Polish victory
98-584: Operation Vistula ( Polish : Akcja Wisła ; Ukrainian : Опера́ція «Ві́сла» ) was the codename for the 1947 forced resettlement of close to 150,000 Ukrainians (including Rusyns , Boykos and Lemkos ) from the south-eastern provinces of post-war Poland , to the Recovered Territories in the west of the country. The action was carried out by the Soviet-installed Polish communist authorities to remove material support to
196-499: A / (spelled a ), / ɔ / (spelled o ) and / u / (spelled u and ó as separate letters). The nasal vowels are / ɛ w̃ / (spelled ę ) and / ɔ w̃ / (spelled ą ). Unlike Czech or Slovak, Polish does not retain phonemic vowel length — the letter ó , which formerly represented lengthened /ɔː/ in older forms of the language, is now vestigial and instead corresponds to /u/. The Polish consonant system shows more complexity: its characteristic features include
294-771: A dialect of Polish. Many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating for the recognition of Silesian as a regional language in Poland . The law recognizing it as such was passed by the Sejm and Senate in April 2024, but has been vetoed by President Andrzej Duda in late May of 2024. According to the last official census in Poland in 2011, over half a million people declared Silesian as their native language. Many sociolinguists (e.g. Tomasz Kamusella , Agnieszka Pianka, Alfred F. Majewicz, Tomasz Wicherkiewicz ) assume that extralinguistic criteria decide whether
392-669: A few culturally and linguistically related tribes from the basins of the Vistula and Oder before eventually accepting baptism in 966. With Western Christianity , Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet , which made it possible to write down Polish, which until then had existed only as a spoken language . The closest relatives of Polish are the Elbe and Baltic Sea Lechitic dialects ( Polabian and Pomeranian varieties). All of them, except Kashubian , are extinct. The precursor to modern Polish
490-520: A large number of branches in all of these areas) offers services available in Polish at all of their cash machines in addition to English and Spanish . According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England and Wales who consider Polish to be their "main" language. In Canada , there is a significant Polish Canadian population : There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to
588-543: A lect is an independent language or a dialect: speakers of the speech variety or/and political decisions, and this is dynamic (i.e. it changes over time). Also, research organizations such as SIL International and resources for the academic field of linguistics such as Ethnologue , Linguist List and others, for example the Ministry of Administration and Digitization recognized the Silesian language. In July 2007,
686-454: A nasal consonant, rather than a nasal vowel. For example, ą in dąb ("oak") is pronounced [ɔm] , and ę in tęcza ("rainbow") is pronounced [ɛn] (the nasal assimilates to the following consonant). When followed by l or ł (for example przyjęli , przyjęły ), ę is pronounced as just e . When ę is at the end of the word it is often pronounced as just [ɛ] . Depending on
784-653: A press campaign directed against "anti-government terrorist bandits", which would place the blame for the murders on various anti-Communist organisations. As a result, between the spring of 1945 and January 1947, at least 140 members of the PSL were murdered by the UB, among them notable figures such as Narcyz Wiatr and Władysław Kojder . The leader of the PSL, Stanisław Mikołajczyk , in the face of widespread election fraud and growing state terror against his party, fled Poland in April 1946. As early as September 1945, Radkiewicz ordered
882-796: A public critique of his actions, he was made the Minister of State Farms. In May 1957, he was removed from the Central Committee of the PZPR and, for three years, from the Party itself. From 1960 until 1968, he served as the general director of the Bureau of State Reserves and retired in 1968. He died on 13 December 1987, aged 84, in Warsaw . Over the years, he had been awarded the Cross of Grunwald and
980-402: A reversed diacritic hook called an ogonek . Polish is a synthetic and fusional language which has seven grammatical cases . It has fixed penultimate stress and an abundance of palatal consonants . Contemporary Polish developed in the 1700s as the successor to the medieval Old Polish (10th–16th centuries) and Middle Polish (16th–18th centuries). Among the major languages, it
1078-627: A seminar entitled On the Clergy's Offensive Against Our Task at a conference for secret police chiefs and Radkiewicz was the main discussant. In her presentation, Brystiger stated that the "final time of merciless fight with the Church" was coming soon and that, in order to win it, the secret services of the Polish United Workers' Party would need to employ "any means necessary". Radkiewicz, in his follow up remarks, noted that, "The clergy
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#17327765045981176-491: A single word. This applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), prze ze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable. The Polish alphabet derives from the Latin script but includes certain additional letters formed using diacritics . The Polish alphabet was one of three major forms of Latin-based orthography developed for Western and some South Slavic languages,
1274-405: A verse by Jan Brzechwa ) is W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [fʂt͡ʂɛbʐɛˈʂɨɲɛ ˈxʂɔw̃ʂt͡ʂ ˈbʐmi fˈtʂt͡ɕiɲɛ] ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed'). Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants – the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel. The consonant /j/ is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede
1372-478: A vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents /j/ , palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both depending on analysis). Also the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels when they follow another vowel, as in autor /ˈawtɔr/ ('author'), mostly in loanwords (so not in native nauka /naˈu.ka/ 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized Mateusz /maˈte.uʂ/ 'Matthew'). Some loanwords , particularly from
1470-772: A war time affiliate of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. Of the near 4,000 Ukrainians taken to Jaworzno camp, 823 were women and children. Torture, typhus epidemics and additional exigencies resulted in the several deaths and suicides in the camp. Military tribunals were also to judge civilians and sentenced to death 173 Ukrainians on the spot during Operation Vistula. The Ukrainians were transported in compact cattle and box cars, sanitary conditions were poor and food supplies irregular, some deportees died during transit. Ukrainians were packed into trains for Lublin or Oswiecim, where they were rerouted to their places of settlement. The final destination and degree of dispersal of groups
1568-711: Is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group within the Indo-European language family written in the Latin script . It is primarily spoken in Poland and serves as the official language of the country, as well as the language of the Polish diaspora around the world. In 2024, there were over 39.7 million Polish native speakers. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union . Polish
1666-419: Is also spoken as a second language in eastern Germany , northern Czech Republic and Slovakia , western parts of Belarus and Ukraine as well as in southeast Lithuania and Latvia . Because of the emigration from Poland during different time periods, most notably after World War II , millions of Polish speakers can also be found in countries such as Canada , Argentina , Brazil , Israel , Australia ,
1764-427: Is most closely related to Slovak and Czech but differs in terms of pronunciation and general grammar. Additionally, Polish was profoundly influenced by Latin and other Romance languages like Italian and French as well as Germanic languages (most notably German ), which contributed to a large number of loanwords and similar grammatical structures. Extensive usage of nonstandard dialects has also shaped
1862-480: Is not like the PSL (The Polish People's Party). With them it won't be as easy as it was with the PSL". As a result, in the autumn of 1950 Radkiewicz split Section V of the 5th Department into its own department (also the 5th) whose purpose was exclusively the "fight against the clergy". The actions against the Catholic Church took several forms, including harassment of priests and nuns, attempts to alienate
1960-447: Is possible to say ko goście zoba czy li? – here kogo retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns. These stress patterns are considered part of a "usable" norm of standard Polish - in contrast to the "model" ("high") norm. Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were
2058-595: Is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics , and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals. The traditional 32-letter Polish alphabet has nine additions ( ą , ć , ę , ł , ń , ó , ś , ź , ż ) to the letters of the basic 26-letter Latin alphabet , while removing three (x, q, v). Those three letters are at times included in an extended 35-letter alphabet. The traditional set comprises 23 consonants and 9 written vowels , including two nasal vowels ( ę , ą ) defined by
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#17327765045982156-524: Is the Old Polish language . Ultimately, Polish descends from the unattested Proto-Slavic language. The Book of Henryków (Polish: Księga henrykowska , Latin : Liber fundationis claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Heinrichau ), contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (in modern orthography: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj ;
2254-529: Is the most widely-used minority language in Lithuania's Vilnius County , by 26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results, as Vilnius was part of Poland from 1922 until 1939. Polish is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. In Ukraine, it is most common in the western parts of Lviv and Volyn Oblasts , while in West Belarus it is used by the significant Polish minority, especially in
2352-430: The kropka (superior dot) over the letter ż , and the ogonek ("little tail") under the letters ą, ę . The letters q, v, x are used only in foreign words and names. Polish orthography is largely phonemic —there is a consistent correspondence between letters (or digraphs and trigraphs ) and phonemes (for exceptions see below). The letters of the alphabet and their normal phonemic values are listed in
2450-401: The ś in święty ("holy") all represent the sound / ɕ / . The exceptions to the above rule are certain loanwords from Latin, Italian, French, Russian or English—where s before i is pronounced as s , e.g. sinus , sinologia , do re mi fa sol la si do , Saint-Simon i saint-simoniści , Sierioża , Siergiej , Singapur , singiel . In other loanwords
2548-813: The Bolshevik Revolution , he joined the Komsomol . After the Polish-Soviet War , in 1922, his family moved back to their home village, but Stanisław soon moved to the Soviet Union where he worked in the Polish Bureau of the Communist Party of Byelorussia . In 1925, he was sent clandestinely by Moscow back into Poland to take charge of the youth section of the illegal Polish Communist Party (KPP). Three years later, he
2646-596: The Brest and Grodno regions and in areas along the Lithuanian border. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries. In the United States , Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. According to the 2000 United States Census , 667,414 Americans of age five years and over reported Polish as
2744-527: The Minister of Public Security (MBP) divisional general Stanisław Radkiewicz and Marshal Michał Rola-Żymierski , the Minister of National Defence, issued the operative and organization plan for an operation named Akcja Wschód ('Operation East') articulating the goal of the operation as "To solve the Ukrainian problem in Poland once and for all" and instructing the participants to "Conduct evacuation from
2842-790: The National Remembrance Institute (IPN) and participants in the conference on the 1947 Operation Vistula and openly rejected the notion that it should in any way be linked to earlier events in Volhynia. "It was believed for years that the Vistula operation was the revenge for slaughter of Poles by the UPA forces in the east in the years 1943-1944. Such attitude is wrong and cannot be accepted. The Vistula operation should be condemned." In 2007, president of Poland Lech Kaczyński and president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko condemned
2940-780: The Polish Senate adopted a resolution condemning the postwar Polish government's Operation Vistula. In response, the Ukrainian Parliament ( Verkhovna Rada ) adopted the statement of understanding of the Polish Senate resolution as a serious step towards the correction of the injustices towards the Ukrainians in Poland. In the same resolution the Rada condemned the criminal acts of the Stalinist regime towards
3038-641: The Polish education system . In December 1945, Radkiewicz directed a general action against the only legal opposition party in Poland at the time, the PSL. The purpose of the action was to ensure a Communist victory in the upcoming elections and in the Polish people's referendum of 1946 . On Radkiewicz's orders, PSL candidates in the elections were harassed and removed from electoral lists, ballots sent to areas of high PSL support were intercepted and never delivered so that voting never took place, PSL town hall meetings were attacked by units of Milicja Obywatelska (MO) and UB and, finally, particularly active members of
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3136-666: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 's influence gave Polish the status of lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe . The process of standardization began in the 14th century and solidified in the 16th century during the Middle Polish era. Standard Polish was based on various dialectal features, with the Greater Poland dialect group serving as the base. After World War II , Standard Polish became
3234-588: The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issued an Order No. 3214-1050, for the deportation of all Ukrainian families of alleged UPA members to Siberia. Between 1945 and 1947 over 126,000 Ukrainians were apprehended by the NKVD and almost 32,000 of the Ukrainian underground were killed, attesting to the continuity of the same Soviet policy from before 1947. In the aftermath of the death of Karol Świerczewski, Lieutenant Colonel Wacław Kossowski, though concluding that
3332-681: The Ukrainian Insurgent Army . The Ukrainian Insurgent Army continued its guerrilla activities until 1947 in Subcarpathian and Lublin Voivodeships with no hope for any peaceful resolution; Operation Vistula brought an end to the hostilities. In a period of three months beginning on 28 April 1947 and with Soviet approval and aid about 141,000 civilians residing around Bieszczady and Low Beskids were forcibly resettled to former German territories , ceded to Poland at
3430-522: The United Kingdom and the United States . Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. At the time, it was a collection of dialect groups with some mutual features, but much regional variation was present. Mieszko I , ruler of the Polans tribe from the Greater Poland region, united
3528-624: The Yalta Conference at the end of World War II . The operation was named after the Vistula River , Wisła in Polish; some Polish and Ukrainian politicians as well as historians condemned the operation following the 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe and described it as ethnic cleansing . Others argued that no other means of stopping the violence existed since partisans used to regroup outside Polish borders. At
3626-474: The classical languages , have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-from-last) syllable. For example, fizyka ( /ˈfizɨka/ ) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. This may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement, for example muzyka /ˈmuzɨka/ 'music' vs. muzyka /muˈzɨka/ – genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When additional syllables are added to such words through inflection or suffixation ,
3724-578: The flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) , as well as the expulsion of Ukrainians and Operation Vistula , the 1947 migration of Ukrainian minorities in the Recovered Territories in the west of the country, contributed to the country's linguistic homogeneity. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak Polish somewhat differently, although the differences between modern-day vernacular varieties and standard Polish ( język ogólnopolski ) appear relatively slight. Most of
3822-404: The standard language ; considerable colloquialisms and expressions were directly borrowed from German or Yiddish and subsequently adopted into the vernacular of Polish which is in everyday use. Historically, Polish was a lingua franca , important both diplomatically and academically in Central and part of Eastern Europe . In addition to being the official language of Poland, Polish
3920-416: The 16th century, which is also regarded as the " Golden Age of Polish literature". The orthography was modified in the 19th century and in 1936. Tomasz Kamusella notes that "Polish is the oldest, non-ecclesiastical, written Slavic language with a continuous tradition of literacy and official use, which has lasted unbroken from the 16th century to this day." Polish evolved into the main sociolect of
4018-553: The 19,000 adult males deported by the NKVD, most were sent to coal mines and stone quarries in the north. None of the people deported by the NKVD received any farms or empty homes to live in. The goal of the operation was to suppress the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which had been fighting the Polish People's Army (LWP) in the southeast of Poland. The original codename of the operation was Akcja Wschód (Operation East), similar to Operation West ( Akcja Zachód ) conducted by
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4116-486: The 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto (91,810 speakers) and Montreal . The geographical distribution of the Polish language was greatly affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II and Polish population transfers (1944–46) . Poles settled in the " Recovered Territories " in the west and north, which had previously been mostly German -speaking. Some Poles remained in
4214-583: The Henryków monastery, noted that "Hoc est in polonico" ("This is in Polish"). The earliest treatise on Polish orthography was written by Jakub Parkosz [ pl ] around 1470. The first printed book in Polish appeared in either 1508 or 1513, while the oldest Polish newspaper was established in 1661. Starting in the 1520s, large numbers of books in the Polish language were published, contributing to increased homogeneity of grammar and orthography. The writing system achieved its overall form in
4312-663: The NKVD on the Soviet side of the border. It is sometimes assumed that the cause for Operation Vistula was the assassination on 28 March 1947 of the Polish communist General Karol Świerczewski in an ambush set up by the UPA. About 12 hours after the incident, the Polish Soviet-sponsored authorities made the decision to deport all Ukrainians and Lemkos. It is known that preparations for Operation Vistula had started in January 1947, if not earlier. On 10 September 1947
4410-636: The Polish church from the Vatican via the use of moles and agent provocateurs, seizure and expropriation of church property, and staging of incidents which were meant to embarrass the Catholic hierarchy in the eyes of the public and Western opinion (for example, planting of weapons in churches). In particularly "difficult" cases of politically active priests and Catholics who "didn't get the message", Radkiewicz ordered their elimination from public life, or, if all else failed, murder. In December 1954, Radkiewicz
4508-512: The Polish people. On 18 April 2002 in Krasiczyn , Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski expressed regret over Operation Vistula. The president described the operation as the symbol of harm against Ukrainians committed by the communist authorities. "Speaking on behalf of the Republic of Poland I want to express regret to all those wronged by the operation" - Kwaśniewski wrote in a letter to
4606-569: The San River and south of Przemyśl . The new Soviet acquisitions went to Ukraine, and populations were exchanged. Following the transfer of land, the Soviets built large coal mines there with the total capacity of 15 million tons annually. Living standards were harsh for the deported Ukrainians, as deportees were refused compensation for the property and land they were forced to leave behind and because communities and families were separated across
4704-671: The Silesian language was recognized by ISO , and was attributed an ISO code of szl. Some additional characteristic but less widespread regional dialects include: Polish linguistics has been characterized by a strong strive towards promoting prescriptive ideas of language intervention and usage uniformity, along with normatively-oriented notions of language "correctness" (unusual by Western standards). Polish has six oral vowels (seven oral vowels in written form), which are all monophthongs , and two nasal vowels . The oral vowels are / i / (spelled i ), / ɨ / (spelled y and also transcribed as /ɘ/ or /ɪ/), / ɛ / (spelled e ), /
4802-747: The Soviet Union, even communists who helped 'repatriate' Ukrainians in the previous wave, were forcible resettled". Nationality was not decided by 'individual choice' but by religion, language and "frequently by the letter 'U' in the Kennkarte Polish citizens received from the Nazi occupation during the war". Those who resisted deportation were imprisoned in the Jaworzno prison camp in Silesia. In total 3,936 Ukrainians were imprisoned in Jaworzno camp,
4900-412: The area known as Lemkovyna . The largest communities of Lemkos live in the villages Łosie , Krynica , Nowica , Zdynia , Gładyszów , Hańczowa , Zyndranowa , Uście Gorlickie , Bartne , Bielanka , and in the eastern part of Lemkovyna – Wysoczany , Mokre , Morochów , Szczawne , Kulaszne , Rzepedź , Turzańsk , Komańcza . Also in the towns Sanok , Nowy Sącz , and Gorlice . On 3 August 1990,
4998-454: The borders of Poland. Many Ukrainians as well as tens of thousands of Poles (ca. 200,000 persons or more) fled from southeastern Poland to central Poland between 1944 and 1945 independently of treaties due to the pacification campaign by the Bandera faction. Operation Vistula occurred within the Polish national borders. The transfer involved persons who were internally relocated as citizens of
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#17327765045985096-485: The cases mentioned above, the letter i if followed by another vowel in the same word usually represents / j / , yet a palatalization of the previous consonant is always assumed. The reverse case, where the consonant remains unpalatalized but is followed by a palatalized consonant, is written by using j instead of i : for example, zjeść , "to eat up". The letters ą and ę , when followed by plosives and affricates, represent an oral vowel followed by
5194-664: The communist forces. Nevertheless, the UPA remained active for a few more years. After the last relocations, UPA's activities on Polish territory died out. Some Ukrainian partisans fled to Western Europe , notably to West Germany , and the United States . A principle of 'collective responsibility' was applied–all Ukrainians within the indicted area of Poland were deported regardless of political leanings, alliances and historical affiliations. Polish authorities decided to resettle "every person of Ukrainian nationality". Mixed families, communities that did not support UPA, Lemkos returning from Red Army service, "even loyal party members trained in
5292-713: The corresponding sentence in modern Polish: Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj or Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij ; and in English: Come, let me grind, and you take a rest ), written around 1280. The book is exhibited in the Archdiocesal Museum in Wrocław, and as of 2015 has been added to UNESCO 's " Memory of the World " list. The medieval recorder of this phrase, the Cistercian monk Peter of
5390-488: The country. The final relocation of Ukrainians and Poles between the state borders occurred in 1951, when Poland was forced by the Soviet Union to adjust the border in the upper San River area and in the Belz area for economic reasons. Poland gave up rich deposits of coal including the city of Bełz that was in Poland, and in exchange, was assigned a stretch of barren land with low quality soil and no natural resources east of
5488-479: The disappearance of yers . Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ] ('absolute' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło [ˈʑd͡ʑbwɔ] ('blade of grass'), wstrząs [ˈfstʂɔw̃s] ('shock'), and krnąbrność [ˈkrnɔmbrnɔɕt͡ɕ] ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from
5586-430: The distinction between regular penultimate and exceptional antepenultimate stress. Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy , etc. These endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress; for example, zro biłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable, and zro bi libyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive authorities ,
5684-531: The eastern parts of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth wrote Polish in the Arabic alphabet. The Cyrillic script is used to a certain extent today by Polish speakers in Western Belarus , especially for religious texts. The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska (graphically similar to the acute accent ) over the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź and through the letter in ł ;
5782-420: The end of words (where devoicing occurs) and in certain consonant clusters (where assimilation occurs). For details, see Voicing and devoicing in the article on Polish phonology. Most Polish words are paroxytones (that is, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable of a polysyllabic word), although there are exceptions. Polish permits complex consonant clusters, which historically often arose from
5880-476: The entire country. Polish has traditionally been described as consisting of three to five main regional dialects: Silesian and Kashubian , spoken in Upper Silesia and Pomerania respectively, are thought of as either Polish dialects or distinct languages , depending on the criteria used. Kashubian contains a number of features not found elsewhere in Poland, e.g. nine distinct oral vowels (vs.
5978-588: The expellees comprised about 20,000 Ukrainians . With time, the total number grew to 80,000 and eventually to close to 150,000 inhabitants of Polesie , Roztocze , Pogórze Przemyskie , Bieszczady , Low Beskid , Beskid Sądecki , and Ruś Szlachtowska . The expellees were resettled over a wide area in the Northern and Western Territories assigned to Poland by the Potsdam Agreement including Warmia and Masuria . A consequence of Operation Vistula
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#17327765045986076-412: The following table. The following digraphs and trigraphs are used: Voiced consonant letters frequently come to represent voiceless sounds (as shown in the tables); this occurs at the end of words and in certain clusters, due to the neutralization mentioned in the Phonology section above. Occasionally also voiceless consonant letters can represent voiced sounds in clusters. The spelling rule for
6174-410: The four provinces of Olsztyn, Szczecin, Wrocław and Gdansk, carefully dispersed so that the Ukrainian deportees did not constitute more than 10% of the local population. The expedited plan approved by Civil Security Minister Brigadier General Radkevych and Marshal Zhymerski instructed "Conduct evacuation from the Southern and Eastern border region of all the people of Ukrainian descent...and settle them in
6272-417: The identity of the assailants responsible for Świerczewski's death was 'impossible to determine', nonetheless advised the Polish general staff on 11 April "As soon as possible, an Operational Group should be organized, which would elaborate a plan to include among other matters the complete extermination of the remnants of the Ukrainian population in the southeastern border region of Poland". On April 16, 1947,
6370-435: The language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English , 0.25% of the US population, and 6% of the Polish-American population. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census (over 50%) were found in three states: Illinois (185,749), New York (111,740), and New Jersey (74,663). Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services (which has
6468-439: The letter y . The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate stress – in a word of more than one syllable, the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress, e.g. in a four-syllable word, where the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first. Each vowel represents one syllable, although the letter i normally does not represent
6566-431: The middle aged and young speak vernaculars close to standard Polish, while the traditional dialects are preserved among older people in rural areas. First-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty recognizing the regional and social differences. The modern standard dialect , often termed as "correct Polish", is spoken or at least understood throughout
6664-460: The most widely spoken variant of Polish across the country, and most dialects stopped being the form of Polish spoken in villages. Poland is one of the most linguistically homogeneous European countries; nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their first language . Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in areas which were once administered or occupied by Poland, notably in neighboring Lithuania , Belarus , and Ukraine . Polish
6762-480: The name Tarzan . Stanis%C5%82aw Radkiewicz Stanisław Radkiewicz ( Polish pronunciation: [staˈɲiswaf ratˈkʲevit͡ʂ] ; 19 January 1903 – 13 December 1987) was a Polish communist activist with Soviet citizenship, a member of the pre-war Communist Party of Poland and of the post-war Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). As head of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland ( Urząd Bezpieczeństwa or UB ) between 1944 and 1954, he
6860-424: The newly established borders were deported to new Poland over three years . In 1944 the expulsion from Ukraine involved 117,000 Poles officially. In 1945 the number swelled to 512,000 Poles. In 1946 the total was 158,500 Poles from the Ukrainian SSR alone. Some 482,000 Ukrainians were deported to the Ukrainian SSR between September 1944 and April 1946, although some 300,000 remained in their native settlements within
6958-415: The nobles in Poland–Lithuania in the 15th century. The history of Polish as a language of state governance begins in the 16th century in the Kingdom of Poland . Over the later centuries, Polish served as the official language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , Congress Poland , the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , and as the administrative language in the Russian Empire 's Western Krai . The growth of
7056-637: The north-western territories of Poland in the highest possible degree of scattering...". Ukrainians were faced with largely decrepit accommodations, as most habitable buildings in the 'recovered territories' had recently been moved into by newly repatriated Poles after the 1944 Polish-Soviet population transfers. They received financial credits and material help from the government, including grain shipments and other foodstuffs. Dr Zbigniew Palski writes that new homes were renovated with public funds; in Olsztyn Voivodeship 2,427 houses were rebuilt by
7154-507: The old name. In the period after 1945, the secret police grew rapidly under Radkiewicz's direction, with twelve thousand agents in April 1945 and twenty-four thousand in December 1945. At its height, in 1953, the organisation had thirty-three thousand agents. Radkiewicz's UB focused its activities on several main areas: Additionally, the UB played a significant role in organising Operation Vistula , and in consolidating Communist control of
7252-477: The operation as a violation of human rights . President Yushchenko also noted that the operation was executed by and was the responsibility of a "totalitarian communist regime". [REDACTED] Media related to Operation Wisła at Wikimedia Commons Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] )
7350-423: The organisation of the 5th Department of UB whose task was to "counter organisations and groups active against the interests of the (Communist) Party". Within the 5th Department, Section V was charged with investigating and building actions against the Catholic Church. Within the section, Sub-Section I was charged with investigating those active in the Catholic Church (including the clergy) while Sub-Section II's focus
7448-673: The others being Czech orthography and Croatian orthography , the last of these being a 19th-century invention trying to make a compromise between the first two. Kashubian uses a Polish-based system, Slovak uses a Czech-based system, and Slovene follows the Croatian one; the Sorbian languages blend the Polish and the Czech ones. Historically, Poland's once diverse and multi-ethnic population utilized many forms of scripture to write Polish. For instance, Lipka Tatars and Muslims inhabiting
7546-401: The palatal sounds / ɕ / , / ʑ / , / tɕ / , / dʑ / and / ɲ / is as follows: before the vowel i the plain letters s, z, c, dz, n are used; before other vowels the combinations si, zi, ci, dzi, ni are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms ś, ź, ć, dź, ń are used. For example, the s in siwy ("grey-haired"), the si in siarka ("sulfur") and
7644-404: The party were murdered. Radkiewicz issued an order to his agents in which he instructed them to prepare an action of "liquidating" members of the PSL which, according to him, opposed Communist rule in Poland and which supposedly supported the anti-Communist underground. The order also stated that these liquidations were to be made to look as the work of the anti-Communist underground, combined with
7742-494: The police Milicja Obywatelska and the Security Service Urząd Bezpieczeństwa . At 4am on 28 April 1947, six divisions of the Polish army surrounded the villages of southeastern Poland that were inhabited by Ukrainians. In a commensurate action, Soviet internal security forces and Czechoslovak border guards blocked the eastern and southern borders of Poland, preventing the deportees from fleeing. Initially,
7840-520: The previously Polish-ruled territories in the east that were annexed by the USSR , resulting in the present-day Polish-speaking communities in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, although many Poles were expelled from those areas to areas within Poland's new borders. To the east of Poland, the most significant Polish minority lives in a long strip along either side of the Lithuania - Belarus border. Meanwhile,
7938-540: The same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście , although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zro bi liśmy 'we did' should be prescriptively stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as zrobi li śmy ). These irregular stress patterns are explained by the fact that these endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of ko go zoba czy liście? ('whom did you see?') it
8036-692: The same time the Soviet Union carried out a parallel action, Operation West, in the Ukrainian SSR . Although both operations were coordinated from Moscow, there was a difference in their results. Operation West was conducted in West Ukraine by the Soviet NKVD and targeted the families of suspected UPA members. Over 114,000 individuals, mostly women and children, were deported to the Kazakh SSR and Siberia and forced into extreme poverty . Of
8134-410: The series of affricate and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish. The full set of consonants, together with their most common spellings, can be presented as follows (although other phonological analyses exist): Neutralization occurs between voiced – voiceless consonant pairs in certain environments, at
8232-506: The six of standard Polish) and (in the northern dialects) phonemic word stress, an archaic feature preserved from Common Slavic times and not found anywhere else among the West Slavic languages . However, it was described by some linguists as lacking most of the linguistic and social determinants of language-hood. Many linguistic sources categorize Silesian as a regional language separate from Polish, while some consider Silesian to be
8330-603: The southern and eastern border region of all the people of Ukrainian descent...and settle them in the north-western territories of Poland in the highest possible degree of scattering...". The operation was carried out by the Operational Group Vistula consisting of about 20,000 personnel commanded by General Stefan Mossor . The group included soldiers of the Polish People's Army and the Internal Security Corps , as well as functionaries of
8428-601: The state, in Szczecin Voivodeship , only 717 although the needs were exponentially greater: reaching 10,000 households, far beyond the available state budget. Most of their personal debts, however, were remitted in the following years. Some five thousand Lemko families returned to their home regions in south-eastern Poland in 1957 and 1958. While the Polish census of 2003 shows only 5,800 Lemkos (self-identification), there are estimates that up to 100,000 Lemkos in total live in Poland today, and up to 10,000 of them in
8526-494: The stress normally becomes regular. For example, uniwersytet ( /uɲiˈvɛrsɨtɛt/ , 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛtu/ ) and derived adjective uniwersytecki ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛt͡skʲi/ ) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Loanwords generally become nativized to have penultimate stress. In psycholinguistic experiments, speakers of Polish have been demonstrated to be sensitive to
8624-563: The vowel i is changed to y , e.g. Syria , Sybir , synchronizacja , Syrakuzy . The following table shows the correspondence between the sounds and spelling: Digraphs and trigraphs are used: Similar principles apply to / kʲ / , / ɡʲ / , / xʲ / and /lʲ/ , except that these can only occur before vowels, so the spellings are k, g, (c)h, l before i , and ki, gi, (c)hi, li otherwise. Most Polish speakers, however, do not consider palatalization of k, g, (c)h or l as creating new sounds. Except in
8722-443: The word, the phoneme / x / can be spelt h or ch , the phoneme / ʐ / can be spelt ż or rz , and / u / can be spelt u or ó . In several cases it determines the meaning, for example: może ("maybe") and morze ("sea"). In occasional words, letters that normally form a digraph are pronounced separately. For example, rz represents /rz/ , not / ʐ / , in words like zamarzać ("freeze") and in
8820-583: Was arrested for activity against the sovereignty and independence of the Polish Republic and sentenced to four years in prison. After being released, he served as a functionary of the KPP. He was arrested again in 1937 and served half a year in prison. In 1938, on the orders of Joseph Stalin , the KPP was disbanded and many of its leaders were executed as part of the Great Purge . Radkiewicz, however,
8918-689: Was born in the village of Rozmierki in the Slonimsky Uyezd of the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus ). He was the son of farmer Franciszek and Paulina née Lenczewska. He finished third grade. In 1915, during World War I , together with his family he was evacuated by the retreating Imperial Russian Army to Buzuluk in the Samara Governorate , where he worked on local farms. After
9016-501: Was determined by the judgement of the intelligence officers, whose colleagues were waiting to receive their instruction in sealed envelopes at the end of the line. The deportations occurred in stages. Poland and the Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges resulting from bilateral agreements signed on 9 September 1944 and 16 August 1945. The first transfers occurred at the end of World War II. The Poles who resided east of
9114-757: Was made head of the UB secret police in 1944, shortly after the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) "Lublin Committee" explicitly with Stalin's approval. On 31 December 1944, the PKWN was transformed into the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland and the UB was renamed Ministry of Public Security of Poland (MBP), although it continued to be known by its UB acronym partly because local offices continued under
9212-692: Was one of the chief organisers of Stalinist terror in Poland. He also served as a political commissar and was made a divisional general in Communist Poland . Unlike other individuals responsible for the Stalinist terror in the 1940s and 1950s, Radkiewicz was never held responsible for his crimes, although in 1956, after the Poznań protests and his official " self-critique ", he was removed from his post as Minister of Public Security and made Minister of State Agricultural Farms (PGRs). Radkiewicz
9310-667: Was removed from the position of Minister of Security, and in July 1955 he stepped down from the Political Bureau of the PZPR. After workers' unrest in Poznan in 1956 and the Polish October reforms, several other members of the security services responsible for the Stalinist terror in Poland were put on trial (among others Roman Romkowski , Józef Różański and Anatol Fejgin ), but Radkiewicz went unpunished. After he made
9408-471: Was spared as he enjoyed Stalin's confidence and was in fact put in charge by Stalin of liquidating KPP's party cells . During World War II , he volunteered for the Red Army , but was later transferred and made a political commissar of the Polish 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division and later a division general . He was also a delegate to the first Polish Sejm under Communist rule. Radkiewicz
9506-513: Was the almost total depopulation of Pogórze Przemyskie , Bieszczady and Beskid Niski coupled with the NKVD-led forcible repatriation of Ukrainians from Poland to the Soviet Union (the Ukrainian SSR and Siberia ) in 1944–46. The relocation of the population put the UPA forces in Poland in the most difficult position; deprived of human and other resources, the outnumbered Ukrainian partisans were unable to uphold their armed resistance against
9604-411: Was to be on the Catholic press and secular Catholic organisations. The head of the 5th Department was Julia Brystiger who, together with Radkiewicz, organized the secret police's operations aimed at the Catholic Church in Poland. In October 1947, Brystiger - who was an interrogator of political prisoners widely known for her sadism and Gestapo -like methods of torture during questioning – presented
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