Poland

     THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND

 

· Official web site of Poland

· A key to understanding the polish people, culture and history

· Find out more on Gorzów Wlkp.

· Famous Poles

· Polish national anthem, flag and emblem

 

GENERAL INFORMATION

Territory:
the total area of the country .........312,685 km2 (120,727sqm) - about the size of Arizona

Borders:
Length of national border ..... 3495 km
Length of sea border ............ 440 km

The highest mountain's peak:
Rysy ..................... 2499 meters
(about 8197 feet)

Population:
in year 2000 ......... 38,646,023

Currency:
Złoty (PLN) = 100 groszy
1 USD = 2.4 PLN
1 Euro = 4.77 PLN

CURRENT STATISTICS

· Based on the population Poland is holding 29th position in the world and 8th in Europe.

· Majority of Polish people know other languages like: English, German and Russian ...

· Life Expectancy:
Male ........... 68,8
Female ....... 77,5
Almost 80% of deaths in Poland are due to modern diseases, i.e., as a result of diseases of the circulatory system (approximately 50%), malignant neoplasms (approximately 20%) as well as traumas and poisonings (approximately 7%). The most frequent causes of infant deaths are due to diseases contracted during the perinatal period (more than 50%) as well as congenital birth defects (approximately 30%).

· Religious denominations:
Catholic Church ......... 92% (practicing 75%)
Orthodox and other .... 3%
None ........................... 5%

 

· One third of all unemployed are before 30 years of age.  Their chance to find a job is decreasing with age.

 

· In some regions of Poland unemployment reaches 30% while in some big cities it does not exceed 5%. Unfortunately Polish unemployment- which results from 40 years of ineffective socialistic planned economy – is not just a phase in capitalistic development – but it has long-lasting features.

 

· While Warsaw, Poland has the largest Polish population, Chicago, Illinois boasts of having the world's second largest number of Polish residents.

· Poland was the first country in Central and Eastern Europe to break out of communist rule

· Hermaszewski Mirosław was first Polish space traveller, June 27, 1978.

RECENT HISTORY

 

 

Independence Regained (1914-1939)

The upcoming World War I and the political turbulence that was sweeping throughout Europe in 1914 offered the Polish nation hopes for regaining independence. By the end of World War I, Poland had seen the defeat or retreat of all three occupying powers. After the war independent Poland was established that boosted development of the culture and economy.

The new Polish state had had only 20 years of relative stability and peace before Poland's aggresive, totalitarian neighbours tried to wipe her from the map of Europe again.

 

World War II in Poland (1939-1945)

On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov nonaggression pact, which secretly provided for the dismemberment of Poland into Nazi and Soviet-controlled zones. On September 1, 1939, Hitler ordered his troops into Poland. On September 17, Soviet troops invaded and then occupied eastern Poland under the terms of this agreement. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Poland was completely occupied by German troops.

The Poles formed an underground resistance movement and a government in exile, first in Paris and later in London, which was recognized by the Soviet Union. During World War II, 400,000 Poles fought under Soviet command, and 200,000 went into combat on Western fronts in units loyal to the Polish government in exile.

In April 1943, the Soviet Union broke relations with the Polish government in exile after the German military announced that they had discovered mass graves of murdered Polish army officers at Katyń, in the U.S.S.R. (The Soviets claimed that the Poles had insulted them by requesting that the Red Cross investigate these reports.) In July 1944, the Soviet Red Army entered Poland and established a communist-controlled "Polish Committee of National Liberation" at Lublin.

Resistance against the Nazis in Warsaw, including uprisings by Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and by the Polish underground, was brutally suppressed. As the Germans retreated in January 1945, they leveled the city.

During the war, about 6 million Polish citizens were killed, and 2.5 million were deported to Germany for forced labor. About 1,5-2 million were deported to Soviet Union, many of them to concentration camps and labor camps (Gulag). About 3 million Jews (all but about 300,000-500,000 of the Jewish population) died of starvation in ghettos and labor camps or were killed in extermination camps of Oswiecim (Auschwitz II), Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibór, Chelmno.

 

People's Republic of Poland (1945-1989)

Following the Yalta Conference in February 1945, a Polish Provisional Government of National Unity was formed in June 1945; the U.S. recognized it the next month. Although the Yalta agreement called for free elections, those held in January 1947 were controlled by the Communist Party. The communists then established a regime entirely under their domination.

In October 1956, after the 20th ("de-Stalinization") Soviet Party Congress at Moscow and riots by workers in Poznan, there was a shakeup in the communist regime. While retaining most traditional communist economic and social aims, the regime of First Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka liberalized Polish internal life.

In 1968, the trend reversed when student demonstrations were suppressed and an "anti-Zionist" campaign initially directed against Gomulka supporters within the party eventually led to the emigration of much of Poland's remaining Jewish population. In December 1970, disturbances and strikes in the port cities of Gdansk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, triggered by a price increase for essential consumer goods, reflected deep dissatisfaction with living and working conditions in the country. Edward Gierek replaced Gomulka as First Secretary.

Fueled by large infusions of Western credit, Poland's economic growth rate was one of the worlds highest during the first half of the 1970s. But much of the borrowed capital was misspent, and the centrally planned economy was unable to use the new resources effectively. The growing debt burden became insupportable in the late 1970s, and economic growth had become negative by 1979.

In October 1978, the Bishop of Krakow, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, became Pope John Paul II, head of the Roman Catholic Church. Polish Catholics rejoiced at the elevation of a Pole to the papacy and greeted his June 1979 visit to Poland with an outpouring of emotion.

Onn July 1, 1980, with the Polish foreign debt at more than $20 billion, the government made another attempt to increase meat prices. A chain reaction of strikes virtually paralyzed the Baltic coast by the end of August and, for the first time, closed most coal mines in Silesia. Poland was entering into an extended crisis that would change the course of its future development.

On 31 August 1980, workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, led by an electrician named Lech Walesa, signed a 21-point agreement with the government that ended their strike. Similar agreements were signed at Szczecin and in Silesia. The key provision of these agreements was the guarantee of the workers' right to form independent trade unions and the right to strike. After the Gdansk agreement was signed, a new national union movement "Solidarity" swept Poland.

The discontent underlying the strikes was intensified by revelations of widespread corruption and mismanagement within the Polish state and party leadership. In September 1980, Gierek was replaced by Stanislaw Kania as First Secretary.

Alarmed by the rapid deterioration of the PZPR's authority following the Gdansk agreement, the Soviet Union proceeded with a massive military buildup along Poland's border in December 1980. In February 1981, Defense Minister Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski assumed the position of Prime Minister as well, and in October 1981, he also was named party First Secretary. At the first Solidarity national congress in September-October 1981, Lech Walesa was elected national chairman of the union.

 

Martial law

On December 12-13, the regime declared martial law, under which the army and special riot police were used to crush the union. Virtually all Solidarity leaders and many affiliated intellectuals were arrested or detained. The United States and other Western countries responded to martial law by imposing economic sanctions against the Polish regime and against the Soviet Union. Unrest in Poland continued for several years thereafter.

In a series of slow, uneven steps, the Polish regime rescinded martial law. In December 1982, martial law was suspended, and a small number of political prisoners were released. Although martial law formally ended in July 1983 and a general amnesty was enacted, several hundred political prisoners remained in jail.

In July 1984, another general amnesty was declared, and 2 years later, the government had released nearly all political prisoners. The authorities continued, however, to harass dissidents and Solidarity activists. Solidarity remained proscribed and its publications banned. Independent publications were censored.

A "shock therapy" program during the early 1990s enabled the country to transform its economy into one of the most robust in Central Europe. Hopes for early admission to the EU were realized on April 16, 2003, when Poland and nine other countries signed a Treaty for EU membership from May 1, 2004. Poland joined NATO in March 1999.

The Third Republic (1989-present)

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