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RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report Vol. 3, No. 38: excerpts


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Subject: RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report Vol. 3, No. 38: excerpts


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RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report Vol. 3, No. 38:
excerpts 


RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
________________________________________________________
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report
Vol. 3, No. 38, 9 October 2001
 
A Survey of Developments in Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine by
the Regional Specialists of RFE/RL's Newsline Team

***********************************************************

..............
 
POLAND

..............
 
POLISH-UKRAINIAN COLLEGE OPENS IN LUBLIN. Polish President Aleksander
Kwasniewski and his Ukrainian counterpart Leonid Kuchma on 6 October
attended the inauguration of the European College of Polish and
Ukrainian Universities in Lublin, eastern Poland, Polish and Ukrainian
media reported. The founding declaration says the college is to help
create a strategic partnership between Poland and Ukraine.

Speaking at the inauguration, both presidents stressed that the
college is the first step toward the setting up of a Polish-Ukrainian
university. "Educational institutions are able to build bridges of
reconciliation. Both science as well as culture and arts were, are,
and will be stronger, more powerful than borders, visas, and
passports," Kwasniewski said in Lublin. "For centuries, Lublin was a
place where cultures of the West and the East were coming together, so
the education of a younger generation here in the spirit of tolerance
and of the respect for others and democratic principles will promote
rapprochement of the nations that are on the road toward the unifying
Europe," Kuchma noted.

Eighty-six Ukrainian, two Belarusian, and 16 Polish postgraduate
students (who will be seeking their doctorates) were matriculated into
the college on 6 September. The college was set up by three
Lublin-based universities - Maria Curie-Sklodowska University,
Catholic University, and the Central and Eastern European Institute -
as well as three Ukrainian ones: the Kyiv-based Taras Shevchenko
University, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and the Lviv-based Ivan Franko
National University.


ETHNIC LEMKO WINS PRECEDENT CASE OVER NATIONALIZED PROPERTY. Last week
Poland's Supreme Administrative Court passed a precedent verdict in a
case over property confiscated by the state in 1949 from Maria Hladyk,
an ethnic Lemko who was compulsorily resettled in 1947 from her
village in Beskid Niski (a region in southeastern Poland).

In 1999, Maria Hladyk's grandson, Stefan Hladyk, applied to the Polish
authorities with a request to repel the 50-year-old decision by which
some 11 hectares of land (including 7.55 hectares of forest) was
confiscated from his grandmother. The Agriculture Ministry satisfied
his request. In last week's decision, the Supreme Administrative Court
rejected an appeal by Poland's State Forests, a state-run agency that
manages the country's forested areas and which had owned Maria
Hladyk's wooded plot for the past 50 years. The court simultaneously
confirmed Stefan Hladyk's ownership right to the plot.

This precedent verdict by the Supreme Administrative Court actually
admits that the nationalization of Lemko properties 50 years ago was
illegal. The verdict paves the way for other Lemkos (or their heirs)
to regain what was confiscated from them by the communist authorities.
According to PAP, Polish courts are currently going over some 200
lawsuits by Lemkos seeking to have their properties in Beskid Niski
returned to them.

[Ed. note: Some historical background to the case. In a bid to deprive
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) - which fought the Polish communist
government in 1944-47 - of support among Ukrainians inhabiting their
ethnic territories in southeastern Poland, the Polish authorities
decided in 1947 on a mass resettlement of Ukrainians to the so-called
Recovered Lands (Ziemie Odzyskane) - the former territories of the
Third Reich incorporated into post-World War II Poland. The Polish
army performed the drastic and violent Operation Vistula, which
resettled some 150,000 people. The operation, according to the General
Staff, contributed to "the final solution of the Ukrainian problem" in
Poland.

The resettled people included some 30,000 Lemkos, an ethnic community
with a vaguely defined ethnic identity: some Lemkos considered
themselves to be Ukrainians, while some believed they were a group
different from Ukrainians. Incidentally, support for the UPA among
Poland's pre-1947 Lemko community was much weaker than among Polish
Ukrainians.

The dispersion of Lemkos following the 1947 resettlement immensely
accelerated the process of their assimilation. The Polish authorities
did not give Lemkos the right to develop their ethnic identity in
1956, when Poland's Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, and Jews
were allowed to set up their own ethnic organizations to pursue some
educational, cultural, and social activities. Some Lemko activists
joined the Ukrainian movement but many others chose Polishness to
avoid being identified with Ukrainians.

In 1949, the Polish government passed a decree on the nationalization
of properties remaining after the resettlement of the Ukrainians and
Lemkos. Following the decree, local authorities passed appropriation
decisions with regard to resettled owners' land plots and belongings
remaining on their administrative territories.]

.................

*********************************************************
Copyright (c) 2001. RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
 
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report is prepared by Jan
Maksymiuk on the basis of a variety of sources including reporting by
"RFE/RL Newsline" and RFE/RL's broadcast services. It is distributed
every Tuesday.

Direct comments to Jan Maksymiuk at [email protected].
For information on subscriptions or reprints, see:
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Back issues are online at http://www.rferl.org/pbureport/

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