Belarus is a typical borderline country featuring multi-ethnicity, including various cultures, denominations and languages co-existing one near the other. Current socio-linguistic situation in Belarus may be defined as socially conditioned diglossia. Russian is the language of the governing elites, all-level education, popular culture and mass-media. Urban inhabitants speak almost entirely Russian, and the majority of village inhabitants speak Belarusian dialects. When, during Lukaszenka’s rule, Belarusian language fell once again in disgrace, it once again became a symbol of national revival and a fighting tool of opposition. Representatives of democratic elites speak Belarusian, but only when they hold informal meetings or political events. Based on biographic interviews held with the representatives of the Belarusian intelligentsia in Belarus, the Author has revealed a process of the narrators’ discovering an importance of a mother tongue as a sign of national identity. The process of realizing the importance of the Belarusian language in the life of an individual, as well as ethnic community, as well as a process of conscious learning of the language is, for contemporary Belarusians, one of the stages of shaping national identity. Learning the language is followed by participating in Belarusian symbolic culture and remembering history and reviving common memory, which finally leads to conscious identity with a mother land in a symbolic sense, which is broader than purely territorial reference.

The subject of the article are personal names of the Ukrainian population living in the former Chełm land, presented within the context of historical and cultural and religious conditions, as determinants of national identity. Language, in addition to tradition, a sense of religious, historical and territorial community and national consciousness, being one of its basic elements. Shown is the relationship between certain types of anthroponyms and their linguistic structure together with their ethnic and social origin and, to some extent, the system of values professed. Attention has also been paid to the phenomenon of the infiltration of Polish features present in the anthroponymy of the inhabitants of the area in question.

The article presents two dimensions of the relationship between cinema and Polish independence. The first part was devoted to the situation of Polish cinema after 1918. I describe the film market, the political situation, relationship between the state and cinematography, films that were then created and their impact on national identity. Then I focus on films in which independence has become a movie theme. I divide them into three periods: until 1939, the People's Republic of Poland and after 1989. I draw attention to their political and historical contexts, functions and film form, and I discuss the meaning and interpretation of each films.

The research task of the essay is to answer the question of what is the face of the nation in the ethnic enclaves situated at the peripheries of national states. The subject of the analyses is the local population of the village Jaworzynka. In 1922, the settlement Herczawa was founded as a local unit independent from Jaworzynka. Since then Herczawa began to belong to Czechoslovakia. The state-owned status of Jaworzynka, which started to be a part of the Republic of Poland, was recognized after the World War I. The author takes into account the longue durre of folk and national culture generated in the Silesian Beskidy in the second half of the 18th century. The national culture is the main term applied to the investigations of the borderland regions. According to the ethno-symbolic approaches (Anthony D. Smith) and culturalism methods in sociology (Antonina Kłoskowska), the author analyses in his research: 1) language, 2) religion, 3) folkways and mores 4) arts, 5) local knowledge and literature. These elements delineate the sphere of symbolic culture. Based on the common folk culture, two national cultures have been formed nowadays – the Polish and Czech ones. Both Polish and Czech Census Bureau data and objective elements of national culture discussed in the essay indicate the process of national revival. The local people of Jaworzynka identify themselves as Poles and the population of Herczawa define themselves as Czechs. The content and the form of the local culture are visible in Jaworzyna, but they seem to be latent or diminishing in Herczawa.

The paper outlines the methodological issues connected to national statistics, their cartographical representations, and the methods of conducting censuses. During the Paris Peace Conference representatives of new Central- and Eastern European states vehemently criticized the ethnic statistics developed by the empires, mostly Russian and Austro-Hungarian. The censuses, conducted in these new states in early 1920s, were criticized along similar lines by the minorities. Among the most vociferous critics were German geographers. Pointing out to the results of the plebiscites in Silesia, Carinthia and other regions they argued, that national identity did not have to correspond to the mother tongue, and census authorities should have taken it into account. Paradoxically, they considered this point valid only to the Central and Eastern Europe, not Western Europe. In the final part of the paper the position of geographers and statisticians in post-war debates are confronted with information on the behaviour of respondents during the censuses in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The problem of Hungarian identity is one of the themes of Stanisław Vincenz’s essays written at the time of the Second World War. Inspired by Wincenty Pol’s thinking about relationship between the sense of geographical place and literature, he decided to explore the ‘general impact of landscape’ and in particular identify the place that would convey the essence of ‘Hungarianness’. The article looks at various aspects of this problem in Vincenz’s essay ‘Landscape – the background of history’ in the context of his other essays in which the idea of place is discussed. In effect, the article lays down a theoretical formula of indeterminate spots in modern literature. The indeterminate spot possesses six constitutive features: changeability and transmutability; fuzzy borders; shifty positioning between utopia and atopia; great semantic potential; the experience of place is involved in irreducible inconsistencies but rests on a solid ideological foundation.

The article examines Leopold Tyrmand's attitude towards the Poles and Polishness on the basis of, primarily, his journalism, interviews and correspondence. It picks up a broad range of themes, among them, the reasons of Tyrmand's leaving Poland in 1965, his relations with other exiles and expatriates, in particular the Polish community in the United States, his opinions on the virtues and vices of the Polish national character, his attitude towards the Polish language, his decision to write in English and his search for national identity. The article argues that Tyrmand's views on Poland and things Polish kept changing and this evolution was closely connected with various phases of his life. While acknowledging the heterogeneity of Tyrmand's sense of identity, the conclusion notes that the dominant element of his self-awareness was a sense of belonging to the Polish nation.