The series of actions led by successive governments of the Polish state from 1919 to 1939. In particular steps were taken from 1919 to 1924, 1929 to 1934, and 1937 to 1938.
The restitution action formed part of the general policy of the Second Republic against the Polish Orthodox Church, which aimed to minimize the social and political influence of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian national minorities. An important motive was also a strong hostility to the Orthodox Church, a religion which was seen as a representative of the partitioning powers on Polish soil, as well as the memory of the dissolution of Roman Catholic monasteries in the Russian Empire. Action was initially through spontaneous takeovers of churches by Catholics and in later stages by pre-prepared government plans. Orthodox churches were torn down, closed, adapted to become Roman Catholic churches (as many were originally) or public buildings.
According to surviving documents from 1937 to 1938 the goal was total Polonization of areas west of the Bug River (traditionally seen as the border between Catholic and Orthodox Poland) and to maximise Polish cultural influences east of it. These plans were not implemented because of the outbreak of World War II and because of the attitude of the Orthodox Church.
Legal status of the Orthodox Church On December 16, 1918, the Polish chief of state issued a decree in which all assets of the Orthodox Church in Poland were put under the administration of the state. Formally, this step was justified by the need to protect the assets of churches abandoned after World War I, during the Bieżeństwo (the mass exodus of the Orthodox populations from western areas of the then Russian Empire in the face of approaching German troops). In fact, in the first years of the existence of the independent Second Polish Republic, numerous parish churches and monasteries had no hosts. The decree did not lose validity even when the population and Orthodox clergy returned to the occupied territories after the war, and after the March constitution guaranteed freedom of religion. Consent to re-open churches and their use for the purpose of worship was issued by the state administration and could not be granted without detailed justification. In 1919, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education (Ministerstwo Wyznań Religijnych i Oświecenia Publicznego (MWRiOP) ordered seals attached to inactive Orthodox churches, declaring they would take a more comprehensive decision on the Orthodox churches at a later time. In practice, this led to their permanent closures. A July 9, 1919, decree extended this to lands joined to Poland after the Treaty of Riga.
A second decree, the Regulation Commissioner General Directorate of Civil Eastern Territories of October 22, 1919 (rozporządzenie Komisarza Generalnego Zarządu Cywilnego Ziem Wschodnich), known as the lex Żeligowski, only related to areas east of the Bug River. It commanded the return of all church buildings to be operated by the Roman Catholic Church, however it did not address the issue of churches belonging to the Eastern Catholic Churches. Some problems relating to the nationality of the church buildings that had been taken also developed in 1922's temporary regulations on the relationship of government to the Orthodox Church in Poland, which mainly dealt with issues of liturgical language, meeting organisation, conventions, diocesan councils, territorial division of the diocese, education, clergy and Orthodox co-fraternities. After the publication of the temporary regulations, the Orthodox Church was also required to present a complete inventory of existing churches and monasteries, as well as a list of the clergy and the estimated number of its faithful.
It was only from 1938 to 1939 when statutory solutions to ownership of sacred objects were enacted. In addition to resuming the language issue (it was forbidden to issue religious statements in a language other than Polish), regulation of issues related to the training of religious personnel and the requirement for prayers for the Polish state, the document partially raised the issue of property with more detailed solutions for the next draft law. It set a limit on the area of church property that was not subject to division at 180 ha for a metropolis, 150 ha for a bishopric, 125 ha for a consistory, and 180 ha for a monastery. On 30 June 1939, by another regulation, the state recognised the belonging to the Orthodox Church of those estates that were still in its hands - it was a total of 52,200 ha of land (before 1918, the Orthodox had 146,000 ha of land at their disposal).
The first wave of the recovery from 1919 to 1924
Spontaneous actions by Catholics
During the first wave of the recovery, there were spontaneous actions by local Roman Catholic communities in order to take over Orthodox churches for their own use or to close or destroy them. Such an attitude was a reaction to the earlier policies of the Tsarist government, which treated the construction of new Orthodox churches as part of their policy of Russification and often built them in areas where there wasn't a need, or quite consciously constructed them in areas to symbolise Russian rule. These activities most often did not have the consent of state or local authorities, at best the consent of church authorities.
In some areas, the latter encouraged the faithful to take over churches: the bishop of Podlaskie, Henryk Przeździecki, issued a special decree on 11 December 1918, which called for the priests of his diocese to immediately restore to the Roman Catholic Church all Orthodox churches which had been originally established as Catholic churches (even those set up as Eastern Catholic churches). He also ordered the immediate reopening of all Roman Catholic churches and chapels closed by the Tsarist authorities. The response to the bishop's call was so great that by 1920, Przeździecki changed his ordinance, leaving the decision open on the fate of specific objects seized from the Orthodox church. Performing these actions was much easier after World War I and the October Revolution because the Orthodox church was in organisational chaos. In 1915, retreating Russian troops often took church equipment with them, especially those from the numerous Orthodox military churches. Many Orthodox clergy left too, gradually returning after 1918.
A specific feature of the first wave was also the recovery and the destruction of churches seen as symbols of Russian rule, such as the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Warsaw or the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius (Cerkiew Świętych Cyryla i Metodego) in Chełm (commemorating the liquidation of the Eastern Catholic diocese of Chelm in 1875). This happened both spontaneously and (in the case of the cathedral in Saxon Square) after longer discussions at governmental level. Churches were demolished in Aleksandrów Kujawski, Grajewo, Janów Lubelski, Jędrzejów, Kalisz, Kolno, Kozienice, Lubartów, Lublin, Łask, Łomża, Mława, Modlin Fortress, Opoczno, Osowiec, Ostrów Mazowiecka, Pińczów, Płońsk, Przasnysz, Pułtusk, Raczki, Radomsko, Raduczu, Rawa Mazowiecka, Różan, Rypin, Sieradz, Sierpc, Skierniewice, Słupca, Sosnowiec, Suwałki, Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Warsaw (6 locations), Włocławek and other locations. Some of these places, which did not find their way into the hands of the Catholics, were adapted for secular purposes, for example a former Orthodox church in Ostrołęka became a scrap yard, one in Skierniewice became a granary, and one in Staszów, a theatre.
The attitude of state authorities The government didn't display a unified position regarding the recovery of churches. Political pressure and pressure from the Catholic Church came in the initial stages, when specific inquiries about the fate of the Orthodox church were considered to favour Catholics. The government was often not thought to have any opinion, which allowed for spontaneous solutions to the problem. The belief of a government bias against it caused much bitterness within the Orthodox Church.
In practice, the Polish government sought to limit any possible influence of the Orthodox Church, minimising the number of active parishes and Polonizing Orthodox churches associated not only with the Tsar, but — as time went on to an even greater extent - with the Ukrainian national movement. Thus, there were differences in policies for the individual regions. The areas inhabited by an overwhelming majority of Orthodox believers were not massively Catholicised, however measures were carried out to subordinate the hierarchy of the Orthodox church. On the other hand, they totally tried to deny the Orthodoxy in Chełm and Podlasie, according to the declaration by Lublin governor Stanislaw Moskalewski, who in 1921 announced that: "the country west of the Bug River was purely Polish." In a similar vein, the MWRiOP commented in a February 5, 1924, letter that "the Lublin province should strive to Polonize Orthodoxy or displace it in favour of the Roman Catholic Church". Earlier, in 1919, it was established that 5,000 faithful was the norm for the creation of permanently functioning Orthodox parish, while removing the clergy of a closed church would hold back the local population from demanding that it re-open. Back in the 1920s there were cases where a church which had been closed at the request of the population, would re-open for a particularly important holiday, then the practice disappeared, because, according to the governor of Lublin, such temporary openings "evoke bitterness in the population and unwanted reflections". Another constant feature of state policy towards the Orthodox church was not issuing construction permits for new churches or for the renovation of existing ones damaged during World War I. Only the governor of the Volyn province, Henryk Józewski, inquired of the MWRiOP whether it could not be more flexible to approve applications for the construction of houses of prayer. This eventually earned a command to send any application that the office deemed appropriate in for evaluation at a central level. The Minister stated that it "MWRiOP in principle is opposed to the erection of new houses of worship in places where a fixed Pastoral base is provided for".
In 1921, the MWRiOP completed work on the first draft of the Act completing the issue of the church, which clearly resolved the issue of ownership of Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic churches in favour of the Roman Catholic Church and the Ministry reserved the right to decide the fate of any church built on state land with state funds or from contributions of the population. The government discussed this project on December 15, 1921, but in fear of the outbreak of mass Orthodox discontent, completely abandoned its consideration. The text was then supplemented with a caveat that a church, even located in a former Catholic church, can remain in the hands of the Orthodox church if it is actively used by the Orthodox community. This solution, however, was conditional on the consent of the bishop of the appropriate Catholic diocese.
However, on May 24, 1921, progress of recovery actions in the Lublin region and local interfaith relations exacerbated the situation to such an extent that the MWRiOP had to not only prohibit further occupation of the churches, but also suspend the execution of orders already obtained by Catholics. The relevant regulation was sent to provincial governors. Despite this, proposals and memoranda concerning churches were still received subsequently and had repeated conflicting situations, although on a smaller scale. The most famous location transferred to Catholics after the formal termination was the recovery of a monastery in Zahorowie (Cerkiew Świętych Piotra i Pawła w Zahorowie).