Polish Education versus the Roman Catholic Church in Podolia in the Inter-war Period

Abstract

Polish education in the territory of Podolia before the First World War was virtually absent. Only the changes that followed 1914 in Russia had made the development of Polish education possible. The clergy and the Roman Catholic Church played a considerable role here. The first school with Polish as the i=main language in Podolia government was established in 1916 at a parish in Płoskirów. In the years of 1917-1920, the Polish School Motherland took care about Polish education in Podolia. With a fairly short period a number of Polish schools in this region had risen to over 500, with circa 35.000 children and adolescents.

After the Bolsheviks had finally occupied Podolia, the decisive majority of those schools ceased to exist or became clandestine. By virtue of the decree On separation of the Church and State of 1918 the Soviet authorities first set about eliminating religious instruction from schools and getting rid of all illegal Polish educational institutions, often those that functioned at Catholic parishes. During the first years of the Bolshevik rule the network of Polish schools in Podolia decreased from year to year. It was as late as after 1924 that the number of Polish educational posts increased in the Soviet Union, including mainly in Podolia. In 1934, in the Winnicki region, which embraced among other things the former territory of the Podolia government, Polish schools numbered as many as 285 with over 23.000 students. The State changed its politics towards Poles in the Soviet Union in mid-1930, a process that ultimately had eliminated the decisive majority of Polish educational institutions, and brought about repression and persecution of the Polish population. This action converged with the final crushing of the Roman Catholic Church in those territories. Thereby the communist authorities had destroyed almost everything that made Poles beyond the Zbrucz different.