The problems of nationality in the weekly "Polish News Weekly of Poles in Australia and New Zealend" in the years 1981-1986

Abstract

The subject of this an analysis of the content of the weekly publication "Wiadomości Polskie" (Polish News) which has been coming out in Sydney, New South Wales since 1942 and is presently edited by Jan Dunin-Karwicki.

Texts found in the publication (articles, commentaries, and information) deal with national of Byelorussia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, und the Ukraine. These texts chronicle the mutual contacts between the above-mentioned groups in Australia, in other countries of significant representation, and in the homelands of East-Central Europe.

For a round number of 95 issues of "Wiadomości Polskie" which arrived at the library of the Institute For Polonia Research in the zears 1981-1986 as many as 60 constitute issues in which the subject of this article is mentioned. There are in these issues articles of general nature, texts that present an account of the activity of ethnic groups in Australia, and texts as well that are devoted to particular national groups in Poland and the Soviet Union. The contents of publications originally found elsewhere and reprinted from such Polish emigration writings has been analyzed as well.

Without a great risk of error one may say that the authors who write these articles are in favor, sometimes most decidedly so, of the cooperation of Byelorussians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Poles, and Ukrainians in the countries and republics of Europe as well as in immigrant lands.

The material thus presented thus presented gives conclusive evidence that the publication is bringing into realization the dreams of their chief editor, who in 1969 asserted "the creation of one community of free and equal states is a consequense dictated by their geopolitical setting that flows from the historical experiences of those nations, that they may themselves determine their own fortune".