Suwałki Region Suwalszczyzna | |
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 A map of the Suwałki Region, with towns, roads and forest areas | |
| Country |  Poland |
| Capital | Suwałki |
| Time zone | UTC+1 (CET) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC+2 (CEST) |
| Highways |  |
Suwałki Region (Polish:Suwalszczyzna[a][suvalʂt͡ʂɨzna]ⓘ;Lithuanian:Suvalkų kraštas, Suvalkija) is a historical region around the city ofSuwałki in northeasternPoland nearthe border withLithuania. It encompasses thepowiats ofAugustów,Suwałki, andSejny,[1][2] and roughly corresponds to the southern part of the formerSuwałki Governorate.[3]
The region was disputed between Poland and Lithuania after their re-emergence as independent states followingWorld War I. This dispute along with theVilnius question was the cause of thePolish–Lithuanian War and theSejny Uprising. The area has since been part of Poland, with the exception of theGerman and Soviet occupation duringWorld War II. The Suwałki Region remains as the center of theLithuanian minority in Poland.[4][5]
Yotvingians until 14th century
Grand Duchy of Lithuania 1400s–1569
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 1569–1795
Kingdom of Prussia 1795–1807
Duchy of Warsaw 1807–1815
Congress Poland 1815–1867
Vistula Land 1867–1915
Ober Ost 1915–1919 (occupation)
Second Polish Republic and
Lithuania, contested during 1919–1920
Nazi Germany/
Soviet Union 1939–1941 (occupation)
TheNeolithic era ushered in the first settled agricultural communities in the area of present-day Poland, whose founders had migrated from theDanube River area beginning about 5500 BC. Later, the native post-Mesolithic populations adopted and further developed the agricultural way of life, between 4400 and about 2000 BC.[6] DuringPolish antiquity and thePolish Early Middle Ages, the northeast corner of what is now Poland was populated byWest Baltic tribes. They were at the outer limits of any substantial cultural influence from theRoman Empire.[7]
After the localYotvingians were eradicated orGermanized by theTeutonic Order in the 14th century, their southern lands were repopulated byPoles,Belarusians, andUkrainians. Their northern territories ofSuvalkija remained largely void of settlement until the 16th century, whenLithuanians began to migrate into the area.[8]
The region belonged, either fully or partially, to theGrand Duchy of Lithuania, within thePolish–Lithuanian union until 1569. Afterwards it was divided between the Grand Duchy and theCrown of the Kingdom of Poland, both forming thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.[b][9]
Following theThird Partition of Poland, the whole region belonged to theKingdom of Prussia from 1795 to 1807.[10] It then belonged to theDuchy of Warsaw from 1808 to 1815.[11]
In 1815, the Suwałki Region became part ofCongress Poland, a state which was tied bypersonal union to Russia and absorbed by theRussian Empire in the aftermath of the 1830November Uprising. TheSuwałki Governorate, in a Russian census conducted during the 1880s, was about 58% Lithuanian.[12] Most of its territory is now part of Lithuania, with only threeuyezds, Augustów, Suwałki, and Sejny, partially located in Poland.
The1897 Russian Census recorded the linguistic composition of local towns:[13]
The three corresponding uyezds (counties) had the following population, by language:[14]
The town of Sejny was located on the Polish-Lithuanianethno-linguistic boundary.[15]
DuringWorld War I, the region was captured by the German army and incorporated intoOber Ost. In the German census of 1916, Poles constituted 86.6% of the inhabitants in the AugustówKreis (district) and 74.2% in the Suwałki Kreis. Lithuanians accounted for 0.3% and 9.6% respectively. The Sejny Kreis had a Lithuanian majority of 51%. Poles made up 43.3% of the population.[16]
Poland's sovereigntywas restored in the wake of World War I, but its eastern borders were not settled. The Suwałki Region was claimed byre-established independent Lithuania, based on cultural heritage and later1920 peace treaty with Soviet Russia.
In November 1918, the German forces allowed the establishment of Polish civilian administration in the form of the Provisional Citizens' Council (Polish:Tymczasowa Rada Obywatelska Okręgu Suwalskiego, TROOS[d]). They permitted elections to thePolish Legislative Sejm, which took place on 16 February 1919. Nevertheless, the German military saw further strengthening of Polish aspirations as disadvantageous and in March 1919 handed control over the area to the LithuanianTaryba. In May 1919, units of the Lithuanian army joined German troops in Suwałki and Sejny.[17]
In July 1919, theEntente ordered the German army to leave the Suwałki Region, and adopted theFoch Line as a temporarydemarcation line between Poland and Lithuania. The line left on the Polish side: the counties of Suwałki and Augustów, the town of Sejny, and four communes[e] (gminas) of the Sejny county: Krasnopol, Krasnowo, Berżniki, and Giby.[18]
The Lithuanian army left the region in July–August 1919, after the Entente's decision and theSejny Uprising.[19] They returned a year later, during thePolish Army's retreat from advancing Soviets. In September 1920, the Poles forced the Lithuanians to withdraw behind the Foch Line.[20]
The Foch line coincided approximately with the eastern ethnic boundary of Lithuania. It evolved into the future Polish–Lithuanian border, which was internationally recognized in 1923, while being rejected by the Lithuanian government.[21][22] A small ethnically Lithuanian area (north of Sejny (Lithuanian: Seinai) and around Puńsk[f] (Lithuanian: Punskas)) was left under Polish control. The Suwałki section of thePolish–Lithuanian border remained unchanged afterWorld War II.[23]
During theInterwar[broken anchor] period, the Lithuanian authorities claimed that the region consisted of three counties (seeadministrative divisions of Lithuania), that were illegally occupied by Poland.
These included:
The aforementioned units roughly correspondended to the actual administrative division of the area intopowiats of Augustów, Suwałki and Sejny of theBiałystok Voivodeship of Poland, respectively. The region was the least economically developed part of Poland in the interwar period.[24]
Following the joint German-Sovietinvasion of Poland, which startedWorld War II in September 1939, most of the Suwałki Region was annexed byNazi Germany and adjoined to the province ofEast Prussia. A small part, including the town ofLipsk was occupied by theSoviet Union until 1941. UnderGerman occupation, the Polish population was subjected to the genocidalIntelligenzaktion campaign, which included mass arrests, massacres, deportations toforced labour andconcentration camps, andexpulsions, while in the Soviet-occupied part the Russians carried out deportations of Poles into the USSR. In April 1940, the Germans carried out mass deportations of local Polishintelligentsia to concentration camps, includingSoldau,Sachsenhausen andDachau.[25]
After World War II, Poland regained control over the territory. The area was administratively part of theBiałystok Voivodeship until 1975, then theSuwałki Voivodeship until 1998, and since 1999 it is located in thePodlaskie Voivodeship.
The area is still inhabited by theLithuanian minority. Lithuanians are concentrated in theSejny County[g] where they accounted for 20.2% of the population in2011[26] and exceeded 10% of the inhabitants in two communes –Gmina Puńsk (73.4%) andGmina Sejny (15.5%).[27] There are Lithuanian schools and cultural societies present in the Suwałki region and the Lithuanian language isspoken in the offices in the commune of Puńsk.
The Suwałki Region has many lakes and forests and is considered a relatively undeveloped region in Poland.
Towns:
Forests:
Lakes:
Parks:
a^ The Polish termSuwalszczyzna was formed in the second half of the 19th century to describe the territory of theSuwałki Governorate. In its narrowest sense, it may also refer to the area of theSuwałki powiat.[28]
b^ Parts of the Augustówpowiat (including the area of modern town of Augustów) belonged, with some breaks, toMazovia (from the mid-13th c. to 1409). After1569, Augustów was transferred to the Crown and absorbed by the Augustówstarostwo (Polish:starostwo augustowskie).[29]
c^ Buchowski gives the following data: Lithuanians – 60%, Poles – 20%, Jews – 16%, Germans – 3%, Russians – 1%.[15]
d^ TROOS encompassed the counties of Augustów, Suwałki, and Sejny.[30]
e^ Most of the Sejny county (10 out of 14 communes) remained on the Lithuanian side of the line.[18]
f^Puńsk had a Jewish majority in the late 19th century[31] and was inhabited mainly by Jews in the interwar period.[11] Today both Puńsk[11] andGmina Puńsk have Lithuanian majorities.[27][32]
g^ According to thePolish census of 2002, 90% of Lithuanians lived in the areas close to the Polish-Lithuanian border and nearly 60% of them resided in Gmina Puńsk.[33] The 2011 census, which allowed respondents to declare double national and ethnic identity, found that 49% of the people who declared Lithuanian nationality (either as their first or second identity) lived in Gmina Puńsk and Gmina Sejny (3,846 out of 7,863).[27][33]
The northern part of what was then Suwałki province, which belonged until World War I to the so-called Polish Kingdom, a part of the Russian Empire, was an ethnically Lithuanian area, and it now belongs to the Lithuanian state.
The stops on my way to Warsaw at Seinai and Suvalkai, where the majority of Poland's Lithuanians live, were also important.
The Suwałki region is a peculiar territory established in the 19th c. and combining the areas once belonging to the Great Duchy of Lithuania and to the Crown.
54°06′00″N22°56′00″E / 54.100000°N 22.933333°E /54.100000; 22.933333
