. In line with the Gierek regime's avowed desire to increase Poland's political and economic role in Europe, it is likely further to give practical encouragement to the study and knowledge of Western languages—especially English and French—by those engaged in diplomatic and commercial relations.
2. Minorities (C)
Although insignificant numerically, the postwar ethnic minorities have retained their own special characteristics and have frequently had a social and political impact far beyond their numbers. The tiny Jewish minority has played a significant role in the shaping of Communist rule in Poland. The German group is at the center of the repatriation issue which played an important part in the conclusion of the Polish-West German treaty of December 1970. Some of the minority groups are known to be antagonistic toward the Polish state, but because of their numerical weakness and their lack of cohesiveness and leadership none of them are regarded as a threat to national security. For the same reason, they have not become a serious problem in Poland's relations with its neighbors, although the concentration of certain minorities along border areas has sometimes prompted rumors of border adjustments.
The events of World War II and of the early postwar years helped to create the most ethnically homogenous citizenry in the history of the Polish nation. The proportion of minority groups has continued to decline, constituting only 1.5% of the total population in 1969. Nonetheless, lingering animosities, including anti-Semitism, remain. Much of this animosity has historical roots, since Polish national consciousness has to a large extent been molded by resistance to foreign incursions on Polish culture and to the irredentist claims of Polish neighbors. The generally unviable borders of the Polish state during the interwar period did little to reduce this feeling of national insecurity, particularly since they encompassed a significant and often restive non-Polish population. The census of 1931 showed that ethnic minorities accounted for 31.1% of the total population, the largest being the Ukrainians and Ruthenians (13.9%), the Jews (8.6%), the White Russians (3.1%), and the Germans (2.3%).
Wartime losses, postwar territorial shifts, and population transfers might have been expected to eliminate ethnic frictions. Nevertheless, much of the former bitterness among ethnic groups was actually compounded in the immediate postwar period. Traditional Polish-Ukrainian enmity boiled over in the late 1940's, stimulated by the existence of Ukrainian partisan groups in southeast Poland agitating for a free Ukraine. This resulted in the forced transfer of over 100,000 Ukrainians to northwest
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
