Polish minorities participation in Lithuanian local politics

Abstract

The article contributes to three areas. First, it presents the process of the revival of Polish activity in Lithuania after World War II. Secondly, it focuses on the political activity undertaken by the Polish minority at the state level. Third, in the example of the Soleczniki Municipality District, it characterizes the activity of the Polish minority at the level of local government administration. I attempt to find the following answers: (1) How does the Local Government Council function, whose representatives are mostly people from the Polish minority? (2) Does nationality matter in the functioning of the Council? The choice of the time frame (1990–2016) is dictated by the beginning of the collapse of the USSR and the greatest political success of the Polish party at the parliamentary level in 2016. According to various statistical data, the Polish minority in Lithuania ranges from 200 to 250 thousand inhabitants in 3 million Lithuania. It is an indigenous and well-organized community. The Polish revival in Lithuania after the devastation of World War II began more or less in the 1960s and reached its peak at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. In the newly emerging state, the Polish community was not idle. Associated with the Union of Poles in Lithuania, she began cultural, educational, and political activities. The article is the result of many years of observation of the work of local government activists, preceded by a historical analysis of the emergence of national states and national minorities.