History /
Mother tongue in Poland - acccording to 1931 census. [174]
Interesting point, but one which assumes that if WWI hadn't happened Poles would by now not exist, as they would have been Russified or Germanized or Austrianated (I may well not have the precisely correct words there).
You don't get, do you or put it simply you just don't want to get it... anyways huge difference between a fully culturally self-aware, 800 year old independent country that all of a sudden gets occupied and partitioned and 'nations' who only briefly enjoyed independence at much earlier stages of history and whose ruling classes long had chosen different cultural affinity.. please (I really do not want explain the logic behind it, you are an intelligent man, you should be able to figure it out)
we are still left with Jews and Lithuanians.
sigh.. nitpicking rarely defies logic... yes I meant Lithuanians as well , Jews...?! Jews have always been Jews, why on earth are we talking Jews again.. why not Serbia..? Well just kidding Harry,please don't mention Serbia or I'll puke.
Let's get away from Poland for a bit because something tells me you in your zeal to stomp out the Polska See No Evil mentality (which, you're right, is annoying and totally counter productive particularly for its adherers) have gone slightly over the board and lost your ability to be objective.
And here comes Scandinavia; Finland for the most part of her history was part of Sweden right until 1809 when Russians took it. Yet only after 1809 the separate strong independent Finnish identity arose, simply because Finns realized that being under the Russian boot blows so many goats soon there wouldn't be any goats left and as such the fate of humanity without any goat cheese around would be unthinkable (I'm pretty sure French would not stand for this including me even though I'm not French). But if it weren't for the Russian Empire today' Sweden would be much larger probably in some sort of union with Finland, much in the same way as Scotland is with England. And I guarantee you there would be more Swedish speakers in Finland than the current 10%.
edit: hehe 'slightly overboard' and not 'over the board', I mixed that up with all all over the board, which kind of makes sense in this particular context ;)