Polonization (in Polish: polonizacja) is the assumption, voluntary or involuntary, complete or partial, of the Polish language or another real or supposed Polish attribute. It may be regarded as a subclass of a historically ubiquitous process of assimilation. (Other recent examples are Germanization, Russification, Americanization.) Such assimilation has commonly accompanied the evolution of empires, broadly construed.
Polonization was especially noted in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or Republic, when the much more developed Polish civilization drew to itself the upper classes of the Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian communities, leading to those classes' lesser or greater alienation from their ethnic roots.
One of the features of Polonization was the promotion of the Roman Catholic Church at the expense of the Orthodox Churches.
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