Silesian: between suppression in Poland and flourishing on the web

The fall of communism in 1989 heralded the advent of democracy and individual freedoms in the former Soviet bloc countries, including Poland. In this country’s multiethnic region of Upper Silesia, during the communist period, the indigenous population of Silesians used to be lauded as ‘true Poles’ on the ideological plane, but in reality, they were treated as untrustworthy ‘crypto-Germans’. This sociopolitical dynamic underpinned the emergence of a Silesians regional-cum-ethnic-cum-national movement already in the early 1990s. The state reluctantly accepted the regional character of this movement but has been actively suppressing its ethnolinguistic dimension since 1997. Faced with the state’s staunch opposition, Silesian ethnolinguistic activists decided to limit their aspirations to the standardization and recognition of Silesian as a language in its own right. Such recognition was gained internationally in 2007, but thus far not in Poland. Meanwhile, the internet spawned deterritorialized cyberspace, where a growing array of Silesian-language initiatives and resources have been developed outside the state’s control. The Silesian-language cyberspace will guarantee freedom of expression as long as the Polish state does not decide to reassert its control on the web, like China or Iran already did.