Zakerzonia ( uk, Закерзоння, Trans-Curzonia; pl, Zakerzonie) is an informal name for the territories of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

to the west of the

Curzon Line The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I. It was first proposed by George Curzon, 1st Marque ...

which used to have sizeable

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

populations, including significant Lemko, Boyko populations, before the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...

by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939, and were claimed as ethnically Ukrainian territories by Ukrainian nationalists in the aftermath of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. However, before 1939, the areas of Zakerzonia were mostly inhabited by Poles, who constituted about 70% of the population of this area. Ukrainians lived in a minority in Zakerzonia, constituting about 20% of the area's population. "Zakerzonia" stands for "territory beyond the Curzon line", or in Ukrainian "Zakerzons'kyi krai". The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), at the height of their control of the territories, claimed plans of creation of ''Transcurzon Republic''. The demography of Zakerzonia drastically changed by forcible resettlement of the Ukrainians, with ethnic cleansing operations being the

resettlement of Ukrainians from Poland to the Soviet Union The population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine at the end of World War II was based on a treaty signed on 9 September 1944 by the Ukrainian SSR with the newly-formed Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN). The exchange stipulat ...

(1944–1946) and Operation Vistula (1947). Orest Subtelny, "The Fate of Poland's Ukrainians, 1944-1947", in: "Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948", 2001, Bohdan, Kordan. "Making Borders Stick: Population Transfer and Resettlement in the Trans-Curzon Territories, 1944–1949". ''International Migration Review'' Vol. 31, No. 3., 1997, pp. 704-720. Therefore, Poles today constitute over 95% of the population of Zakerzonia.

Ukrainians in Poland: 1939–1950

Pyotr Eberhardt estimates that in 1939 the number of Ukrainians between the Curzon Line and Oder-Neisse Line was 657,500 people. Timothy Snyder gives a similar estimate of up to 700,000

Ukrainians Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian language, Ukrainian. The majority ...

Ukrainian-language Ukrainian ( uk, украї́нська мо́ва, translit=ukrainska mova, label=native name, ) is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European language family. It is the native language of about 40 million people and the official state langu ...

speakers lived in Poland immediately after World War II within the new borders. They were a "demographic majority in many areas along a long border strip running from Chełm almost to

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

". Timothy Snyder, ''"To Resolve the Ukrainian Problem Once and for All": The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland 1943-1947'', pp. 101, 104, 105, in

Journal of Cold War Studies The ''Journal of Cold War Studies'' is a quarterly Peer review, peer-reviewed academic journal on the history of the Cold War. It was established in 1999 and is published by MIT Press for the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies. The journal is issu ...

Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 1999. However, his data is not considered reliable. http://www.yale.edu/history/faculty/documents/2ColdWarStudies.pdf His data, however, are not considered reliable, because, for example, the area near

Tarnów Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998, it was the capital of the Tarnów ...

, Rzeszów, Zamość and others has been purely Polish for centuries. In 1946, only 220,200 Ukrainians were left in Poland, which had further decreased to 150,000 by 1950.

References

Aftermath of World War II in Poland Poland in World War II Poland–Ukraine relations Poland–Soviet Union relations Ukrainian irredentism Ukrainian-speaking countries and territories Regions of Poland {{Ukraine-hist-stub