Wilno Voivodeship (1926–1939)
| Wilno Voivodeship Województwo wileńskie | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voivodeship of Poland | |||||||||||
| 1926–1939 | |||||||||||
Location of Wilno Voivodeship (red) within the Second Republic of Poland (1938). | |||||||||||
| Capital | Wilno (Vilnius) | ||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||
• 1921 | 29,109 km2 (11,239 sq mi) | ||||||||||
• 1939 | 29,011 km2 (11,201 sq mi) | ||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||
• 1921 | 1,005,565 | ||||||||||
• 1931 | 1,276,000 | ||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||
| • Type | Voivodeship | ||||||||||
| Voivode | |||||||||||
• 1926–1931 | Władysław Raczkiewicz | ||||||||||
• May–Sep 1939 | Artur Maruszewski | ||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||
• Established | 20 January 1926 | ||||||||||
| 17 September 1939 | |||||||||||
| Political subdivisions | 9 powiats | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
The Wilno Voivodeship (Polish: województwo wileńskie) was one of 16 Voivodeships in the Second Polish Republic, with the capital in Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania). The jurisdiction was created in 1926 and populated predominantly by Poles, with notable minorities of Belarusians, Jews and Lithuanians. Before 1926, the voivodeship's area was known as the Wilno Land; it had the same boundaries and was also within the contemporary borders of Poland at the time.
The total area of Wilno Voivodeship was 29,011 km2 (11,201 sq mi), with a population of 1.276 million. Following the German and Soviet invasion of Poland and the reshaping of Europe, Poland's borders were redrawn at the insistence of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference. Wilno Voivodeship was incorporated into the Lithuanian and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics. Many of the ethnic Polish population were forcibly resettled at the end of World War II. Since 1991, the former territory of the voivodeship is now part of sovereign Lithuania and sovereign Belarus.