Upper Silesia: Rebirth of a regional identity in Poland

Article is part of a special issue, 'Region, State and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe'.

Journal abstract:

The territorial decentralization of administrative competences has been a key focus of political debate in Poland since the fall of communism. The devolution of the functions of governance to localities and regions has been seen as an important step towards the consolidation of participatory democracy. Yet it has also become a key locus of cultural politics, with the rediscovery and revival of numerous local and regional historical-cultural identities in the post-1989 period. This essay focuses on processes of regionalization in Upper Silesia in south-eastern Poland, the home of some of the most vocal Polish regionalist movements in the past decade. It traces the ways in which the revival of Silesian identity has proceeded through the assertion of the region's historical and cultural difference from the remainder of the Polish state and the affirmation of the continuity of a distinct Silesian regional community through time.