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The Polish minority in Belarus numbers officially about 294,549 according to 2009 census.〔( Statistics from belstat.gov.by (бюллетень). See page 22. ) ''RAR data compression of file''. Listing total population of Belarus with population by age and sex, marital status, education, nationality, language and livelihood ("Общая численность населения; численность населения по возрасту и полу, состоянию в браке, уровню образования, национальностям, языку, источникам средств к существованию") 〕 It forms the second largest ethnic minority in the country after the Russians, at 3.1% of the total population. An estimated 180,905 Belarusian Poles live in large agglomerations and 113,644 in smaller settlements, with the number of women exceeding the number of men by about 33,000.〔 Some estimates by Polish non-governmental sources in the U.S. are higher, citing the previous poll held in 1989 under the Soviet authorities with 413,000 Poles recorded.〔Boris Kleyn (1994), ( Poles in Belarus: Revival of Heritage and Search for Ancestors. ) ''PolishRoots.'' The Polish Genealogy Source. ''Chapter: History.'' Accessed August 8, 2011.〕 Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the emergence of sovereign Republic of Belarus, the situation of the Polish minority has been steadily improving. The politics of Sovietization pursued by decades of indoctrination, went down in history. Poles in Belarus began re-establishing the Polish language schools and their legal right of participating in the religious life. However, the attitude of new authorities to Polish minority are not very consistent. The new laws are insufficient, and the local levels of Belarusian government are largely unwilling to accept the aspirations of their own ethnic Poles,〔Prof. Piotr Eberhardt, ("Polacy na Białorusi." ''Świat Polonii''. Stowarzyszenie Wspólnota Polska. ) Accessed August 6, 2011.〕 making them into new targets for state-sanctioned intolerance, according to 2005 report by ''The Economist''.〔( "Bordering on madness: Belarus mistreats its Polish minority." ) ''The Economist'', June 16, 2005.〕〔( Witryna Związku Polaków na Białorusi (Association of Poles in Belarus). ) ''Stowarzyszenie Wspólnota Polska.'' Accessed August 6, 2011.〕 ==History== Polish ethnic and cultural presence in modern Belarus are an intricate part of its history. The lands of modern Belarus are the birthplace of Mickiewicz and Domejko among others.〔Boris Kleyn (1994), ("Poles in Belarus: Revival of Heritage and Search for Ancestors." ) ''PolishRoots''. The Polish Genealogy Source. Accessed August 08, 2011.〕 The proto-Belarusian language, called Ruthenian or Old Belarusian was protected by law in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and used as local vernacular, while both Polish and Latin languages were the lingua franca of the throne. "As the 16th century drew to a close" – wrote Andrew Savchenko about the local nobles, they had to contend with "an increasingly stark choice: to strengthen their ties with Poland or to suffer disastrous military defeat and subjugation" by the Russian Empire,〔Andrew Savchenko, ( Belarus: a perpetual borderland. ) BRILL, 2009. ISBN 90-04-17448-6. Accessed August 8, 2011.〕 thus leading to their 'voluntary' "Polonization". Throughout the 19th century, "the mass of unassuming peasants was subjected to 'active' Russification" by the Tsarist authorities including the abolition of the Uniate Church created by the Union of Brest, a uniquely Belarusian institution and the cornerstone of the Belarusian nation.〔Andrew Savchenko, ( Belarus: a perpetual borderland. ) BRILL, 2009. ''Ibidem, page 39.''〕 The territories of the Russian Empire consisting of modern Belarus were divided in 1921 between Poland and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic at the Treaty of Riga, thus ending the Polish-Soviet War. Thousands of Poles settled in the area following the peace treaty. In the elections of November 1922, a Belarusian party (in the ''Blok Mniejszości Narodowych'' coalition) obtained 14 seats in the Polish parliament (11 of them in the lower chamber, Sejm).〔Eugeniusz Mironowicz, ''"Białoruś"'', ''Trio'', Warszawa, 1999, 〕 In 1923, a new regulation was passed allowing for the Belarusian language to be used officially both in courts and in schools. Obligatory teaching of the Belarusian language was introduced in all Polish gymnasia in areas inhabited by Belarusians in 1927. Across the border, in the Belarusian SSR, Minsk was home to Polish community organizations and a Polish-speaking national theatre of Belarus. In addition, a Polish Autonomous District, Dzierzynszczyzna, was proclaimed on Soviet territory. However, in East Belarus the Soviet authorities liquidated most Polish organizations in the early 1930s. In 1937–1938 the Soviet NKVD and the Communist Party attempted to eradicate Poles as a minority group in East Belarus during the largest ethnic shooting and deportation action of the Great Terror. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Poles in Belarus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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