Detailed Description of Poland

Contents:

I. INTRODUCTION

II. LAND AND RESOURCES

A. Rivers and Lakes

B. Climate

C. Natural Resources

D. Plants and Animals

III. POPULATION

A. Population Characteristics

B. Principal Cities

C. Religion

D. Language

E. Education

F. Culture

IV. ECONOMY

A. Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing

B. Mining

C. Manufacturing

D. Tourism

E. Energy

F. Currency and Banking

G. Commerce and Trade

H. Labour

I. Transport

J. Communications

V. GOVERNMENT

A. Executive and Legislature

B. Political Parties

C. Judiciary

D. Local Government

E. Health and Welfare

F. Defence

G. International Organizations

VI. HISTORY

A. The Piast Dynasty

B. The Jagiellon Dynasty

C. Wars and Polish Decline

D. Partitions of Poland

E. First Partition and the Polish Commonwealth

F. Second and Third Partitions

G. Poland Under Foreign Rule

H. Independence

I. Post-World War I Period

J. Dictatorship and the German Threat

K. World War II

L. Liberation

M. Post-War Boundary Changes

N. Emergence of the Communist State

O. Stalinist Takeover

P. Church-State Conflict

Q. Gomulka’s Return

R. Reconciliation with West Germany

S. Gierek Regime

T. Solidarity Triumphant

U. Democratic Poland

1. Walesa’s Presidency

2. Kwasniewski Elected President

3. Elections and Change of Government

4. International Position

5. Kwasniewski Re-elected

Description:

I INTRODUCTION

Poland, officially the Republic of Poland (in Polish, Rzeczpospolita Polska), country in central Europe, bordered on the north by the Baltic Sea and Russia; on the east by Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine; on the south by the Czech Republic and Slovakia; and on the west by Germany. The area of the country is 312,684 sq km (120,728 sq mi).

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Poland was one of the major European powers under the Jagiellon dynasty. With the end of the dynasty in 1572, Poland entered a long period of decline, culminating in the partition of the country between Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1772, 1793, and 1795. Poland was again established as a sovereign state after World War I. It was partitioned for a fourth time in 1939 by Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

After World War II, Polish territory suffered a net loss of about 76,000 sq km (29,344 sq mi), as the land ceded to the USSR in the east was nearly double that acquired from Germany in the west. A Communist-dominated government ruled Poland from 1947 to 1989.

The name Polska (Poland), first applied in the early 11th century, comes from an ancient Slavic people known as the Polanie (field or plains dwellers), who settled in the lowlands between the rivers Oder (Odra) and Vistula (Wisla) in the early Middle Ages.

II LAND AND RESOURCES

Poland is a predominantly lowland country situated, for the most part, in the North European Plain. Although Poland appears as an unbroken plain on a relief map, it has considerable diversity and complexity. The average elevation is only about 175 m (575 ft) above sea level, as compared with the overall European average of some 290 m (950 ft), but elevations reach as high as 2,499 m (8,199 ft), atop Mount Rysy in the High Tatry Range in the south, and as low as 1.8 m (almost 6 ft) below sea level in the Wisla delta in the north. Poland is divided into a number of distinct parallel physiographical regions that run from east to west. A marked contrast exists between the northern two thirds of the country and the southern one third.

The northern zone is a vast region of plains and low hills, divided into the Central Polish Lowlands, the Baltic Heights, and the Coastal Plain. The Central Lowlands are traversed from east to west by a series of large, shallow valleys. To the north of the Central Lowlands is the Baltic Heights region, dotted with hills and lakes. A narrow coastal lowland, about 40 to 100 km (25 to 60 mi) wide, runs nearly the entire length of the Baltic Sea. The coastline, 694 km (431 mi) long, is remarkably smooth and regular, the major exceptions being the Pomeranian Bay in the west and the Gulf of Gdansk (Danzig) in the east. A few good natural harbours are located along the Baltic.

The southern third of Poland consists of a number of well-marked regions, comprising upland areas of various kinds and adjacent or intervening lowlands. A narrow belt of mountains occurs in the extreme south and south-west. The Western Carpathian mountain system, which includes the High Tatry Range and the Beskids, contains the highest elevations in the country. In the south-west, the Sudety Mountains reach a maximum elevation of 1,602 m (5,256 ft) in Poland. North of the mountains are a zone of foothills, the Silesian Plain, and the Little Polish Upland.

A Rivers and Lakes

Almost all of Poland is drained north into the Baltic Sea by way of the Wisla and Oder river systems. The remainder is mostly drained by other rivers flowing into the Baltic. Poland has about 9,300 lakes with an area of 1 hectare (2.5 acres) or more. Lakes are concentrated in the Baltic Heights and Coastal Plain regions. Two lakes, Sniardwy (Spirding) and Mamry (Mauer), exceed 100 sq km (39 sq mi) in size. Poland has some 120 artificial reservoirs, which are situated mainly in the Baltic Heights and in the southern mountains. Many of these water resources, however, are severely polluted. The rivers Wisla, Bóbr, Nida, Wislok, and Bug, as well as the Baltic Sea, are among the major systems suffering from years of untreated discharge of industrial and household waste. Efforts are currently being made to improve filtration and treatment of wastes, but about half of Polish factories and about 40 per cent of cities do not have treatment or filtration systems.

B Climate

Poland’s climate has features of both the moderate climate of Western Europe and the more severe continental climate of Eastern Europe. The climate of the western part may be classified as marine west coast, and the eastern part as humid continental with cool summers. Weather conditions are highly variable, particularly in the winter.

In January, mean temperatures range from -1° C (30.2° F) in the west to -5° C (23° F) in the southern mountains. In summer, average temperatures decrease in a north-western direction, from about 20° C (68° F) in the south-east to about 17° C (63° F) near the Baltic. During the year, the warmest temperatures may exceed 40° C (104° F), and the lowest may drop below -42° C (-43.6° F).

Average annual precipitation in Poland as a whole amounts to only some 610 mm (24 in), but it ranges from about 1,195 to 1,500 mm (47 to 59 in) in the mountains to between 450 and 600 mm (18 to 24 in) in the lowlands. Summer precipitation is about double winter precipitation.

C Natural Resources

Poland has diverse mineral deposits. Mineral wealth is heavily concentrated in the southern upland regions and adjacent areas. Of greatest importance are the deposits of hard coal. Reserves are estimated at 63.5 billion tonnes, 90 per cent of which are located in Upper Silesia. Poland, in addition, has more than 12.9 billion tonnes of lignite. The major deposits are in the Turoszów, Konin, and Belchatów basins. The country also has small reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

Sulphur and copper are the most important of the country’s non-fuel mineral resources. Some of the world’s largest sulphur deposits occur near Tarnobrzeg in the south-east, and large reserves of copper are located in Lower Silesia. Important reserves of zinc and lead occur in Upper Silesia. Other minerals of economic consequence are rock salt, potash, iron ore, and gypsum.

D Plants and Animals

Forest covers 30.6 per cent of Poland. About four fifths of the woodland is made up principally of spruce or pine. A few forests in the north-east contain old and scarce species, such as dwarf birch and Lapp willow, which are unique in Europe. Much of Poland’s forest has been cut down to create farmland or has been damaged by pollution.

Poland’s animals are of limited variety. Most wildlife is typical of that found in other parts of Europe. Poland also has species that are either absent or extremely rare elsewhere in Europe. Those animals include chamois, lynx, wildcat, and elk. European bison are preserved in Bialowieza National Park, which straddles the Belorussian frontier. Wolves and brown bear survive in the higher mountains, and elk and deer are fairly numerous in the lake districts. Grouse, heathcock, and black stork inhabit grain-producing areas, lake marshes, and forests. The inland lakes and streams support considerable fish populations.

III POPULATION

Poland’s ethnic composition has changed dramatically in the 20th century. In the inter-war years, about 30 per cent of Poland’s population consisted of ethnic minorities. Many of these, especially the Jews, were exterminated in the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, and others emigrated during and after the war. Border changes also caused Poland to lose some of its ethnic mix, particularly Germans, and today ethnic Poles make up about 98 per cent of the population. Of the approximately 500,000 people reported as members of ethnic minority groups, the Ukrainians and Belorussians form the largest communities, with much smaller groups of Slovaks, Czechs, Lithuanians, Germans, Gypsies, and Jews.

A Population Characteristics

Poland has a population of 38,633,912 (2001 estimate). The country has a moderate overall population density of 124 people per sq km (320 per sq mi), with the highest densities in the southern upland areas and the lowest in the north-west and north-east. The average annual rate of population increase was less than 1 per cent from the mid-1960s, and between 1990 and 1995 the average increase was estimated at 0.29 per cent.

The rate of urbanization has accelerated since the end of World War II, and it was estimated that about 65 per cent of its population lived in urban centres in 1999. Although the population is comparatively youthful, the average age has been steadily increasing. The proportion of the population aged 15 years or less was about 22 per cent by 2001 and that of people aged 65 years or more about 12.4 per cent. Poland has about 95 men for every 100 women.

Since the end of the massive population transfers in the early post-World War II period, the size and composition of the Polish population has been little affected by migration. Emigration since 1950 has consisted mainly of Germans and Jews, whereas immigration has consisted primarily of Polish repatriates from the former republics of the USSR. There are also about 12 million people of Polish origin living in the Polonias (a Polish term designating Polish communities abroad). Of these, some 6 to 7 million are permanently settled in the United States, 1.5 million in Germany, 1 million in France, 400,000 in Canada, 200,000 in Brazil, 150,000 in Australia, and about 140,000 in the United Kingdom. The size of the Polonias in Russia and the former Soviet republics is estimated at between 1 and 2.5 million.

B Principal Cities

In the early 1990s more than 40 cities had an estimated population of more than 100,000, but only 5 of those cities had more than 500,000 inhabitants. The major cities, with their populations, are Warsaw, 1,632,500 (1997 estimate), the capital; Lódz, 812,300 (1997 estimate); Kraków, 740,500 (1997 estimate); Wroclaw (formerly Breslau), 639,400 (1997 estimate); Poznan (formerly Posen), 580,000 (1997 estimate); Gdansk (formerly Danzig), 461,300 (1997 estimate); Szczecin (formerly Stettin), 419,000 (1997 estimate); Bydgoszcz (formerly Bromberg), 386,300 (1997 estimate); Katowice, 349,000 (1997 estimate); and Lublin, 356,000 (1997 estimate).

C Religion

Roman Catholicism is, at least nominally, the religion of some 91 per cent of Poles, and it exerts an important influence on many aspects of Polish life. In 1978, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, a Pole, became the Roman Catholic pope as John Paul II. The country has about 37 other Churches and religious denominations with a combined membership of some 1 million people. Of these, eight groups are members of the Polish Ecumenical Council, the largest being the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church (about 570,000 members) and the Evangelical Augsburg Church (about 100,000 members). There are also some 115,700 Jehovah’s Witnesses. Before World War II, some 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland; over 90 per cent were killed during the German occupation during the war. Many of the surviving Polish Jews emigrated to the West or to Israel after returning from wartime internment in the USSR. Another wave of emigration was touched off by the government’s 1968 “anti-Zionist” campaign. In the early 1990s there were about 10,000 practising Jews in Poland, but in the late 1990s the population was estimated to be less than half this number.

D Language

The Polish language is the official language of Poland and is used by nearly the entire population. There are a number of dialects, some of which are intermediate between Polish and German or Ukrainian. Polish uses a Latin alphabet with some letters and accents additional to those in English usage.

E Education

Poland has a long tradition of educational attainment, and education occupies an important position in Polish culture.

During the period of foreign rule of Poland, education was limited to a privileged elite. After World War I, when Poland’s independence was restored, a centralized educational system was established. After World War II, the Communist government installed a school system patterned on the Soviet model. In 2001 the literacy rate was 99.8 per cent of the adult population.

Education is free and compulsory between the ages of 7 and 15. On completion of the eight-year elementary school level, almost all children enter the secondary school system. About 20 per cent of these students attend general secondary schools that prepare them for college or university entrance. In 1995 about 5.02 million pupils attended primary schools, about 2.54 million were enrolled in secondary, technical, and vocational schools, and about 720,267 attended higher education.

Poland has a long history of higher education. The University of Kraków (Jagiellonian University), established in 1364, was the second university founded in central Europe. Of the 179 Polish institutions of higher education in the mid-1990s, 12 were universities, 30 were polytechnics, 12 were medical academies, and most of the rest were specialized higher vocational colleges. The universities were located in Kraków, Warsaw, Poznan, Wroclaw, Lublin, Lódz, Torun, Gdansk, Szczecin, and Katowice.

F Culture

The great periods of Western cultural and intellectual expression are paralleled by the history of Polish creativity. The Renaissance inspired a great burst of cultural activity. The Reformation sped the development of a vernacular Polish literature, and in the 18th and 19th centuries Poles were greatly influenced by French culture. After World War II artistic freedom was severely circumscribed during the Stalinist period from 1949 to 1955. After 1956 government cultural policy generally became much more liberal.

Poland has attained its highest artistic recognition in the field of literature. The greatest period of Polish literature is generally regarded as the Romantic period of the 19th century, the chief figures being Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Slowacki, Zygmunt Krasinski, and Cyprian Kamil Norwid. Romanticism in drama and poetry was followed by realism, most notably in the novels of Boleslaw Prus, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont. Stanislaw Wyspianski is regarded as the founder of modern Polish drama. Among the many prominent figures after 1945 were Jerzy Andrzejewski, Tadeusz Rózewicz, Stanislaw Lem, Leon Kruczkowski, and Zbigniew Zaluski. The émigré Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.

In music, the greatest and best-known Polish composer is Frédéric Chopin. Karol Szymanowski is regarded as the most important figure since Chopin. A school of composers emphasizing avant-garde music developed after World War II. Well-known Polish musicians have included the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska and the pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski.

Poland also has a long tradition of peasant music, dance, and costumes, though these have been heavily affected by post-war urbanization. Folk arts and crafts range across all fields from pottery, fabrics, and embroidery to sculpture, graphics, and painting. Such traditions have survived most strongly in such regions as the Kaszuby, a colourful forest and lake tourist area to the west of Gdansk.

In painting, Poland has developed little in the way of distinctive styles. Artists have been influenced by various Western styles and trends, although in the 20th century traditional peasant art has exerted some influence. The portrayals of scenes from Polish history by Jan Matejko are of some note. Several Polish film-makers, including Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polanski, and Krzysztof Kieslowski, achieved international reputations after 1950.

Poland has many museums, some of the most notable of which are the National Museum (1862), the Technical Museum (1875), and the State Archaeological Museum (1923), all in Warsaw; the National Museum and the Wawel State Art Collections (1879), in Kraków; the Archaeological and Ethnographical Museum (1956), in Lódz; the Polish Maritime Museum (1960), in Gdansk; and the Upper Silesian Museum (1927), in Katowice. Major libraries include the National Library (1928) and the Public Library (1907), both located in Warsaw, as well as several university libraries.

IV ECONOMY

Hay Farming

After World War II Poland adopted a Soviet-type socialist economy, and almost all important means of production, resources, transport, finance, and trade were nationalized. Private ownership was limited mainly to the agricultural sector, handicrafts, and certain services. Manufacturing became the dominant economic activity, followed by agriculture and construction. From the late 1970s Poland experienced considerable economic difficulties, resulting primarily from a series of poor harvests, unrest among industrial workers, lagging technology, rising inflation, and the highest debt to the West of any Communist-bloc nation. These economic problems, which worsened in the course of the 1980s, were responsible in large part for the collapse of the Communist regime and its replacement by a coalition led by Solidarity in 1989.

In December 1989, the government launched a reform programme designed to change Poland from a centrally planned to a free-market economy. The package called for a convertible currency, removal of virtually all price controls, imposition of wage controls, and privatization of many state-owned companies. State enterprises were changed into joint-stock companies, some of which were bought by foreign investors. Many of the remainder went bankrupt or were earmarked for eventual privatization. This restructuring led to a rapid rise in unemployment as formerly state-owned firms cut their payrolls in order to cope with the loss of subsidies. Poland’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 18.3 per cent in 1990-1991. The immediate decline of about one third in living standards was partially relieved by a new unemployment insurance system.

After the initial shock, the Polish economy began to rebound. GDP increased by 2.6 per cent in 1992, 3.8 per cent in 1993, and 5 per cent in 1994. Increasing industrial production, a fall in unemployment, declining inflation, and rising purchasing power all signalled that Poland’s free-market changes were working. By the end of 1993 about 40 per cent of the Polish workforce was employed in the private sector. In 1999 Poland has a gross national product (GNP) of US$157,429 million (World Bank estimate), or US$4,070 per capita. In 1998 the Polish budget included revenues of US$56,328 million and expenditures of US$59,719 million.

A Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing

Although Poland ranks as one of the leading European agricultural countries, it is chronically unable to meet its needs for food, feed grains, and vegetable oils. Under the Communist government, Polish agriculture was organized into both socialized and private sectors. Small private farms accounted for more than 70 per cent of all farmland and for 80 per cent of yearly agricultural production. Employment in the state agricultural sector fell from 700,000 in 1989 to less than 200,000 in 1994. The largest area of cultivated land is found in the Central Lowlands, but much of the best farmland is in the low plateaux and foothills of southern Poland. Climate limits the range of crops that can be grown, and periodic drought causes considerable fluctuation in yearly crop output. Farmers generally achieve low yields compared to those of other Eastern European countries. In 1998) about 19 per cent of the workforce was employed in agriculture, but it only accounted for 3.4 per cent of GDP (in 1999). The modernization and restructuring of the agricultural sector is one of Poland’s chief obstacles to full EU membership. The principal Polish crops are grain (rye, wheat, barley, oats), sugar beet, potatoes and other vegetables, apples, strawberries, currants, rapeseed, linseed, and tobacco. Annual harvests in 2000 included 8.28 million tonnes of wheat, 4 million tonnes of rye, 3 million tonnes of barley, 22.8 million tonnes of potatoes, and 12) million tonnes of sugar beet. Horses have become an important part of the agricultural economy; Poland is one of the world’s leading exporters of horses and horse meat, with Italy and France as the leading importers in the mid-1990s. Livestock in 2000 included 6.56 million cattle, 18.2 million pigs, 392,105 sheep, and 54.3 million chickens.

The annual roundwood harvest was about 24.3 million cu m (858 million cu ft) in 1999. About four fifths of the harvest consists of softwoods. About one third of the wood is sawn into timber, and the rest is used as pit props in mining, as fuel, or to make paper.

The Polish fish catch was 390,586 tonnes in 1997. Freshwater fish accounted for about 8 per cent of the catch. Since 1960 the major marine fishing activity has moved from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Okhotsk, which now supplies about 75 per cent of the catch. Alaska pollack, herring, Baltic sprat, squid, and cod are now the main species caught. Major fishing ports are Swinoujscie, Kolobrzeg, Darlowo, Ustka, Wladyslawowo, Puck, and Hel.

B Mining

The mining industry employs about 3 per cent of the Polish workforce. Coal mining is the most important sector, and Poland ranks among the world’s leading producers of hard coal. Polish coal production has declined from some 266 million tonnes annually in the late 1980s to about 173 million tonnes in 1999. Poland is also a leading producer of native sulphur (2.4 million tonnes). In addition, the country produces substantial quantities of lignite, copper, lead, zinc, magnesite, and rock salt. In 1999 output of petroleum was about 3.29 million barrels, and of natural gas, 5.10 billion cu m (180 billion cu ft).

C Manufacturing

Before World War II, Poland’s manufacturing base was dominated by the textile, iron and steel, chemical, processed food, and machinery sectors. In the post-war period, these industries were expanded, but other products, such as petrochemicals, machine tools, electronic equipment, ships, fertilizer, and copper, also were given emphasis. Industrial investment is concentrated in the older centres of Upper Silesia and in Warsaw, Lódz, and Kraków, but an effort has been made to introduce industry to smaller cities and rural areas. Annual output in the mid-1990s included cement, 13.9 million tonnes; crude steel, 11.8 million tonnes; passenger cars, 366,000; washing-machines, 419,000; and refrigerators, 585,000.

D Tourism

Poland experienced a rapid increase in the annual number of foreign visitors in the 1970s, with 9 to 11 million people each year visiting the country between 1977 and 1979. Political unrest slowed the tourist boom, however, and in the early 1980s the annual number of visitors did not exceed 2 million; later in the decade the tourist trade rebounded. People from other Communist countries made up the great majority of the visitors, while West Germany was the most important source of tourists from the West. The number of tourists increased from 18 million in 1990 to more than 82 million in 1995, the vast majority of these being Germans, Czechs, and Slovaks on day trips for shopping, business, or family visits. Major attractions in Poland are the beach resorts along the Baltic Sea, the lake district, the Carpathian and Sudety mountains, and the country’s numerous historical sites and cultural institutions. Development of the Baltic Sea resorts has been hampered by a high level of pollution. The Polish Development Agency is undertaking a rapid expansion of the tourist infrastructure, adding luxury hotels and other improvements in about 300 locations nationwide. Tourism generated an income of US$36 million in 1999.

E Energy

In 1999 Poland had an installed electricity-generating capacity of about 31.9 million kW, and production was about 134.4 billion kWh. In 1998 96.47 per cent of the electricity was generated in plants burning coal; the remainder was produced in hydroelectric facilities.

F Currency and Banking

The monetary unit of Poland is the zloty of 100 groszy, the basic currency unit (4.084 zlotys equal US$1; 2001). After the fall of Communism, it became domestically convertible at its real value. After a period of hyperinflation in the early 1990s its exchange rate peaked at about 24,000 to the US dollar. In January 1995 the Polish government replaced the old currency with a new zloty at a conversion rate of 10,000 to one. In an important step in free-market reforms, the new zloty was floated on international currency markets in May 1995, and broadly held its value. The Polish National Bank, founded in 1945, serves as the country’s central bank. Other banks are the Bank of Food Economy, the Export Development Bank, and the Commercial Bank of Warsaw. Foreign banks have also commenced operations in Poland.

G Commerce and Trade

In 1999 annual imports were estimated at about US$45,903 million and exports US$27,397 million. Principal imports are machinery and equipment, crude and refined petroleum, electrical power, chemicals, consumer goods, and agricultural products. Major exports are machinery and equipment, basic metals, chemicals, textiles and clothing, and food products. During the Communist period, Poland’s foreign trade was mainly with other Communist countries, particularly the USSR, East Germany (now part of the Federal Republic of Germany along with West Germany), and Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), but substantial trade was also carried on with the West. Current trade partners include Germany, Russia, the Netherlands, Italy, and the United Kingdom. In 1995 Poland’s foreign debt totalled US$42,200 million. The country has reached debt forgiveness and restructuring agreements with many of its creditors. Foreign investment has been buoyant, with several multinational companies opening or expanding operations in Poland. Privatization receipts in 1997 almost trebled from the previous year, but the overall pace has slowed.

H Labour

Poland had a labour force of some 19.8 million people in 1999, with approximately 32 per cent employed in manufacturing, mining, and construction; 22 per cent in agriculture and forestry; and 46 per cent in the service sector. Unemployment increased rapidly during the early 1990s, but peaked at a level of around 18 per cent and by 1998 had fallen to 10.5 per cent. Until 1980 all trade unions belonged to the state-sponsored Central Council of Trade Unions. About 85 per cent of the workforce, some 10 million workers, joined free trade unions grouped within Solidarity (Solidarnosc) in 1980. In May 1981, private farmers were also allowed to organize an independent Rural Solidarity. Both organizations were dissolved during martial law in October 1982, and not legalized again until April 1989. The Communist regime created the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (Polish acronym, OPZZ) during the 1980s. The OPZZ is currently stronger than Solidarity, which has been torn between its political and trade union roles, and had 2.3 million members in the early 1990s. In the 1993 elections, Solidarity failed to gain parliamentary representation.

I Transport

Poland has a dense network of public roads totalling some 381,046 km (236,771 mi), about 66 per cent of which have a hard surface. Motorways are almost non-existent in Poland, but it is envisaged that 2,500 km (1,554 mi) of toll roads will be constructed over the next 15 years. The Polish section of the motorway from Berlin to Moscow, the A-2, is expected to open in 2001. In the mid-1990s some 7.5 million passenger cars and about 1.4 million commercial vehicles were in use, giving a ratio of 4.3 people per vehicle. The Polish railway system includes about 22,285 km (13,847 mi) of operated track. More than one third of the system is electrified. Poland has about 4,000 km (2,485 mi) of navigable inland waterways; however, this system will require some modernization before being commercially viable. The Wisla, Oder, Bug, Warta, Narew, and Notec are the principal navigable rivers; about 1,215 km (755 mi) of canals connect the river systems. Major inland ports are Gliwice, Wroclaw, and Warsaw. Three major seaports, Gdansk, Szczecin, and Gdynia, account for nearly all Poland’s maritime commerce. The country’s merchant marine numbered about 429 ships in 2000.

The state airline, Polskie Linie Lotnicze (LOT), provides domestic and international flights, and the country is also served by many foreign airlines. Warsaw is the main hub of Polish air traffic.

J Communications

Mass communications in Poland were nationalized in 1946 and, under the Communist regime, were subject to close government supervision. In 1989 the democratic government abolished censorship and ended subsidies to the Communist press. In 1996 Poland had 55 daily newspapers with a circulation of about 4) million: of these, Gazeta Wyborcza (Electoral News), published in Warsaw, is the most important. Most radio and television broadcasting originates in Warsaw, though the country has 16 regional radio and television centres. In 1997 Poland had about 20 million radios and about 13 million television sets. The telecommunications sector has expanded rapidly, and in 1999 there were 263 telephones in use per 1,000 people.

V GOVERNMENT

Poland is governed under a constitution adopted in 1952 and amended in 1989. Major revisions have recently been made to Poland’s governmental structure. In 1989 reforms abolished the Communist Party’s monopoly on power and introduced democratic rules and principles. A transitional “Little Constitution” was passed in 1992 that amended the Soviet-era document until a new constitution could be written. However, the “Little Constitution” established only vague limits on presidential, prime ministerial, and parliamentary powers, which has led to some confrontation between the various arms of government.

A Executive and Legislature

Under the Communist regime, the two houses of the Polish parliament elected the president of the republic. Direct presidential elections, first held in late 1990, require a run-off when no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round of balloting. Under certain conditions the president may dismiss parliament and call for new elections. The prime minister is chosen by the president with the approval of the lower legislative house.

The national legislature of Poland is a bicameral body consisting of a lower house, or Sejm, of 460 members elected to four-year terms, and an upper house, or Senat, of 100 members, also elected to four-year terms. In the general elections of June 1989, 65 per cent of the seats in the lower house were reserved for the Communist Party and its allies and 35 per cent for the opposition, led by the trade union Solidarity; no such restrictions applied to the parliamentary election held in October 1991. The 1993 elections placed minimum poll requirements on parties seeking representation in the legislature. To gain seats, single parties need at least 5 per cent of the votes and coalitions need at least 8 per cent.

B Political Parties

Major parties represented in the legislature following the 1993 elections include the Democratic Left Alliance (made up of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic Party and the All-Poland Trade Union Alliance), the Freedom Union, the Confederation for an Independent Poland, the Non-Party Bloc for Supporting Reforms (the party of President Lech Walesa), the Polish Peasant Party, and the Labour Union.

C Judiciary

The administration of justice is carried out by the Supreme Court, voivodeship (provincial) courts, district courts, and special courts. The Supreme Court is the highest tribunal and supervises all lower courts. The State Tribunal and Constitutional Tribunal guard the constitution against executive or legislative infringement.

D Local Government

Poland is divided into 17 voivodeships (provinces), named after the towns from which they are administered. The voivodeships are divided into towns and communes (gminas). Members of the local councils are freely elected.

E Health and Welfare

Average life expectancy at birth in 2001 was 69.3 years for men and 77.8 years for women. Communist Poland had an extensive system of social welfare funded from the national budget; comprehensive welfare and social security benefits included pensions and various forms of health care. Much of this sector has become market-oriented since 1989, with Poles paying much more directly for all forms of health care and welfare. Private general medicine has spread, as has the practice of charging fees for medical care in hospitals. Most pharmacies are now run by the private sector. Poland had about 88,500 doctors (1 doctor for every 473 people), 17,600 dentists, 210,400 nurses, and about 700 general hospitals with 243,000 beds (1 bed for every 189 people) in the mid-1990s.

F Defence

In 1999 Polish military forces totalled 217,290 personnel, including an army of 132,750, a navy of 16,860, and an air force of 46,200. The last contingent of Russian combat troops—remnants of a Soviet force that had been stationed for decades on Polish soil—withdrew from Poland in October 1992.

G International Organizations

Poland is a member of the UN and UN specialized agencies, as well as the World Trade Organization. Following the 1991 free elections, Poland joined the Council of Europe. It achieved associate status in the European Community (now the EU) in 1992, and was promised full membership by the year 2002. In early 1994 Poland became a member of the Partnership for Peace programme as a precursor to full membership in NATO. Poland is also a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), the Central European Initiative (CEI), and the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA).

VI HISTORY

Little is known regarding the early activities of the Slavic tribes that laid the foundations of the Polish nation. According to some authorities, a number of these tribes united, about ad 840, under a legendary king known as Piast, but Poland does not begin to figure in European history until the reign, from 962 to 992, of Mieszko, reputedly a descendant of Piast.

A The Piast Dynasty

Mieszko led the Poles into Christianity, in response to the crusading and marauding Germans. During the reign of his son, Boleslav I (992-1025), the Christian Church was firmly established in Poland. Boleslav also conducted successful wars against Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and considerably expanded the Polish domain. He was crowned king by the pope in 1025. At his death, Poland extended beyond the Carpathian Mountains and the Oder (Odra) and Dnestr rivers.

During the next three centuries Poland met with repeated misfortunes from internal disorder and foreign invasions. In 1079 Boleslav II murdered the Bishop of Kraków and Poland was placed under a papal interdict. Boleslav III, who reigned from 1102 to 1138, conquered Pomerania, defeated the pagan Prussians, and defended Silesia against Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. On the death of Boleslav III Poland was divided among his sons, and the kingdom subsequently disintegrated into a number of independent warring principalities.

In 1240-1241 the Mongols invaded and ravaged Poland. The neighbouring Baltic dominions of the pagan Prussians had been subjugated, meanwhile, by the Teutonic Knights, and German colonists, encouraged by the Polish princes, began to settle in the country. During the period of German colonization, large numbers of Jews, in flight from persecution in western Europe, took refuge in Polish territory.

Wladyslaw I the Short, of the Piast dynasty, was crowned King of Poland in 1320. From 1305 to 1333, defeats were inflicted on the Teutonic Knights, and the kingdom was reunited. The power and prosperity of Poland increased tremendously during the reign, from 1333 to 1370, of his son Casimir III, one of the most enlightened rulers in Polish history and the last of the Piast dynasty. He initiated important administrative, judicial, and legislative reforms, founded the University of Kraków (1364), extended aid to the Jewish refugees from western Europe, and added Galicia to the Polish domains.

B The Jagiellon Dynasty

The second dynasty of Polish kings, the Jagiellonians, was founded by Jagiello, Grand Duke of Lithuania. In 1386 Jagiello married Jadwiga, Queen of Poland, a grand niece of Casimir III, and ascended the throne as Wladyslaw II Jagiello. Christianity was introduced into Lithuania, a pagan country, by Wladyslaw, who was converted on his accession. In 1410 Polish and Lithuanian armies under Wladyslaw won a decisive victory at Tannenberg over the Teutonic Knights, thereby raising Poland to a leading position among European nations. Thereafter, until 1569, a single sovereign usually ruled both states.

Under the Jagiellon dynasty, which lasted until 1572, Poland attained great heights of power, prosperity, and cultural magnificence. Casimir IV, who ruled from 1447 to 1492, conducted a protracted and successful war (1454-1466) against the Teutonic Knights. In 1466, by terms of the Peace of Thorn, which terminated the conflict, he secured West Prussia, Pomerania, and other territories. The landed gentry and lesser nobility acquired extensive privileges during Casimir’s reign, mainly at the expense of the peasantry. The Sejm, a parliamentary body that evolved out of earlier assemblies of nobles and other social groups, began to assume greater importance. The succeeding Jagiellon kings, notably Sigismund I, were generally victorious in the military and diplomatic struggles of the period, despite some setbacks in the east. In 1569 Sigismund II Augustus united the two realms of Poland and Lithuania. The country was officially termed the Commonwealth. Protestantism, which made many converts among the nobility in the middle years of the 16th century, ceased to be significant after 1600.

With the death of Sigismund II Augustus, last of the Jagiellonians, in 1572, the Polish nobility successfully concluded a prolonged campaign for complete control of the country. A regime of elected kings was instituted with the power of election vested in the Sejm, then a bicameral body consisting of the lesser and greater nobility. One important aspect of this system was to be the liberum veto, which made it possible for any member of the Sejm to prevent the passage of legislation. The constitution also sanctioned the formation of military confederations of nobles.

C Wars and Polish Decline

For two centuries after these developments, the political, economic, and military position of Poland deteriorated. Successive and generally disastrous wars with Sweden, Russia, the Ukrainian Cossacks, Brandenburg, and the Ottoman Turks led to the loss of important Polish territories and the devastation of much of Poland. In 1683 Polish and German armies under the command of John III Sobieski defeated a vast Turkish army at the gates of Vienna, halting a serious threat to Christendom in central Europe, but his victory could not halt Poland’s decline. Early in the 18th century the Russian Empire opened a systematic offensive against declining Poland.

Supplementing military force with bribery and intrigue, the Russian rulers gradually reduced neighbouring Poland to impotence. Widespread political corruption among the Polish nobility accelerated the drift towards national catastrophe. Through shameless bribery of a faction of the Sejm and armed Russian intervention, Frederick Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and son of Augustus II—the previous king of Poland—was placed on the Polish throne in 1733 as Augustus III. These events brought on the conflict known in history as the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1735). Although sections of the Polish nobility subsequently united around a programme of national salvation, Poland was unable to withstand the next Russian onslaught. In 1764 Russian troops entered Poland and forced the enthronement of Stanislas II Augustus, a paramour of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.

D Partitions of Poland

Russian expansionism, as exemplified by these events, caused profound alarm among the European powers. The Ottoman Empire immediately declared war on Russia. Prussia and Austria, fearful of a general European conflict and coveting Polish territory, submitted a proposal to the Russian government for the partition of Poland.

E First Partition and the Polish Commonwealth

The Russian government agreed, and in 1772 the treaty of partition was concluded at St Petersburg. By the terms of this document, Russia, Austria, and Prussia acquired large portions of Polish territory, amounting to about one quarter of the total area of the country. A constitution, which established safeguards against Polish resurgence, was also imposed on the nation by the partitioning powers. The country was officially termed the Polish Commonwealth. Consent of the Sejm to the treaty was obtained largely by bribery.

Despite the political restrictions surrounding the Polish Commonwealth, the attenuated nation progressed in several domestic fields in the decade following partition. The national education system was secularized and completely modernized. A movement for constitutional reform also developed during this period, but the Polish nobility frustrated effective action. Relations between Russia and Prussia deteriorated rapidly after 1786. With encouragement from Prussia, Polish patriots in the Sejm instituted sweeping governmental reforms in 1788 and began the draft of a new constitution. The draft, which proclaimed Poland a hereditary monarchy and strengthened and liberalized the government, was adopted, in the face of violent opposition from a section of the gentry, on May 3, 1791.

F Second and Third Partitions

Shortly afterwards the leaders of the disgruntled nobility and Catherine II reached a secret agreement providing for the restoration of the old order. The Polish conspirators organized the Confederacy of Targowica in May 1792. Supported by Russian troops, this organization immediately began military operations against Poland. The Polish army, led by Prince Józef Poniatowski, resisted for more than three months, but the government, abandoned by Prussia and confronted by overwhelming odds, soon capitulated. Russian armies then occupied all of eastern Poland, and shortly thereafter, early in 1793, the Prussians occupied the western portion of the country. These territorial seizures, which further reduced the area of Poland by two thirds, were formally sanctioned in a second territorial partition, ratified in September 1793.

In 1794 the Poles embarked on a revolutionary war for the recovery of their lost territories. Under the leadership of Thaddeus Kosciusko, who had fought in the American War of Independence and who assumed dictatorial powers, the hastily formed Polish armies won a series of victories over the Russians. By the summer of 1794 large sections of Russian-occupied Poland had been liberated and the Russians had suffered a humiliating defeat at Warsaw. A variety of factors, however, including dissension among the Polish high command, overwhelming numerical superiority of the Russians, and Prussian and Austrian intervention, rendered the Polish cause hopeless. In October 1794 the Russians won a decisive victory at Maciejowice. Russian forces under Field Marshal Aleksandr Suvorov entered Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, in November and massacred much of the population. Warsaw then surrendered, and the remnants of the revolutionary armies capitulated within a few weeks. After settling sharp differences on division of the spoils, the victorious powers concluded treaties between 1795 and 1797 on the third partition of Poland. By the terms of the treaties, the Russian Empire received about half of the remaining Polish territory, and Prussia and Austria each received about a quarter. With these events, the Polish state disappeared from the map of Europe.

G Poland Under Foreign Rule

The Polish people remained under the yoke of foreign masters for nearly 125 years after the third partition. During the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon, who had promised to re-establish Poland, obtained substantial help from the Poles, thousands of whom served in his armies. In 1807, by the provisions of the Treaty of Tilsit, he created the Duchy of Warsaw, consisting originally of the territory taken by Prussia in 1793 and 1795. Two years later Napoleon forced Austria to cede Western Galicia to the duchy. Aside from granting the state a liberal constitution, Napoleon did little else for the Poles, despite their support for his 1812 campaign against Russia.

In 1815 the Congress of Vienna, which drafted the general European peace settlement after Napoleon’s downfall, created a Kingdom of Poland, consisting of about three quarters of the territory of the former Duchy of Warsaw, with the Russian Emperor as King; established Kraków as a city republic; and distributed the remainder of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, granted the new kingdom a liberal constitution in 1815, but Polish nationalists soon initiated a powerful movement for independence. On November 29, 1830, this movement culminated in the outbreak of armed insurrection. The Poles expelled the imperial authorities and in January 1831 proclaimed their independence. In the ensuing war, the Poles kept the Russians at bay for several months. The Russians won an important victory at Ostroléka on May 26, 1831, however, and they took Warsaw on September 8.

The constitution, the Sejm, and the Polish army were abolished in Poland in the aftermath of the rebellion. The Poles were deprived of civil liberties, their country was robbed of literary and art treasures, and severe measures were taken to Russianize public institutions and administration. Other abortive insurrections and nationalist demonstrations occurred in various parts of Poland in 1846, 1848, 1861, and most notably in 1863. After the insurrection of 1863 the Russian Empire, intensifying its programme for the Russification of the Polish lands under its rule, introduced the Russian language in schools, restricted the use of the Polish language, and interfered with the activities of the Roman Catholic Church. Culturally, politically, and economically, the parts of Poland under Russian rule were transformed into mere provinces of the Russian Empire, losing almost all vestiges of their former autonomy. The Poles in Prussian Poland were subjected to a policy of Germanization (although not as severe as in the Russian zone); Poles in Austrian Poland were treated more liberally, and developed their own leaders and political life.

H Independence

Conscripted into the armies of Russia and the Central Powers, Poles fought against Poles in World War I. After the downfall of the Russian Empire, in March 1917, the provisional government of Russia recognized Poland’s right to self-determination. A provisional Polish government was subsequently formed at Paris. In September 1917 the Germans, then in complete control of the country, created a regency council as the supreme governmental authority of the so-called Polish Kingdom.

On the collapse of the Central Powers in the autumn of 1918, the Poles moved swiftly towards statehood. The Republic of Poland was proclaimed in November, and an independent government was installed in January 1919.

I Post-World War I Period

The Treaty of Versailles (June 1919) granted Poland a narrow belt of territory (the so-called Polish corridor) extending along the River Wisla to the Baltic Sea, and large sections of Posen (Poznan) and West Prussia. The treaty also awarded Poland important economic rights in the free city of Danzig. After a war with Soviet Russia in 1921, Poland annexed parts of Belorussia (see Belarus) and Ukraine. In the west, the Poles acquired sections of Upper Silesia in 1921 and 1922, following a plebiscite. In the two decades following the war, the foreign policy of Poland was largely determined by fear of Germany and the USSR. A defensive alliance with France was arranged in February 1921, and alliances were subsequently signed with Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. In 1932 Poland concluded a non-aggression pact with the USSR. A similar agreement, effective for ten years, was concluded with Germany in 1934. Both these treaties guaranteed Poland’s borders.

In the realm of domestic politics, developments in Poland, after the adoption of a permanent constitution in March 1921, were marked by incessant strife between the conservative and leftist political factions. Failure of the new state to protect the economic and political rights of the Jews, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Germans, and other minorities included in its population also caused constant friction and turmoil. Some concessions to the demands of certain of the minorities were legislated in 1924. In December 1925 a measure was enacted providing for the distribution to the peasantry of 20,234 hectares (50,000 acres) of land annually.

J Dictatorship and the German Threat

Meanwhile, Poland had been in the throes of an almost continuous financial crisis. The general instability and confusion led to frequent changes of Cabinet. Following a coup led by Józef Pilsudski in 1926, Ignacy Moscicki was installed as president; Pilsudski, as minister of war, gradually acquired dictatorial control over the government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1935 a new constitution was adopted formalizing his authoritarian regime. Pilsudski survived the inauguration of the new system by less than a month, and was succeeded by General Edward Smigly-Rydz.

The triumph of National Socialism in Germany and the expansionist policy of Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s posed grave dangers to Polish security. After the Munich Pact and the ensuing destruction of the Czechoslovakian state (March 1939), Poland, which had received about 1,036 sq km (400 sq mi) of Czech territory in the Munich settlement, became the next major German target. This development took the form of German demands, delivered late in March, that Poland consent to the cession of Danzig to Germany and yield important rights in the Polish corridor. Polish rejection of these demands was followed, on March 31, by an Anglo-French pledge of aid to Poland in the event of German aggression. On April 28, Hitler renounced the German-Polish non-aggression treaty. On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland, an act that marked the outbreak of World War II.

K World War II

By mid-September 1939, little more than two weeks after the start of the German invasion, German armies had overrun most of western and central Poland. In the same month, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east, and the two invading powers divided the country between them. Enormous reprisals were exacted against the Poles throughout the German-occupied region. In the Soviet-occupied area, many thousands of Poles were forcibly deported to Siberia, and many others were killed.

Numerous members of the Polish government and the military forces succeeded in escaping from Poland during the final phases of German and Soviet military operation against the country. Most of the refugee Polish troops, numbering about 100,000, succeeded in reaching France, where they were regrouped into combat units. These units and others that were later organized in the Soviet Union rendered valiant service to the Allied war effort in North Africa and Europe. In the meantime a government-in-exile had been organized in France. Following the collapse of France in 1940, the Polish government established headquarters in London.

The armed forces of the Third Reich occupied all of Soviet-held Poland during the initial phase of their attack on the USSR in 1941. During their occupation of the country, the German armies pursued a policy of systematic extermination of the Polish people, particularly Jews, many of whom perished at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdenek, Sobibór, and other concentration camps scattered throughout the country. At the expiration of hostilities the estimated total of civilian casualties numbered more than 5 million, most of whom were killed by the Germans. Polish military casualties in the war totalled about 600,000. The material losses suffered were similarly enormous. In April 1943 the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, rather than wait for destruction in the camps, rose in rebellion against hopeless odds. Despite heroic resistance, and attempts to assist by other Polish resistance units outside, the ghetto rising was crushed after weeks of fighting, with Jewish casualties numbering around 14,000, and survivors moved to extermination camps.

L Liberation

The liberation of Poland from German domination began shortly after the Allied invasion of France in June 1944. During June, July, and August the Soviet armies, taking advantage of the situation, inflicted a series of devastating defeats on the Germans in the east. Before the beginning of September the Soviet army, aided by contingents of Polish troops, had begun operations on Polish territory. In August 1944 Polish resistance forces (the Polish Home Army) took control of Warsaw in the Warsaw Uprising, but the Soviets were either unable or unwilling to support them. The Germans recaptured the city in October and razed it to the ground after evacuating the population. The remains of Warsaw were occupied by the Soviet army in January 1945, and the last of the German invaders were driven from the country in March. In July 1944 the Soviet government had sponsored the formation of a Polish Committee of National Liberation, an organization largely dominated by Communists. The Committee of National Liberation, which established headquarters at Lublin after the liberation of that city, proclaimed itself the provisional government of Poland in December 1944. After several attempts, a reconciliation between the London and Lublin Polish governments was accomplished. In June 1945, after the Germans had been expelled, a coalition established a Polish Government of National Unity. This government was officially recognized by the British and US governments in the following month, having gained Soviet promises of free elections at the Yalta Conference in early 1945.

M Post-War Boundary Changes

At the Potsdam Conference, held after Germany’s surrender in 1945, the Allied powers placed Upper and Lower Silesia, Danzig (Gdansk), and parts of Brandenburg, Pomerania, and East Prussia under Polish administration pending the conclusion of a final peace settlement. Of a population totalling about 8,900,000 in the German areas assigned to Poland, more than 7 million were Germans. Most of the Germans fled the Red Army or were subsequently expelled to Germany. The eastern frontier of Poland was delimited by the terms of a treaty concluded by the Polish and Soviet governments on August 16, 1945. On the basis of this document, which established the Polish-Soviet frontier considerably to the west of the pre-war boundary, the USSR acquired a considerable amount of former Polish territory. The inhabitants of this territory totalled approximately 12,500,000. Of this number, nearly four million were Poles, most of whom were repatriated.

N Emergence of the Communist State

Communist-Socialist strength in the government grew steadily during 1946 and 1947. In the 1947 parliamentary elections—denounced by the United States as not “free and unfettered”—the two-party coalition won more than 85 per cent of the vote.

O Stalinist Takeover

Beginning in September 1948 the Polish Communist Party purged itself of many thousands of so-called national Communists who were accused of approving Yugoslavia’s defiance of the Soviet Union. Among those jailed in the purge was Wladyslaw Gomulka, Secretary-General of the Party and First Deputy Premier. In December the Socialists and Communists merged to form the Polish United Workers’ Party, in which pro-Stalin Communists were dominant. Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky was installed as head of the Polish armed forces in 1949. Thereafter Poland appeared to become one of the most faithful satellites of the Soviet Union.

Pro-Soviet Communist leaders then sought to implement industrial and economic goals for Poland in conformity with the economic and social system of the USSR. The major problem was the effort to collectivize agriculture, which was unsuccessful and later abandoned.

P Church-State Conflict

After the Vatican excommunicated all Communists in 1949, the Polish government confiscated many Church properties, ordered the closing of Church schools, and established a youth organization to counteract the influence of the Church. In the 1950s the government assumed supervision over the appointment of clergymen, requiring a loyalty oath of each candidate. Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, Archbishop of Warsaw and Primate of Poland, resisted the measure and was suspended from office. He was allowed to retire to a monastery; in 1956 he returned to his clerical duties as a result of more lenient policies.

Q Gomulka’s Return

During the post-war period, Poland became an active member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact, both Soviet-dominated organs. In 1952 Poland adopted a constitution modelled after that of the USSR but explicitly recognizing certain property rights.

In the “thaw” following the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, Polish artists, intellectuals, students, and workers raised demands for government reforms and a greater measure of freedom from Soviet control. In June 1956 workers staged a demonstration in Poznan; the quelling of the protest left 53 people dead and several hundred wounded. Leaders of the demonstration received relatively light sentences. In October Gomulka, who had been readmitted to the party, was named First Secretary. Rokossovsky and other Stalinist officials in high Polish posts were dismissed.

Gomulka then became the dominant figure in Poland, steering a careful course between pro-Soviet and nationalist sentiments. Limited political reforms were introduced in the 1957 elections. Slates included non-Communists and independents; moreover, there were nearly twice as many candidates as posts to be filled.

Popular discontent erupted once again in Poland in the spring of 1968, as demands by students and artists for greater freedom of expression were met by severe government repression. Student demonstrations began in Warsaw in March, at the university and at the Polytechnic School, and soon spread to the universities in Poznan, Lublin, and Kraków. The students demanded liberal reforms similar to those instituted in Czechoslovakia at the time. Seeking to stifle dissent, the government launched an “anti-Zionist” campaign, which had anti-Semitic overtones. Hundreds of Jews were dismissed from government, party, university, and newspaper positions, and many left Poland for the West or Israel. During the conferences in Warsaw in June and Bratislava in August 1968, Poland joined the Warsaw Pact powers in a condemnation of the Czech reform programme and on August 20 participated in the occupation of Czechoslovakia, sending a contingent estimated at 45,000 troops.

R Reconciliation with West Germany

Early in 1970 economic problems prompted the government to make a major adjustment in its foreign policy. Hopeful of obtaining economic and technological aid from prosperous West Germany (now part of the United Federal Republic of Germany), the Poles opened political talks with West Germany in January, and the Polish and German foreign ministers reached agreement in November. In December Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany went to Warsaw to sign the resulting treaty, in which West Germany formally accepted the post-war loss of 103,600 sq km (40,000 sq mi) to Poland and the establishment of the Oder-Neisse line as Poland’s western frontier. In return, Bonn received informal Polish assurances that Polish residents who claimed German nationality (thought to number several tens of thousands) would be permitted to emigrate from Poland. Both sides agreed to settle disputes “exclusively by peaceful means” and to move towards “full normalization” of relations. Full relations were restored after the West German parliament ratified the treaty in May 1972.

S Gierek Regime

An economic crisis assumed major proportions late in 1970. Polish industry had fallen short of planning goals. Bad weather again contributed to a poor harvest and resulted in the costly import of grain. In addition, the prices of coal, food, and clothing were drastically raised. Outraged at the increases, workers in half a dozen Polish cities staged demonstrations that led to riots, arson, and looting. A week-long state of emergency was declared, and the protests were forcibly suppressed.

In the aftermath of the rioting, Party Secretary Gomulka and other party leaders were removed from the Politburo. Edward Gierek, a Politburo member, became Party Secretary. Prices were frozen at their previous levels, and in 1972 the freeze was extended indefinitely.

Improving relations with the West were symbolized by visits to Poland by US presidents Richard M. Nixon in 1972, Gerald R. Ford in 1975, and Jimmy Carter in 1977. Poland began the repatriation of some 125,000 ethnic Germans to West Germany in 1975.

Official political life subsequently stagnated and opposition developed. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Kraków was elected pope as John Paul II in 1978. Living standards deteriorated, and hundreds of thousands of Polish workers responded to a large food price rise by going on strike in the summer of 1980. In August the country was paralysed when workers in Gdansk and other Baltic ports conducted sit-in strikes in their shipyards for three weeks and started making political demands. At the end of the month, the Communist authorities were forced into making unprecedented concessions. These included the right to strike, wage increases, the release of political prisoners, and the curtailment of censorship. The recognition of the right to organize independent trade unions led to the formation in mid-September of the Solidarity federation. The sick and discredited Gierek stepped down as Communist Party leader in favour of Stanislaw Kania.

T Solidarity Triumphant

The stand-off between Solidarity and the Communist Party took place in a period of increased economic decline and social discontent, causing a growing number of dangerous confrontations. Partly because of Soviet pressure, the government was unable or unwilling to carry out the necessary reforms. In February 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski was made Premier, and in October was made Party Chief. To control the situation, he used the radical demands of the Solidarity movement as a pretext for imposing martial law in mid-December. The Solidarity organization was suspended and its leader, Lech Walesa, and thousands of its activists arrested or interned. All industrial and political opposition was banned and suppressed. Communist Party reformers were also disciplined. The authorities retained many of the expanded emergency powers even after the lifting of martial law in 1983. Solidarity lost its mass base but survived as an underground opposition movement with sufficient popular support to force gradual concessions from the regime. It was backed by the ever more powerful Roman Catholic Church, which had been strengthened by papal visits in 1983 and 1987. The Jaruzelski regime gradually loosened its grip on power and attempted to introduce economic reforms. These failed to gain sufficient social support and were never completed.

The political and economic stalemate in 1980s Poland was broken by the glasnost and perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev. Reform became possible. Spurred on by industrial unrest in 1988, reformist Communists under Jaruzelski and Walesa’s Civic Committee negotiated an agreement in early 1989. Political and civic freedoms were conceded, Solidarity legalized once more, and a freely elected Senat (upper house) of the legislature was established. Jaruzelski was elected to the presidency with Solidarity’s concurrence. In the 1989 elections, Solidarity won 99 out of the 100 Senat seats, as well as the 35 per cent of the Sejm (lower house) seats that it was allowed to contest. Despite the fact that the political balance in the Sejm was held by the Communists’ minor party allies (the Peasants and Democratic parties), these refused to endorse the Communist police chief General Czeslaw Kiszczak’s appointment as prime minister. In August Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Walesa aide, formed a coalition government in which Communists controlled the defence and interior ministries. Mazowiecki, Poland’s first non-Communist premier in more than 40 years, dismantled the Communist system in a constitutional manner and consolidated the transition to democracy. His influential finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, curbed the swelling hyperinflation and began a rapid transition to a free-market economy.

U Democratic Poland

U1 Walesa’s Presidency

Solidarity split up in 1990 as Walesa competed in the presidential election. Mazowiecki was eliminated in the first ballot, while Walesa won the run-off against Stanislaw Tyminski. Walesa was, however, unclear about what he wanted to make of his office. This led to an ambiguous definition of presidential, prime ministerial, and parliamentary powers in the 1992 “Little Constitution”. Post-Communist Poland thus suffered from a confused, unstable, and conflict-ridden political process. Proportional representation adopted for the 1991 election produced a Sejm composed of 29 political parties. Subsequent governments were generally ineffectual.

Poland established or renewed diplomatic relations with the European Community (now EU), the republics of the former Soviet Union, the Vatican, and Israel. Cooperation treaties were signed with the newly reunified Germany, as well as with many other neighbouring states. Poland joined the Council of Europe, and negotiated associate membership of the EU, with full membership expected by 2002 (that deadline was subsequently postponed). Poland also entered NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme, as a prelude to membership. Full national sovereignty was regained with the withdrawal of most of the Russian garrison in Poland by 1992, a process finally completed in August 1993.

The September 1993 elections simplified the party system by excluding all but the six parties that succeeded in gaining the minimum polling threshold of 5 per cent. The Communists’ successor parties, including the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (SDRP) grouping and the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), benefited from popular dissatisfaction with the socio-economic costs of the transformation, and gained a large majority. Waldemar Pawlak, the PSL leader, became prime minister, but his government was harassed by Walesa and accused of trying to slow economic reform. In early 1995, Walesa threatened to dissolve the legislature if the Pawlak government was not replaced. Revealing his intention to position himself for the 1995 presidential election, Walesa nominated a likely rival candidate, Aleksander Kwasniewski, for the position of prime minister. He was overruled by the legislature, and Józef Oleksy was eventually named. Amid this tense atmosphere, Pawlak’s government lost a vote of no confidence and he resigned as prime minister, to be replaced in February 1995 by Oleksy. In April Walesa officially announced his candidacy for the October 1995 presidential elections, while condemning Oleksy’s “treasonable” decision to attend ceremonies in Moscow commemorating the end of World War II; Wojciech Jaruzelski was formally charged with complicity in the killing of demonstrators in 1970 during his term as defence minister. In May, Poland’s currency, the zloty, was floated on world currency markets for the first time, holding its value, while Solidarity trade unionists protesting against unemployment and pollution clashed violently with police in Warsaw.

U2 Kwasniewski Elected President

Walesa finally lost the presidency in the November 1995 elections, yielding to his former prime ministerial nominee, Aleksander Kwasniewski. Following allegations that he had passed information to Soviet and later Russian intelligence agents, Oleksy resigned as prime minister in January 1996, while asserting his innocence, to be replaced by Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz. Charges against Oleksy were dropped in April 1996, feeding speculation that Walesa had been behind a campaign to unseat him, while proceedings against Jaruzelski were suspended when the Gdansk court trying the case referred it to the State Tribunal.

The controversial plan to develop the site adjacent to the former concentration camp at Auschwitz, which had attracted widespread opposition in Poland and abroad in March, continued to arouse hostility. The provincial government of Bielsko-Biala withdrew planning consent in June, after the developer resumed work. It was announced in June that the Gdansk shipyard, cradle of the pro-democracy movement Solidarity, would not be saved from bankruptcy, which prompted angry reaction from shipyard workers. A measure to liberalize the law on abortion received both domestic majority support and condemnation from the Vatican when the measure was passed by the parliament in August. In spite of attempts by the Senat to veto the bill in October, it was formally approved by President Kwasniewski in November. In early March 1997 the announcement of the closure of the Gdansk shipyard resulted in demonstrations in Warsaw and Gdansk, which prompted the government to propose a rescue plan involving the Szczecin shipyard. The Sejm (lower house) voted in March, subject to the consent of the Senat (upper house) and the president, to abolish the death penalty and to replace it with life imprisonment. The final draft of a new constitution was approved by the National Assembly in April, with dissent from Solidarity, who alleged that the proposed constitution was still linked to Poland’s Communist past. Also in April, a bill was passed by the Sejm, which required those seeking political and senior public office to disclose any links to the former Communist security service. The new constitution was approved by referendum in May. In the same month President Kwasniewski and President Kuchma of the Ukraine signed a reconciliation pact relating to events during and after World War II. Pope John Paul II made an 11-day visit to Poland in late May, during which he spoke on NATO and EU membership, and the controversial law on abortion. In June a proposed referendum on the abortion issue was narrowly rejected in the Sejm and parliamentary elections were announced for September 21.

Catastrophic floods swept through Poland in July 1997, seriously affecting the south and south-western provinces of Opole, Walbrzych, and Wroclaw. The unusually heavy rainfall caused the rivers Oder and Neisse to burst their banks, resulting in more than 100 deaths. Estimates of the cost of the flood damage ranged between US$1,000 and US$3,000 million. The poor response of the government to the floods was seen as contributing to its failure in the polls in September.

U3 Elections and Change of Government

The Solidarity Electoral Alliance (AWS) emerged victorious from the September elections, ousting the ruling Democratic Left Alliance of former Communists by taking 34 per cent of the vote, and capturing 201 of the 460 seats in the Sejm. The nominee of the AWS and its centre-left coalition partner the Freedom Union, Jerzy Buzek, was appointed prime minister by President Kwasniewski in October, and invited to form a government. In November the AWS filed an application to register as a new political party, with promotion of a market economy and Christian values among its aims. The Sejm voted in December to accept a Constitutional Tribunal ruling that had rescinded the 1996 law on abortion and effectively restored the 1993 law, which narrowed the criteria for legal abortion. The formation of a new political party, named the Christian Democratic Party of the Third Republic, by Lech Walesa in December, was seen by some observers as an indication of his intention to stand in the presidential elections scheduled for 2000. Also in December a protocol was signed scheduling Poland’s accession to NATO. A concordat with the Vatican was approved by the Sejm in January 1998 and included provision for the legalization of Church marriages. Legislation came into force in September that abolished the death penalty, and introduced life imprisonment.

U4 International Position

The biggest expansion in the 50-year history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) took place in March 1999, when Poland with two other former Warsaw pact countries, the Czech Republic and Hungary, joined the Western defence alliance. In November 1999 a United Nations report praised Poland's economic growth since the fall of Communism, but warned that a lack of investment in the countryside could lead to social instability. The report by the International Labour Organization said that most of the growth had been concentrated in urban areas leaving the countryside with high unemployment and predicted that further investment would be hampered if the government enacted its controversial plans to reform the tax system. Despite such promising economic indicators, the latter half of the year had seen much industrial unrest over the government's implementation of health, education, and pension reform, and widespread protests by farmers against government agriculture policy of grain procurement and low prices.

The growing unrest among farmers and other workers in the agricultural sector was reflected, in January 2000, in the formation of a radical National Peasant bloc, an alliance of three political groupings strongly opposed to EU-influenced reforms and policies. Agricultural protests, as well as strikes in health care and education sectors, continued throughout 2000.

In an effort to align the Polish penal law to the European Human Rights Convention, in April the president signed a protocol abolishing the death penalty, thereby confirming the decisions of the 1998 penal code. The Polish currency was freely floated on the international market, also in April (it had previously been fixed against the Euro and the US dollar). This was seen as a significant step toward the full convertibility of the zloty.

The ruling Solidarity-Freedom Union coalition collapsed in early June, and a new minority government was formed, with Buzek retaining his post as prime minister. The Freedom Union’s strategy to advocate wide-ranging and radical economic reforms had clashed with Solidarity’s socially oriented policy. The coalition government had become unpopular because of growing unemployment and increasing economic insecurity in heavy industry and agriculture. The new government pledged to continue Poland’s preparation for joining the EU in ways that would promote social and economic stability. Later in June Aleksander Kwasniewski announced that he would stand in the presidential election planned for October.

In the run-up to the election, both the president and Lech Walesa underwent an investigation by a Vetting Tribunal on charges of their alleged involvement with the Communist secret service in the 1980s. Both politicians were cleared of the allegations in August.

In a move widely seen as a purely political act, the Roman Catholic Church in Poland expressed, in August, its regret and apologies for the Church’s attitude toward Jews during World War II. Acknowledging that some Polish people helped the Jews, the Church stated that it had not done enough to curb hostility and indifference in the largely anti-Semitic society at the time of the Holocaust. The statement followed a general apology issued in March by Pope John Paul II.

A wide social and party dispute over a mass privatization bill (the so-called enfranchisement bill), passed by the Sejm in July and by the Senate in August, led to the president vetoing the legislation in September. The bill provided for every citizen to become a shareholder in state assets; the Freedom Union as well as the Democratic Left Alliance warned that it would negatively affect the public finances and the economy in general. A subsequent attempt to overrule the presidential veto was unsuccessful.

U5 Kwasniewski Re-elected

In the presidential election in October, Aleksander Kwasniewski was re-elected for a second term, having secured almost 54 per cent of the vote. His closest challenger, Andrzej Olechowski (independent), won 17.3 per cent; Lech Walesa managed just 1.01 per cent of the vote and announced his resignation from politics.

President Kwasniewski reaffirmed as his priority Poland’s membership of the EU. In November, Polish advisors on European integration decided to implement all legislation necessary to adopt EU standards one year earlier than planned, to ensure Poland’s entry by 2003.

In early 2001, the authorities began to allow the citizens access to files kept on them by the Communist secret police. A new body, the National Remembrance Institute, was founded to manage access to the archives and began its work in February. In March, President Kwasniewski used his right to veto to block a bill designed to compensate citizens for property nationalized after World War II; the bill disregarded claims of emigrants, including Jews, and, according to the president and some observers, compensation costs were overestimated.