Cuius regio? Ideological and Territorial Cohesion of Silesia vol. 5 eds Lucyna Harc, Przemysław Wiszewski, Rościsław Żerelik Online access: http://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/publication/78119 Joanna Nowosielska-Sobel, Grzegorz Strauchold, Przemysław Wiszewski Permanent Change. The New Region(s) of Silesia (1945-2015) ed. Przemysław Wiszewski Wrocław 2015 The book was published with funds of the program Cuius regio. Analiza sił spajających i destrukcyjnych w obrębie regionu określających przynależność osób (grup społecznych) oraz spójność społeczną jako zjawisko historyczne / Cuius regio. An analysis of the cohesive and disruptive forces destining the attachment of (groups of) persons to and the cohesion within regions as a historical phenomenon, decision of the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education No. 832/N-ESF-CORECODE/2010/0. Peer review: Małgorzata Ruchniewicz Translated by: Matthew La Fontaine, Paweł Ausir Dembowski, Anna Lidia Błaszczyk, Piotr Szutt Language proofreading: Matthew La Fontaine, Judson Hamilton © Copyright by Authors and Uniwersytet Wrocławski Cover design: Marcin Fajfruk Typesetting: Aleksandra Kumaszka, Tomasz Kalota ISBN 978-83-942651-2-0 Publishing House eBooki.com.pl ul. Obornicka 37/2 51-113 Wrocław tel.: +48 602 606 508 email: [email protected] WWW: http://www.ebooki.com.pl Table of Contents Przemysław Wiszewski A time of transformation. New Silesia under construction (1945-2015) ............ 9 Joanna Nowosielska-Sobel Administrative changes..................................................................................... 19 Grzegorz Strauchold Economy ........................................................................................................... 47 Joanna Nowosielska-Sobel Rural society after 1945 .................................................................................... 59 Grzegorz Strauchold Urban communities ........................................................................................... 77 Grzegorz Strauchold Ethnic issues ..................................................................................................... 89 Joanna Nowosielska-Sobel Cultural and regional identity in Silesia after 1945 (selected issues) ............. 151 Przemysław Wiszewski New Silesia or new post-Silesian regions? ..................................................... 169 Przemysław Wiszewski A Prothean region. The changing shape of Silesia (12th-21st centuries) .......... 175 Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 209 Index ................................................................................................................. 241 Polish-German-Czech concordance of topographic names .......................... 245 The Authors ....................................................................................................... 249 Przemysław Wiszewski A time of transformation. New Silesia under construction (1945-2015) Abstract The submitted book contains a collection of articles on issues related to the formation of Silesia as a region after the end of World War II until the present times. The exchange of population that took place in the years 1945-1947, i.e. expulsion of German inhabitants of Silesia and their replacement with Polish migrants from Borderlands and central Poland, was the end of a con- tinuous transfer of regional tradition that dated back to the 12th century. The formation of new regional structures was conditioned by pressure applied by the central government to connect Silesia as a cultural space with Poland, but also with the existence of new administrative divi- sions. The administrative divisions quite often underwent drastic changes. Settling in the River Oder basin, in a foreign cultural and civil environment with people from both the Polish lands and also the Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania and - over time from Belgium, France and Greece, created a community that initially was deeply divided. Did they manage to overcome these divisions and create a new Silesian regional community? Keywords regiogenesis, tradition, regional history, Silesia, communist regime This book contains a collection of articles on issues related to the functioning of Silesia as a region from the end of War World II to the present day. The studies presented here have been prepared as a summary of the final stages of research car- ried out by the Polish Cuius regio programme team. The analysis of cohesive and disruptive forces determining the attachment and commitment of (groups of) per- sons to and the cohesion within regions executed as part of the work carried out by the European Science Foundation1. The research concerning Silesia was financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education2. Previous volumes were devoted to the history of societal consistency in the Oder River Basin – in the area referred to as the Silesian historical region, which took place from the Middle Ages 1 For more on the project, see www.cuius-regio.eu and Lucyna Harc, Przemysław Wiszewski, Rościsław Żerelik, Czyj to region, czyli słów kilka o pewnym projekcie badawczym, ‘Śląski Kwar- talnik Historyczny Sobótka’, 67 (2012), no. 4, p. 3-5. 2 Cuius Regio. The analysis of cohesive and disruptive forces determining the attachment and com- mitment of (groups of) persons to and the cohesion within regions, decision of the Minister of Sci- ence and Higher Education no. 832/N-ESF-CORECODE/2010/0. 9 Przemysław Wiszewski to 19453. The abridged and modified versions of most of the articles presented in these volumes were published in Polish in a journal entitled ‘Śląski Kwartalnik Historyczny Sobótka’4. In the recent volume researchers from Wrocław’s scholarly community, Joan- na Nowosielska-Sobel and Grzegorz Strauchold, have tried to analyse the function of five basic factors that helped determine the region’s coherency after 1945. Ac- cording to overall project’s assumptions, these were: 1) changes in the administra- tive framework of the functioning of Silesian communities (J. Nowosielska-Sobel); 2) the elements of the economy that strengthened or weakened the region’s coher- ency (G. Strauchold); 3) the way in which the division of the community that in- habited Silesia into a rural and an urban population functioned, two groups with different social statuses, goals and cultural backgrounds (G. Strauchold – city, J. Nowosielska-Sobiel – village); 4) thorough transformations of the ethnic struc- ture of the Oder River Basin which took place after 1945 and significantly contrib- uted to the people’s sense of affiliationto the regional community (Grzegorz Strau- chold); 5) the complex issue of cultural identity or – the cultural identity of the inhabitants of the region and particular local communities (J. Nowosielska-Sobel). This consistent reasoning concerning a specific period in the history of Silesia is complemented by an attempt to recognise all the changes in our area of interest which took place between the mid-12th and early 21st century. They show the flexi- ble, relative nature of how a regional community functioned in the European po- litical and cultural space by using Silesia as an example (Przemysław Wiszewski). Outline of the history of Silesia between 1945-2015 Although, compared to the previous periods concerning the history of the re- gion, this one is the shortest, it is also full of events that thoroughly reshaped the 3 See The Long Formation of the Region (c. 1000-1526), ed. Przemysław Wiszewski, Wrocław 2013 (=Cuius Regio? Ideological and Territorial Cohesion of Silesia (c.1000-2000), eds Lucyna Harc, Przemysław Wiszewski, Rościsław Żerelik, vol. 1); The Strenghtening of the Silesian Regionalism (1526-1740), eds Lucyna Harc, Gabriela Wąs, Wrocław 2014 (=Cuius Regio? Ideological and Territorial Cohesion of Silesia (c.1000-2000), eds Lucyna Harc, Przemysław Wiszewski, Rościsław Żerelik, vol. 2); Region Divided: Times of Nation-States (1918-1945), eds Marek Czapliński, Przemysław Wiszewski, Wrocław 2014 (=Cuius regio? Ideological and Territorial Cohesion of the historical region of Silesia (c.1000-2000), eds Lucyna Harc, Przemysław Wiszewski, Rościsław Żerelik, vol. 4); volume devoted to the 19th c. edited by Lucyna Harc and Teresa Kulak, is currently in print. Works are available under the Open Access policy in printed (with preference for libraries) and digital form on the project website (www.cuiusregio.uni.wroc.pl) and Digital Library of University of Wrocław, collection of the Faculty of Historical and Pedagogical Sciences. 4 See ‘Śląski Kwartalnik Historyczny Sobótka’, 67 (2012), no. 4; 68 (2013), no. 2; 68 (2013), no. 4; 69 (2014), no. 3; 70 (2015), no. 3. 10 A time of transformation. New Silesia under construction (1945-2015) regional community. First of all, it was a period when determined transformations changed the regional community to an unprecedented extent. It was the time of the downfall of this community and the attempt to reconstruct it in a completely new or even different tradition under the auspices of the state authorities, and the rise of new or even innovative forms of regional community that were different from what had been expected. Though earlier regional and local traditions significantly modified the impact of political factors, in the 20th century and in the early 21st century, prob- lems concerning the management of great social groups – nations – and the way of solving them, commonly called politics, determined the shape of Silesia. For Silesia,