Kresy myth

The Kresy myth (Polish: mit Kresów) ('myth' in Polish sometimes not referring to a false belief, similarly to English) also known as the Kresy Cult (kult Kresów) and the Kresy Legend (legenda Kresów) is the name given to a certain sense of views or attitudes in connection to nostalgic attachment of the former eastern borderlands of Poland (Kresy), sometimes in an national sense, sometimes as a multicultural land dominated by Polish culture. According to Andrii Portnov, the Kresy is seen even as "'the lost paradise' of Poland’s 'civilisational mission'" at the same time as the location of "bloody and romantic clashes with the Cossacks and Tatars". The Kresy was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Second Polish Republic but since the latter's fall is no longer Poland but instead present-day Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania. The Kresy, in certain definitions, extend beyond the areas which became part of interwar Poland. In particular after the territorial changes, population transfers of World War II, the nostalgia focused on the Vilnius region and Eastern Galicia, notably Lwów (Lviv). It is argued exponents of the discourse tend to focus specifically on Poles living in the Kresy without paying sufficient attention to the region's Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Rusyn, or Belarusian inhabitants.