The Bialowieza National Park. Man, Animal and Environment in the Polish-Belarusian Borderland

比亚沃维耶扎的原始森林与华沙和明斯克的距离大致相等，位于传统的波兰-白俄罗斯接触区，在那里，与宗教和社会的定义相比，民族定义直到很晚才开始发挥重要作用。这就是波兰地主贵族、犹太商人、白俄罗斯和乌克兰农民的社会环境。从即将结束的19世纪到第二次世界大战，这个被社会经济忽视的地区的大多数人仍然认为自己是“当地人”，没有种族或民族归属。尽管在20世纪上半叶，作为民族国家形成的一部分，政治边界几经随意改变，从而划分了原始森林的区域，但人们仍然坚持其传统的生活方式。在这方面，只有苏联的驱逐、国家社会主义的驱逐和第二次世界大战期间的大屠杀才是主要的转折点。此外，原始森林是稀有动植物的隐居之地，也是波兰国王、俄罗斯沙皇、苏联秘书长和来自世界各地的富有游客的狩猎区，也是偶尔出现的大量利用资源的场景，尤其是木材。比亚沃维耶扎的象征是野牛，欧洲最大的陆地哺乳动物，在第一次世界大战期间几乎灭绝。它的重新繁殖和重新引入野外的历史是独一无二的。该项目的目的是提出一本符合文化研究标准的专著，探讨比亚沃维耶扎国家公园的竞争性空间概念。该公园由波兰第二共和国于1932年建立，并于1991年由白俄罗斯共和国扩建，从1957年起在苏联拥有专属国家森林的地位。重点将放在与不同政治制度下该区域的体制和人事管理有关的问题上，首先是关于对作为资源和储备的自然所采取的办法，以及人口的日常生活及其与外部因素和熟悉的生境的对抗。在20世纪经常戏剧性的历史背景下，在探索一个一直存在于各自记忆文化中的地区时，计划采用区域和跨国微观历史方法。

The primeval forest of Bialowieza is situated roughly equidistant from Warsaw and Minsk, in a traditional Polish-Belorussian contact zone where national definitions, in contrast to religious and social ones, only started to play a significant role quite late on. This was the social environment of Polish landed nobility, Jewish traders and Belarusian and Ukrainian farmers. From the outgoing 19th Century up until the Second World War most people in this socio-economically neglected region still considered themselves to be "local ones", without ethnic or national affiliation. Although political borders were changed several times, somewhat arbitrarily, as part of the formation of nation states in the first half of the 20th Century, thereby dividing up the area of the primeval forest, the population remained attached to its traditional way of life. In this regard it was only the Soviet deportations, the National Socialist expulsions and the Holocaust during the Second World War which constituted major turning-points. In addition, the primeval forest was a place of retreat for rare animals and plants, and a hunting area for Polish kings, Russian tsars, Soviet secretary-generals and wealthy tourists from all over the world, as well as the occasional scene of an extensive use of resources, in particular wood. The symbol of Bialowieza is the bison, the largest land mammal in Europe, which was almost eradicated during the First World War. The history of its re-breeding and re-introduction to the wild is unique.The aim of the project is to present a monograph, meeting with Cultural Studies standards, on competing spatial concepts for the Bialowieza National Park. This park was established by the Second Polish Republic in 1932 and extended by the Republic of Belarus in 1991, and in the Soviet Union it had the status of an exclusive state forest from 1957 on. The focus will be on questions related to the institutional and personnel governance of the region under different political systems, above all with regards to the approaches taken towards nature as a resource and reserve, as well as the everyday life of the population and its confrontation both with external factors and the familiar habitat. Against the background of the often dramatic history of the 20th Century, both a regional and a transnational micro-historical approach is planned in this exploration of a region which has been ever-present in the respective cultures of remembrance.