EN
The village of Poiana Micului in Bukovina does not enjoy a reputation in the Romanian space. Few people know that, since 1842, an ethnic community that is defined as being of Polish origin lives here. During the twentieth century its history was influenced by the policies pursued by Czechoslovakia (respectively Slovakia, for the years between 1939 and 1944) and by Poland. The rivalry between the two countries to achieve strategic supremacy in Central Europe, and especially the territorial dispute in the border region of Teschen (Czech: Těšín), spawned a competition for defining the Slovak‐Polish community in Bukovina. The reason of otherness of the Poles and Slovaks in relation to the Romanians was born from this rivalry. In turn, Romania treated the mentioned community with pragmatism according to its interest at the time, successively encouraging once the idea of Polish origin, and later the idea of Slovak origin of this ethnic group.