Talk:Kresy

The article is pretty inconsistent about whether Białystok and its namesake voivodeship, which were returned to Poland by the Soviet Union after the war, are part of the Kresy or not. The lead seemingly contradicts itself on that point, claiming Administratively, the Eastern Borderlands territory was composed of Lwów, Nowogródek, Polesie, Stanisławów, Tarnopol, Wilno, Wołyń, and Białystok voivodeships (provinces). Today, all these regions are divided between Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and south-eastern Lithuania. Meanwhile, the Kresy#Interwar population section lists the Białystok voivodeship, while Białystok is conspicuously absent from the list of largest cities and towns, despite its pre-war population of 91000.
What should be done to clarify this? Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 01:31, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

@Chaotic Enby: Not all of Białystok Voivodeship was returned to Poland after the war; the western portion of it, including Białystok itself, was; but the eastern portion, including Grodno and Wolkowysk/Vawkavysk, remained in the USSR and today belongs to Belarus.

Similarly (in a kind of "reverse" situation), Lwów Voivodeship was also partitioned after the war, but with the titular capital meeting the "opposite" fate: the eastern portion of the voivodeship, including Lwów/Lviv itself was retained by the USSR (and is today in Ukraine), but the western portion of the pre-war Lwów Voivodeship, including Przemyśl, was returned to Poland in 1945.

I made an edit a while back to try and clarify this better, but I think the article still needs more work re. this.

I also think some work needs to be done on the Interwar population demographic tables, at least to clarify; the first table gives the demographics of the entirety of Białystok and Lwów oblasts, including the portions that are in modern-day Poland; at the very least this fact needs to be clarified, if it is not possible to find a figure specifically for the ceded portions, since it could otherwise give a misleading impression that the ceded territories were more ethnically Polish than they actually were, given that in both cases the Polish percentage was higher in the western portion of the oblast that remained in Poland.

For the second table I'm not sure what the areas being taken for the figures for "South-Eastern Poland" and "North-Eastern Poland" are, and I believe the third and fourth tables only include areas outside modern day Poland (e.g. Przemyśl is not included). LC49 (talk) 00:01, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the explanation, that makes sense! Maybe [...] was composed of the Nowogródek, Polesie, Stanisławów, Tarnopol, Wilno and Wołyń voivodeships, and of parts of the Lwów and Białystok voivodeships could work better? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 00:04, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

That could work, although if we do that I think we possibly need to clarify that by "Eastern borderlands" we mean the area that is no longer in Poland, since the exact area denoted by "Kresy" / "Eastern borderlands" has varied over time and therefore varies throughout this article. Elsewhere the section refers to "east of the "Curzon line", which while similar is not exactly co-terminous.

I would also propose swapping the order of the Extents and Etymology sections; the text we're discussing is in the former, but the latter contains the key piece of information that At the beginning of the 20th century, the meaning of the term expanded to include the lands of the former eastern provinces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, east of the Lwów–Wilno line. In the Second Polish Republic, Kresy equated to historically Polish settled lands to the east of the notional Curzon line. Currently, the term applies to all the eastern lands of the Second Polish Republic that are no longer within the frontiers of modern Poland, together with lands further east, that had been integral to the Commonwealth before 1772, and where Polish communities continue to exist, which is important context for the information in "Extents" that we're discussing. LC49 (talk) 00:40, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Two problems with the edit, which I reverted.

First, this piece information should not be included in the lede. The lede is supposed to be the summary of the article content. But it is too bloated already (and you see at the top the message says " lead section may be too long.". A proper place might be in section "Economic decline of Kresy".

Second, any information you are adding must be verifiable by fellow editors. You did provide the footnote, but you did not give page number. Nobody is going to read all 400 pages of "Rocznik statystyczny", right?

Now, why I wanted to check the references: I highly doubt that "Rocznik statystyczny" compared Kresy with africa. therefore I think what you did is WP:Original research, inadmissible in wikipedia, i.e., you were adding your own thoughts not found in references cited. --Altenmann >talk 01:40, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

I made a redirect to this page from the term Okrainy. However, I wanted to post about this because there is some papers discussing the differences between them but I am not sure if this is academic just splitting hairs. Here is the paper I am referring to.

Kamusella, Tomasz (2019-10-02). "The Russian Okrainy (Oкраины) and the Polish Kresy: objectivity and historiography". Global Intellectual History. 4 (2). doi:10.1080/23801883.2018.1511186.

@Chefs-kiss:You added this redirect with edit summary "Russian term for the Kresy" - This is wrong judgement. Yes as words they translate into each other, but this article is about specifically "Kresy Wschodnie" "Eastern Borderlands" which is absolutely not synonymous with the word okrainy. Because okrainy for Russia are borderlands all around Russia, while Kresy for Poland are borderlands all around Poland. I strongly recommend you to make your redirect deleted by posting {{db-author}} on top of the redirect page and in the future do not redirect from terms that are not used in the article. --Altenmann >talk 11:15, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks Chefs-kiss (talk) 12:13, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Do you know any academic articles that discuss the difference between these two terms btw? Chefs-kiss (talk) 12:15, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

There is no reason to discuss their difference, just as nobody discusses the difference between melons and plums. Why would one want to discuss the difference between borderlands of Poland and borderlands of Russia? If you have in mind this area between Poland and Russia, in Russian Empire these were included in the area of Western Krai. The plain word "krai" is synonymous with "okraina" (but of course the two words are not always interchangeable). --Altenmann >talk

P.S. The article you are citing makes an absolutely ignorant statement "The Russian term okrainy and the Polish concept of kresy tend to refer to the same spatial area" - Obviously, the author has troubles with basic logic. Yes, this area (now West Belarus + West Ukraine) is part of okraina and part of kresy. But from this absolutely does not follow that okraina=kresy. For Poland there also are Kresy zachodnie=Western Borderlands, while for Russia there also are восточные окраины whicg are basically Russian Far East and there even was a short-lived state of ru:Российская восточная окраина (государственное образование) there. Way far away from Polish Kresy I would say :-) --Altenmann >talk 11:29, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

P.P.S. And I bet this guy has no slightest idea where "kresy północne" or "Northern Borderlands" are. --Altenmann >talk 11:43, 30 May 2025 (UTC)