The Contemporary Ethnic and Religious Borderland in Podlasie Region

Abstract

The national and religious borderland in Podlasie is a zone with many transitory areas where different national, religious, linguistic and cultural groups overlap. There are hardly any clear dividing lines separating particular national and religious groups. In Podlasie various communities, in many cases closely related to each other, coexist side by side. The research has confirmed that the national and religious spatial diversification of Podlasie population with two totally different parts: western and eastern, remained basically unchanged for centuries. A new tendency, increasingly noticeable especially after WW II, is national borderland shifting eastward faster than the religious one, which results in growing unconformity of the two borderlands. It is explicable in terms of progressing Polonization (in some cases leading to acculturation) of many Orthodox, who, however, preserve their faith. In consequence these days a large part of Polish population in Podlasie declares Orthodox religion. It follows that the predominantly Polish area is more extensive than the area of Catholic domination, which causes divergences between national and religious borderland.Although the two borderlands are not in line, the analysed part of Podlasie region is evidently divided, both ethnically and religiously, into two parts: the western part dominated by Polish Catholic population and the eastern part dominated by adherents of the Orthodox Church more diversified as to their nationality. The central part is predominantly inhabited by Polish Orthodox population, while in the north-eastern part none of the groups has absolute domination but the communities of ‘tutejsi’ and Belorussians are most numerous