Episode 4. Tomasz Kamusella: The Minority Question in Poland: Past and Present

In this episode, Tomasz Kamusella, Reader in European History at the University of St Andrews, talks to us about the national and minority questions in modern Poland. Focusing on Poland’s language and minority policies from 1918, Tomasz considers how Polish nationalism came to define the ethnic make-up of interwar Poland and keeps shaping a particular idea of the country as an ethnically homogeneous nation-state. Tomasz discusses language politics, both in Poland and Central Europe in general, to show how national activists and politicians constructed languages and minorities in this region. Tomasz Kamusella, Words in Space and Time. A Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe (CEU Press, 2021) "Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)