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The consequence of establishing new Polish state borders after the Second World War was the mass resettlement of citizens of the pre-war Second Polish Republic (II Rzeczpospolita) from the so-called Kresy – now newly established Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian republics of the Soviet Union – to the Polish People’s Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa). The 240,000 Poles, who left the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the post-war resettlement, were only part of a group of over 1.4 million people resettled to ‘new Poland’. With extraordinary strength, they revived the 19th century myth of the Polish Kresy – one of the most important Polish national myths – which soon became an inseparable part of the Polish national discourse and the main element of Polish identity policy towards Poles who stayed in Kresy. This article is an attempt to answer the following question: What is the meaning of and role played by Kresy myth/discourse in constructing the identity of contemporary Poles living in South-eastern Lithuania – on the territory of these mythical Polish Kresy? The article is based on a series of interviews with Poles from Lithuania and representatives of governmental and non-governmental organisations operating for the Kresy, as well as an analysis of the content of these organisations websites with a project offer addressed to Poles in Lithuania.

The last century of Lithuanian history and the resulting dynamics of political and demographic change have radically transformed the role, meaning and forms of interpretation of Polish heritage in Lithuania. The purpose of the article is to observe the main directions of changes taking place within the cultural memory of Poles living in Lithuania -the largest national minority group in Lithuania. The report presents the processes of changing topicality of Polish heritage in Lithuania in three main areas of active cultural memory: history, art and religion. The first area is represented by objects related to Józef Piłsudski, the second one by the Pohulanka Theatre (now the Russian Drama Theatre) in Vilnius and objects related to Adam Mickiewicz, and the third one by objects related to the cult of Divine Mercy.The article analyses official communication of these memory objects (published by the objects' owners or official managers) as well as memory practices and rituals carried out in these objects and described on social media and in news articles published in Lithuania in 2017-2019. Observing various types of storage media, in this case, some selected objects of cultural heritage and rituals and texts accompanying them, it is possible to notice processes of variability, exchange, erasing, redefining memory and hence the dynamics of changes in the Polish collective identity in modern Lithuania.The analysis of the formal ritualization and communication of these objects has enabled noticing several interesting trends, above all an occurrence of the phenomenon of polylogue of narratives and the process of universalization of Polish heritage in Lithuania and thus Lithuanian and Polish collective memory approaching each other.The following analysis is valuable as a starting point for reflection on the transformation of the ethnic identity of Poles in Lithuania. The article is one of the first attempts to show

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