Kresy Wschodnie or
Kresy (, "Eastern Borderlands", or "Borderlands") is a term that refers to the eastern lands that formerly belonged to
Poland. These territories today lie in
Western Ukraine, western
Belarus, as well as eastern
Lithuania, with such major cities, as
Lviv,
Vilnius, and
Hrodna. Kresy was part of the
Second Polish Republic until
World War II. In the
interbellum Poland, the term
Kresy roughly equated with the lands beyond the
Curzon Line, suggested in December 1919 by the British Foreign Office as the eastern border for Poland. In September 1939, after the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, these territories were incorporated into
Soviet Ukraine,
Belarus and
Lithuania. These Soviet gains were ratified by the
Western Allies at the
Tehran conference, the
Yalta conference and the
Potsdam conference. When the Soviet Union broke up, they remained part of those respective republics as they gained independence. Even though
Kresy, or the
Eastern Borderlands, are no longer Polish territories, the area is still inhabited by a significant Polish minority, and the memory of a Polish
Kresy is still cultivated. The attachment to the "myth of Kresy", the vision of the region as a peaceful, idyllic, rural land, has been criticized in Polish discourse. Economically the region was the poorest in interwar Poland, and had the lowest
literacy level of the nation, which was the result of more than one hundred years of Austro-Hungarian and Russian rule, as education was not
compulsory in the
Russian Empire.