| Year | Poles | % | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1921 | 112,000 | 51 | 219,400 |
| 1989 | 9,500 | 1.2 | 790,908 |
| 2001 | 6,400 | 0.9 | 725,200 |
Many Poles moved to Lviv after the city was conquered by King Casimir in 1349. It became a major Polish cultural centre and this continued after the partitions of Poland.
Lviv was depolonised mainly through Soviet-arranged population exchange from 1944–46. Those that remained found themselves having lost their state status and becoming an ethnic minority. By 1959 Poles made up only 4% of the population after Ukrainians, Russians and Jews. The Polish population underwent significant assimilation; in 1989 40% considered Ukrainian as their mother tongue, 15% Russian. During Soviet times two Polish schools continued to function: № 10 (with 8 grades) and № 24 (with 10 grades).
In the 1980s the process of uniting groups into ethnic associations was allowed. In 1988 a Polish language newspaper was allowed («Gazeta Lwowska»). The Polish population of the city continues to use the dialect of the Polish language known as Lwów dialect (Polish: gwara lwowska). The word ment (see militsiya) used in the Soviet Union is derived from that dialect.
Read more about this topic: Lviv, Demographics
Famous quotes containing the word poles:
“The Poles do not know how to hate, thank God.”
—Stefan, Cardinal Wyszynski (1901–1981)
“War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“I see you boys of summer in your ruin.
Man in his maggot’s barren.
And boys are full and foreign in the pouch.
I am the man your father was.
We are the sons of flint and pitch.
O see the poles are kissing as they cross.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)