Minorities resisted assimilation when majority culture seemed less distinguished

Evidence

Neither the League of Nations nor the Minority Treaties would have prevented the newly established states from more or less forcefully assimilating their minorities. The strongest factor against assimilation was the numerical and cultural weakness of the so-called state peoples. The Russian or the Jewish minority in Poland did not feel Polish culture to be superior to its own and neither was particularly impressed by the fact that Poles formed roughly 60 per cent of Poland’s population. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 677

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with imagined-community theory of nationhood: the cultural prestige differential, not mere numbers, drives assimilation resistance. — connects to: Coercive Americanization backfired, driving minorities into their own defensive nationalisms — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1531; Formal law fails against minority cultural practices that resist it — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1434