Post WWII resettlement of the Sorbs from Democratic Republic of Germany to Czechoslovakia/Poland

[Vistulian]

Sorbs - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sorbs are West Slavic nation living in Saxony. Lower Sorbian language is quite similar to Polish, while Upper Sorbian is more similar to Czech language. In 1945 there were 145 000 Sorbs. Nowadays there is only 7 thousands of Lower Sobians and 13 thusand of Upper Sorbians - most of the Sorbs become germanised.

OTL shortly after II World War both Poland and Czechoslovakia has been struggling with shortages of manpower and workers on the areas from which Germans were expelled. Even today those territories have lesser population density than core areas of Poland and Czechia.

What if Polish, Czechoslovak and DDR communists "had asked" Soviets to resettle Sorbs into Czechoslovakia and Poland? By that more Germans could be ressetled into DDR instead of BRD.

Could bohemisation (czechisation?) and polonisation of Sorbs possible?

 

[rfmcdonald]

Even now, the total population of Czechia is still a half-million people below its peak population in the early 1940s. In the regions where the Sudeten Germans lived, permanent and radical depopulation has been a common outcome.

The big question I would have would relate more to the rationale. If the goal was to liberate the Sorbs from German tyranny, why not just remove their territory from Germany? Opting to remove them from their homeland, to be scattered as a diaspora, might reclaim them for Slavdom but would do nothing to solve their ethnic issues. Why would they not be overlooked as OTL, especially since they were so few?

 

[Vistulian]

The Lusatian National Committee in Prague claimed the right to self-government and separation from Germany and the creation of a Lusatian Free State or attachment to Czechoslovakia. The majority of the Sorbian intelligentsia was organised in the Domowina, though, and did not wish to split from Germany. Claims asserted by the Lusatian National movement were postulates of joining Lusatia to Poland or Czechoslovakia. Between 1945–1947 they produced about ten memorials[3] to the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, Poland and Czechoslovakia; however, this did not bring any results. On 30 April 1946, the Lusatian National Committee also submitted a petition to the Polish Government, signed by Paweł Cyż – the minister and an official Sorbian delegate in Poland. There was also a project to proclaim a Lusatian Free State, whose Prime Minister was intended to be the Polish archaeologist of Lusatian origin, Wojciech Kóčka.

Lusatia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The problem was: how that areas could have been added to Czechoslovakia, as Czechoslovakia had a lot of depopulated areas?
The Czechs even took a 40 thousands of Hungarians from Slovakia, mostly compulsory, to work in post-German farms and industries

After expulsion of the Germans, Czechoslovakia found it had a labor shortage, especially of farmers in the Sudetenland. As a result, the Czechoslovak government deported more than 44,129 Hungarians from Slovakia to the Sudetenland for forced labor[54][55] between 1945 and 1948.[55] Some 2,489 were resettled voluntarily and received houses, good pay and citizenship in return. Later, from 19 November 1946 to 30 September 1946, the government resettled the remaining 41,666 by force, with the police and army transporting them like "livestock" in rail cars.[citation needed] The Hungarians were required to work as indentured laborers, often offered in village markets to the new Czech settlers of the Sudetenland.
These conditions eased slowly. After a few years, the resettled Hungarians started to return to their homes in Slovakia. By 1948, some 18,536 had returned, causing conflicts over the ownership of their original houses, since Slovak colonists had often taken them over. By 1950, the majority of indentured Hungarians had returned to Slovakia. The status of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia was resolved, and the government again gave citizenship to ethnic Hungarians.

Hungarians in Slovakia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I guess the communist weren't so protective to small ethnic groups, mostly they weren't protesting against etnocide of Lemko and Boyko Rusins expelled by Polish communist from southern-east borderlands of Communist Poland to western "Reclaimed Territories", as they called land taken from Germany. They have also scattered the Kresy 's Poles, previously living in the areas lost to USSR: officially people from the same village or town were forbidden to be settled en masse in the same post-German town / village. Communities with strong ties to their neighbors and with prewar customs, tradition and political views would be harder to indoctrinate into 'new socialistic people'.

If Stalin would come with such idea, no one from polish communist regime would openly oppose such a transfer. What is more, German communist could somehow play on the nationalistic fiddles showing, that they manage to provide houses for some 100-140 thousand expelled Germans.

 

[Wendell]

A Lusatian autonomy within the DDR is likelier.