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Concept
Polish National District
Summary
Polish National Districts (called in Russian "полрайоны", polrajony, an abbreviation for "польские национальные районы", "Polish national raions") were national districts of the Soviet Union in the interbellum period providing national autonomy for Polish minorities in the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics of the USSR. They were created in an attempt to live up to the postulate of Leninism about the rights of nations for self-determination. Also, creation of these regions served one of purposes of the Bolsheviks to export the revolution since after their defeat in the Polish-Soviet War, the Soviets did not give up their idea of creating a Soviet Republic in Poland. Polish National Districts were supposed to be the origin of future Soviet Poland. They both were disbanded in mid-1930s and a significant part of their populations ("anti-Soviet and unreliable elements") was deported to Kazakhstan, with many of them killed during the Great Purge.
The possibility of granting autonomy to Polish-populated areas of the Soviet Union was discussed during the Polish-Soviet war by key persons involved in the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee. However, there were no plans to create whole districts; autonomy would be granted to separate villages. In 1925 it was decided that a district would be created in Soviet Ukraine, where, according to the 1926 survey, 476,435 Poles lived. This was 1.6% of the Ukrainian population, but in the Zhitomir Oblast, their number reached 10%. Among persons who supported the district were Soviet communists of Polish origin, such as Feliks Kon, Julian Marchlewski, Felix Dzerzhinsky and Tomasz Dąbal. Thus Marchlewszczyzna was created, and later Dzierżyńszczyzna.
Marchlewszczyzna was the Polish National District (Мархлевский польский национальный район) in Ukraine created as an experiment and as part of the Soviet Korenizatsia campaign on 21 July 1925 in Zhytomyr Okruha on resolution of Little Presidium of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee.
Official source
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