This paper deals with the interpretation of the national discourse of the Polish national democracy at the turn of the 19th and 20th century focusing on the definition of the Polish identity and the desirable extent of the future independent Poland. On the basis of these principles it is possible to determine the attitudes of the National Democrats to the issues of the non-Polish ethnic groups in the regions of former Rzeczpospolita. As the key method of this rersearch we can highlight the comparison of the theoretical concepts of the main exponents of the National Democracy which evidences that optimal definicition of he "Pole" and "Poland" in their notions before World War I was not unambiguous. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou