History

Overview

Poland was inhabited from at least 2000 BC, becoming an independent kingdom in the 9th century. Under the Piast Dynasty, the Poles emerged as the most powerful of a number of Slavic groups; it formed a union with Lithuania in 1569, at which point it stretched from the Black Sea to the Baltic. This Commonwealth was weakened by attacks from Turkey, Russia, Brandenburg and Sweden, and eventually Poland was partitioned between Prussia, Russia and Austria, depriving it of its independent statehood. Following the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Poland became a semi-independent state and was incorporated into the Russian Empire under Alexander I. The Poles struggled constantly for national liberation, although various uprisings merely led to a repressive campaign of Russification. However, the struggle continued and was eventually won at the end of World War 1 in 1918 when an independent Polish state emerged. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, triggering World War II, and Poland was partitioned between the USSR and Germany. In 1944, a People's Democracy was established under Soviet influence, and by 1947 communists controlled the government.

The late 1970s saw the rise of an independent trade union known as Solidarity. Its leaders were detained and a state of martial law was imposed. Unrest continued in the 1980s, and in 1989, the communist government lost support in elections and Solidarity had major successes. Lech Wakesa (Solidarity's leader) became President at the end of 1990, but was defeated by the former communist Aleksander Kwasniewski in 1995. In 1997, a new constitution was adopted that eradicated all signs of the former communist system and a Solidarity-led government was formed. In 2002, Poland was formally invited to join the EU.

Until 966: Prehistory

It was postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now known as Poland. The exact ethnicity and linguistic affiliation of these groups was hotly debated. Many Slavic, Celtic, Baltic and Germanic tribes were among the prominent groups.

The most famous archaeological find from the Poland's prehistory is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, around 700 BC.

966-1385: Piast Dynasty

The Polish state was born in 966 with the baptism of Mieszko I, duke of the Slavic tribe of Polans and founder of the Piast dynasty. His conversion from paganism to Christianity was Poland's first recorded historical event. By 990, when Mieszko officially submitted to the authority of the Holy See, he had transformed his country into one of the strongest powers in Eastern Europe. Mieszko's son Boleslaw the Brave built on his father's achievements, for the first time uniting all the provinces that subsequently came to comprise the traditional territory of Poland. In 1025, he became the first king of Poland. After his death the country entered a period of instability under Boleslaw's son, Mieszko II (990-1034). Six years after Mieszko II was crowned king, he was defeated by the Holy Roman Empire in 1031.

However the nation made a recovery under his son, Casimir the Restore (1016-1058). Casimir rebuilt the early medieval Polish monarchy. Casimir's son Boleslaw the Daring, Also known as the Generous (1040-1081) Revived Polish military strength and with the blessing of Pope Gregory VII crowned himself king in 1076. There was a conspiracy that involved Boleslaw's brother Wladyslaw Herman (1040-1102) and the Bishop of Krakow. Boleslaw had his half-brother Wladyslaw blinded and then executed. However Boleslaw was forced to abdicate the Polish throne because of pressure from German princes.

The son of Wladyslaw Herman was then crowned king of Poland. His name was Boleslaw the Wrymouth (1102-1137). In 1135, he would be forced to pay tribute to the Emperor Lothair III for Western Pomerania, which he held in fief. After he died in 1138, however, the kingdom was divided among four of his sons, ushering in a period of fragmentation. For two centuries, the Piasts sparred with each other, the clergy and the nobility for control over the divided kingdom. The civil strife and foreign invasions, such as Mongol invasions in 1241 and 1259, weakened and depopulated the small Polish principalities. This caused a massive immigration of German settlers into Poland. They brought with them German laws and customs which the Poles adopted. Germans made up a significant minority up until the 20th century.

The 12th and 13th centuries were marked by the economic and social evolution of Poland into a Western Christian state. In 1228, the Acts of Cienia were passed and signed into law by Duke Wladyslaw III. The Duke of Poland promised to provide a "just and noble law according to the council of bishops and barons". The Acts of Cienia were very similar to the English Magna Carta of 1215. The Act of Cienia guaranteed Wladyslaw that he would become the next king of Poland.

St. Adalbert or Adalbert of Prague (Swiety Wojciech) was a member of the Slawnikowics (Slavnik's dynasty), a Czech noble family, who had to flee their native Bohemia after losing a power struggle with the Czech ruler Boleslaus II of Bohemia. St. Adalbert was initially bishop of Prague and wrote a treatise titled "Infelix Aurum" which condemned the slave trade. He went to Hungary and baptized Geza of Hungary and his son Stephen in the city of Esztergom. Then he went to Poland where he was cordially welcomed by Boleslaw I the Brave. Bohemian rulers (i.e., Premyslids) refused to ransom Saint Adalbert's body from the Prussians who murdered him, so it was purchased by Poles. He was declared the patron saint of Poland in the 11th and 12th centuries. His Latin biography was the beginning of Latin Polish literature.

In 1226, Konrad I of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights to help him fight the pagan Prussian people on the border of his lands. In the following decades, the Teutonic Order conquered large areas long the Baltic Sea coast and established their monastic state. When virtually all of the former heathen Baltic people had become Christians, the Knights turned their attention to Poland and Lithuania, waging war with them for most of the 14th and 15th centuries until their remaining state was converted into the Protestant Duchy of Prussia under the King of Poland in 1525.

In 1308, a group of armed German monks, known as the Order of the Knights of Riga, committed mass murder of hundreds of Polish peasants and knights. In 1318, the Roman Catholic Pope John XXII appointed inquisitors to determine the truth of the massacre, the church eventually held a trial in 1320-1321, and convicted the knights of murder and ordered them to compensate the Poles and evacuate all of Bohemia. However the Knights refused to obey the Popes orders and a war ensued. It was then in 1325 that the Poles and Lithuanians made a treaty to defeat the Teutonic Knights who were invading both lands. The Teutonic Order made a treaty with Bohemia. From 1327-1332, the Polish-Lithuanian armies fought the invading Teutonic Order. Despite some success, the Teutonic Knights captured Kujaway and Dobrzyn. It was during these wars that the Mongols invaded Eastern Europe.

In the middle of 14th century Poland started to expand to the East and annexed Galich Rus'. The regional division ended when Wladyslaw I the Elbow-high united the various principalities of Poland. His son Kazimierz the Great, the last of the Piast dynasty, considerably strengthened the country's position in both foreign and domestic affairs. Before his death in 1370, the heirless king arranged for his nephew, the Andegawen Louis of Hungary, to inherit the throne.

In 1385, the Union of Krewo was signed between Louis' daughter Jadwiga and Jogaila, Grand Duke of Lithuania (later known as Wladyslaw II Jagiello), beginning the Polish-Lithuanian Union and strengthening both nations in their shared opposition to the Teutonic Knights and the growing threat of Muscovy.

1385-1569: Jagiellon Era

The personal union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the North-East paved the way for the extension of Polish power far to the East and the creation (by the Union of Lublin in 1569), of a unified Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita), stretching from the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian mountains, to present-day Belarus and Western and Central Ukraine (which earlier had been Kievan Rus' principalities).

In the north-west, the Teutonic Knights, in control of Prussia since the 13th century, were defeated by a combined Polish-Lithuanian force in the Battle of Grunwald (1410), and in the later Thirteen Years War. In the Second Treaty of Torun of 1466, they had to surrender the Western half of their territory to the Polish crown (the areas known afterwards as Royal Prussia), and to accept Polish-Lithuanian suzerainty over the remainder (the later Ducal Prussia).

During this period, Poland became the home to Europe's largest Jewish population, as royal edicts guaranteeing Jewish safety and religious freedom, issued during the 13th century, contrasted with bouts of persecution in Western Europe. This persecution intensified following the Black Death of 1348-1349, when some in the West blamed the outbreak of the plague on the Jews. Much of Poland was spared from this disease, and Jewish immigration brought their valuable contributions and abilities to the rising state. The greatest increase in Jewish numbers occurred in the 18th century, when Jews came to make up 7% of the population. Generally speaking, the Kings of Poland, and the szlachta (nobles), were friendly to the Jews, while the peasants and the Roman Catholic Church were not.

1569-1795: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

During the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poland became an elective monarchy, in which the king was elected by the hereditary nobility. This king would serve as the monarch until he died. At that time the country would have another election.

In 1572, the Polish king Sigismund II Augustus died without any heirs. At the time, Poland didn't have any method of choosing a king if such a thing happened. It took a long time for the Poles to decide how to elect their king. Finally, after much debate, they decided to let the entire nobility of Poland decide who the king was to be. The nobility were to gather near Warsaw and vote in a "free election".

The first Polish election was held in 1573. There were four men running for king in this election. These men were, Henri of Valois (Henryk Walezy), who was the brother of the king of France Charles IX, the Russian czar Ivan IV "the Terrible", Archduke Ernest from the Austrian Habsburg dynasty, and the king of Sweden, Johan Vasa III. Henri of Valois was the winner in a very disorderly election However, after serving as Polish king for only four months, he received news that his brother had died. He then went to France and claimed the throne as Henry III.

From 1569, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot, pillage and capture slaves into jasyr. The borderland area to the south-east was in a state of semi-permanent warfare until the 18th century. Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 3 million people, predominantly Ukrainians but also Circassians, Russians, Belarusians and Poles, were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate.

In the late 16th and early 17t several Cossack uprisings took place. The last one (1648), led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky lasted for six years. As a result of several requests from the Ukrainian hetman Ukraine was taken under the protection of Russia. The agreement was made in January of 1654 in the city of Pereyaslavl (Ukraine). This breakout led to a new Russian-Polish war that lasted from 1654 to 1667. In the end, the parties signed an agreement in the village of Andrusovo (near Smolensk) according to which the eastern Ukraine now belonged to Russia (with a high degree of local autonomy and an internal army).

Poland stopped electing after the Partitions of Poland. The elected kings in chronological order were:

• Henri of Valois (1572-1573)
• Stefan Batory (1576-1586)
• Zygmunt Waza III (1587-1632)
• Wladyslaw Waza IV (1632-1648)
• Jan Kazmierz Waza (1648-1668)
• Michal I (Wisniowiecki) (1669-1673)
• Jan III (Sobieski) (1674-1696)
• August II "The Strong" (1697-1706, 1709-1733)
• Stanislaw I (Leszczynski) (1706-1709, 1733-1736)
• August III (1733-1763)
• Stanislaw II August (Poniatowski) (1764-1795)

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, following upon the Union of Lublin, became an interesting counterpoint to the absolute monarchies gaining power in Europe. Its quasi-democratic political system of Golden Liberty, albeit limited to nobility was mostly unprecedented in the history of Europe.

However the series of power struggles between the lesser nobility, the higher nobility (magnates) and elected kings undermined citizenship values and gradually eroded the government's function and authority. After the series of devastating wars in the middle of the 17th century (most notably the Chmielnicki Uprising and The Deluge) Poland-Lithuania stopped being an influential player in the politics of Europe. Its economy and growth was further damaged by the nobility's reliance on agriculture and serfdom, delaying the industrialization of the country. By the beginning of the 18th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commownealth, the largest European state, was little more than a pawn of its neighbours (Russian Empire, Prussia and Austria) who interfered in its domestic politics almost at will.

With the coming of the Polish Enlightenment in the second half of the 18th century, the movement for reform and revitalization of the country made important gains, culminating in the adoption of the Constitution of May 3, the first modern codified constitution on the European continent. However the reforms, which transformed the Commonwealth into a constitutional monarchy were viewed as dangerous by Poland's neighbours, who didn't want the rebirth of the strong Commonwealth. Before the Commonwealth could fully implement and benefit from its reforms, it was invaded by its neighbours.

1795-1918: Partitioned Poland

Polish independence ended in a series of Partitions (1772, 1793 and 1795) undertaken by Russia, Prussia and Austria, with Russia gaining most of the Commonwealth's territory including nearly all of the former Lithuania (except Podlasie and lands West from the Niemen river), Volhynia and Ukraine. Austria gained the populous southern region henceforth named Galicia-Lodomeria, named after the Duchy of Halicz and Volodymyr. (The Duchy was briefly occupied by Hungary between 1372 and 1399, and the Habsburgs claimed to have inherited it from the Hungarian Kings, despite the fact that Volodymyr was not a part of Galicia). In 1795, Austria also gained the land between Krakow and Warsaw, between the Vistula river and Pilica river. Prussia acquired the western lands from the Baltic through Greater Poland to Krakow, as well as Warsaw and Lithuanian territories to the north-east (Augustow, Mariampol) and Podlasie. The last heroic attempt to save Poland's independence was a national uprising (1794) led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko; however, it was eventually quashed.

Following the French emperor Napoleon I's defeat of Prussia, a Polish state was again set up in 1807 under French tutelage as the Duchy of Warsaw. When Austria was defeated in 1809, Lodomeria was added, giving the new state a population of some 3.75 million, a quarter of that of the former Commonwealth. Polish nationalists were to remain among the staunchest allies of the French as the tide of war turned against them, inaugurating a relationship that continued into the twentieth century.

With Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 converted most of the Grand Duchy into a Kingdom of Poland ruled by the Russian Tsar before the Russian dynasty was deposed from the throne by the Kingdom's Parliament during the Polish-Russian War of 1830/1. After the January Uprising of 1863 the Kingdom was fully integrated into Russia proper. Several national uprisings were bloodily subdued by the partitioning powers. However, the striving of Polish patriots to regain their independence could not be extinguished. The opportunity for freedom appeared only after World War I when the oppressing states were defeated or weakened.

1918-1939: Second Republic

World War I and the political turbulence that was sweeping 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.

Polish independence was eventually proclaimed on November 3, 1918 and later confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919; the same treaty also gave Poland some territories annexed by German and Austrian during the partitions. The post-war eastern borders of Poland were determined by Polish victory in the Polish-Soviet War. From mid 1920s to mid 1930s, Polish government was under the control of Jozef Pilsudski, the politically-moderate war hero who had engineered the defeat of Soviet forces. Polish independence had boosted the development of culture, but Poland was hit hard by the Great Depression. The new Polish state had had only 20 years of relative stability and uneasy peace before Poland's aggressive neighbours tried to wipe her from the map of Europe again.

1939-1945: World War II

On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov non-aggression 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 marched into and then took control of most of the areas of eastern Poland having significant Ukrainian and Belarusian populations 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 Polish government in exile, first in Paris and later in London, which was recognised 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. Many Polish refugee camps were set up, including one in Valdivade, near Kolhapur in India. The camp numbered about 5 000, and the Polish embassy in exile had its office in Bombay. The camp existed from 1943 to 1948.

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 Katyn, in the USSR. 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 and the Peoples' Army of Poland (Ludowe Wojsko Polskie or LWP) entered Poland, defeated the Germans (losing 600,000 of its soldiers), and established a communist-controlled "Polish Committee of National Liberation" in Lublin.

There was powerful hatred of the Nazis in Warsaw, and there was often resistance, most famously the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 in which most of the Warsaw population participated, but which was largely instigated by the Armia Krajowa, or Home Army. The uprising was planned on the condition that the Soviet forces, waiting on the other side of the Vistula River in full force, would help in battle over Warsaw. However, the Soviets betrayed the Poles, stopping their advance at the Vistula and branding them as criminals on radio broadcasts. For the next two months, the Soviets calmly watched as the Nazis returned and brutally suppressed the Underground forces. Historian Professor Norman Davies famously said that to comprehend the numbers killed, one would have to imagine the Twin Towers 9/11 disaster every day for 63 days, and it still wouldn't be enough. After a hopeless surrender on the part of the Poles, the Germans then carried out Hitler's request that "there not be two bricks standing" in Warsaw, systematically levelling the city. They retreated only in January 1945 when the Soviets resumed their invasion.

During the war, about 6 million Polish citizens were killed by Germans, and 2.5 million were deported to Germany for forced labour or to extermination camps such as Oswiecim (Auschwitz). In 1941-1943, Ukrainian nationalists (OUN and Ukrainian Insurgent Army) massacred more than 100,000 Poles in Galicia and Volhynia. More than 500,000 Polish citizens were deported to the Soviet Union, many of them to concentration camps and labour camps (Gulag).

The Soviet government insisted on retaining most of the territories captured in the course of the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939 (now western Ukraine and western Belarus), compensating Poland with parts of Silesia, Pomerania and southern East Prussia, along with Gdansk("Regained Territories"), which were annexed by Poland and most of German population expelled to Germany.

1945-1989: People's Republic of Poland

In June 1945, following the February Yalta Conference, a Polish Provisional Government of National Unity was formed; the US recognised 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. The Polish government in exile existed until 1990, although its influence was degraded.

In October 1956, after the 20th Soviet Party Congress in Moscow ushered in destalinization and riots by workers in Poznan ensued, there was a shake-up in the communist regime. While retaining most traditional communist economic and social aims, the regime of First Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka began to liberalise internal Polish life.

In 1968, this trend was 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.

Fuelled by large infusions of Western credit, Poland's economic growth rate was one of the world's 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 Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Karol Jozef 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.

On July 1, 1980, with the Polish foreign debt at more than US$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 build-up along Poland's border in December 1980. In February 1981, Defence Minister Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski assumed the position of Prime Minister, and in October 1981, was named party First Secretary. At the first Solidarity national congress in September-October 1981, Lech Walesa was elected national chairman of the union.

On December 12-13, the regime declared martial law, under which the army and ZOMO 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 two 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.

In late 1980s the government was forced to negotiate with Solidarity in the Polish Roundtable Negotiations. The Polish legislative elections, 1989 become one of the important events marking the fall of communism in Poland.

1989 - Present: Third Republic

After 1989, Poland became one of the newer European democracies and adopted a market-based economy. The shock therapy Balcerowicz Plan during the early 1990s enabled the country to transform its economy into one of the most robust in Central Europe of its time.

Poland joined NATO on May 27, 1999 and the European Union on May 1, 2004.