The collapse of the USRR marks the beginning of a new period in the history of the Poles who used to live in this state. In the aftermath of the political processes, the Poles, who were dispersed in the various areas of the Soviet Union, started to function in its sovereign successor states. Both their capacity to act and results achieved were dependent on how numerous their milieus have been, what the given national majority’s attitude to the Poles was, if the Poles’ choices were opportune as well as what the legal conditions in which the national minorities could function were in those states. The present article attempts to analyse the Poles’ situation in Lithuania and Ukraine between 1988 and 2014.