Die Stadt Lublin war in den letzten Jahren das Objekt umfassenderer Arbeiten. Wenn aber selbst die allgemeine Geschichte Lublins in der Zwischenkriegszeit im Unterschied zur historiographischen Würdigung der Zeit bis zum Eersten Weltkrieg ein “unbeschriebenes Blatt” ist, dann gilt dies umso mehr für die Geschichte der Lubliner Juden und ihr Verhältnis zur nicht-jüdischen Bevölkerung. Regionalbezogene Untersuchungen fehlen völlig. Dies liegt an der Komplexität des Themas, aber auch an der lange Zeit ungenügenden Bereitschaft polnischer amtlicher Stellen, Archivalien frei zugänglich zu machen.

In attempting to provide a framework for the study of linguistic minorities within Yugoslavia and peripheral areas, I shall proceed along conceptual lines suggested by economic theory. Although the terms “ethnic minority” and “linguistic minority” are often used interchangeably, the focus is on linguistic minorities since in terms of economic significance the linguistic attribute generally outweighs other attributes which define ethnic groups. After all, communications involve substantial costs, and it is precisely the distribution of these costs between linguistic groups which gives the minority status its economic dimension. The subsequent discussion hinges in part on these costs.

Since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, an increasing number of Czech voices have suggested that the nation would have been better off in a federalized Austria-Hungary. While the Czechs would have survived and, most likely, prospered in such an arrangement, it was necessary for the Slovak national survival to severe the nation's ties with Hungary. As it happened, the Czechoslovak Republic, proclaimed on October 28, 1918, lasted for merely twenty years — a short span in the life of both nations. The collapse of the Republic has been blamed by various writers on France and England, the national minorities, the rise of Nazism in Germany and others. But, in the last analysis, the responsibility has to be placed on the shoulders of the leaders who did not have the foresight to secure the state externally and internally and/or were unwilling to fight for its territorial integrity in the fall of 1938.

On the eve of the October revolution most of Central Asia was a tsarist colony with the exception of the Amaret of Bukhara. Islam as a religion and a way of life had become more and more ibadah (religious ritual) and less and less as a program of action for the ummah. The tsarist functionaries deprived its religious and educational institutions from their major sources of income (the auqāf) and encouraged instead a program of russification through the schools, specially the Russian-Native schools (russkotuzamnaya shkola) and active conversion of the Muslims of Turkestan to Orthodox Christianity through organizations such as the Anti-Muslim Missionary Division (protivo-musul'manskoe missionerskoe otdelenie), of the Kazan Ecclesiastical Academy. Aside from these and settlements of the Slav immigrants on the Turkestanis lands by force and without compensation the Tsarist government interfered very little in the Central Asian way of life. Almost all of the religious laws (Shariah) dealing with the domestic matters, and the customary laws of the land (adāt) were kept intact.

By the end of 1920 the Soviet government achieved victories over all its external enemies. The white Russian armies were pushed out of their stronghold — Crimea. The Ukrainian army, in war against Soviet Russia, was also interned by its former ally — Poland. While external enemies ceased to represent any real menace to the Soviet government the situation on the internal front was far from satisfactory. Disillusioned workers and dissatisfied peasants presented quite a problem for the victorious but weak Soviet government. But an even worse situation existed in Ukraine which, it was hoped, would provide food for the major Russian cities. Although Ukraine was conquered by the Russian Red Army, it was not entirely subdued. It was aflame through numerous uprisings of nationally conscious elements who struggled for Ukrainian independence. The forcible requisition of food products in Ukrainian villages alienated the Ukrainian peasantry and turned its sympathies to the Ukrainian guerillas. Many of the young and able-bodied men joined the underground forces hoping that the tide may yet turn in their favor.