Research on the attitudes of the inhabitants of Wroclaw to Lithuania and Lithuanians

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lenkija; Lietuva; Vaizdiniai; Patinka/nepatinka; Vroclavo gyventojų požiūriai į Lietuvą ir lietuvius. Keywords: Poland; Lithuania; Image; Liking/disliking; Wroclaw inhabitants' attitudes towards Lithuania and Lithuanian.Reikšminiai žodžiai: Lenkija (Lenkijos karalystė. Kingdom of Poland. Poland); Kaimynystė; Lenkų požiūris; Lietuviai; Visuomenės nuomonė; Lithuanians; Neighborhood; Polish approach; Public opinion.

ENIt is grounded to say that a couple of centuries of Poland and Lithuania’s common history might justify the statement on a special status of the Lithuanian neighbour in the Poles’ social awareness. Yet the sociological research mentioned in the article makes one question such an optimistic assumption. The quantitativemeasure of Poles’ liking for Lithuanians reveals a change of attitudes being confirmed by an increase in the level of such feelings over the last two decades. This rise, however, is not large so this overall attitude can most aptly be described by the category of indifference yet with a pinch of positive emotions resulting from protectionism and sentimentalism. This fact may partly be accounted for by the example of the inhabitants of Wrocław for whom Lithuanianness functions neither on the level of ordinariness nor on that of knowledge resources, with an exception for some literature-based images. At the same time this feeling is burdened by a dose of sense of superiority. The people under investigation, generally speaking, do not visit Lithuania because it is remote (probably not only in a geographical sense), unattractive and associated with the negatively valorised Eastness. Their knowledge about Lithuania is far from satisfactory, some respondents tended to mistake this country for Ukraine, which bears out that there is a vague yet vivid category of the generalized East in the Polish awareness. Conscious of it all, the respondents claim that it is the absence of the Lithuanian questions in the media as well as the range of Lithuania itself (its little significance and being peripheral) that account for this state of affairs, yet one may assume that it is their own lack of interest in Lithuania that matters most here. [From the publication]