Poland can hint its roots again over 1,000 years. Situated within the middle of Europe, there have been durations of each independence and durations of rule by different nations.
A number of million folks, half of them Jews, died within the Second World Struggle.
A brand new period started with Poland’s accession to the EU in Might 2004, 5 years after becoming a member of NATO and 15 years after the tip of communist rule.
It was the birthplace of the previous Soviet bloc’s first formally acknowledged unbiased mass political motion, when strikes on the Gdańsk shipyard in August 1980 led to an settlement with the authorities to kind the Solidarity commerce union.
REPUBLIC OF POLAND: FACTS
- Capital metropolis: Warsaw
- Space: 312,696 km²
- Inhabitants: 38 million
- Languages: sharpening
- Life expectancy: 72 years (males) 80 years (girls)
LEADER
Andrzej Duda of the conservative, eurosceptic Legislation and Justice occasion scored a shock victory within the 2015 election, beating incumbent Bronislaw Komorowski of the centrist Civic Platform within the closest presidential contest in Poland’s historical past.
Mr. Duda was born in 1972 and is a regulation lecturer by career. He has been lively in conservative politics because the early 2000s and labored below Lech Kaczynski within the Presidential Chancellery from 2008 to 2010.
Prime Minister: Mateusz Morawiecki
Finance Minister Morawiecki took over the management of the Legislation and Justice occasion in December 2017, changing Beata Szydlo, who moved to the submit of deputy prime minister.
Within the 2019 parliamentary elections, the Legislation and Justice Get together retained its majority within the Sejm, the decrease home, however misplaced its majority within the Senate, the higher home.
Western-trained economist Morawiecki has a extra polished demeanor than his predecessor, but additionally helps a conservative Catholic social agenda and rejects European Union calls for to simply accept Muslim refugees.
The Polish broadcasting market is the biggest in Jap and Central Europe. Tv is the main medium.
Many non-state media are owned by international firms.
Critics grumbled when the newly elected conservative Legislation and Justice authorities launched a invoice in 2015 that will permit ministers to nominate the heads of public broadcasters TVP and Polish Radio.
Fb is the main social community.
TIMELINE
Some vital dates within the historical past of Poland:
966 – Duke Mieszko I, the traditionally acknowledged founding father of the Polish state, adopts Catholic Christianity.
1025 – Boleslaw I proclaims the Kingdom of Poland.
1569 – Poland indicators the Union of Lublin with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, establishing the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a serious energy in Europe.
1683 – Jan III. Sobieski leads a Polish-Lithuanian military to defeat an Ottoman military besieging Vienna. The siege is usually seen because the climax of the Ottoman advances into Europe.
1772 – After an anti-Russian rebellion, the Commonwealth experiences the primary of three main divisions by its neighbors Prussia, Russia and Austria.
1791-1793 – A program of political and social reform culminates within the Structure of Might three, 1791, which guarantees civil rights to the Commonwealth’s city and rural populations. Russia invades to forestall liberal change. Prussia additionally despatched troops, and in 1793 the 2 powers carried out a second partition.
1794-1795 – Reformers lead an armed riot in opposition to the dividing powers. After its failure, the Commonwealth is finally divided between Prussia, Russia and Austria.
1807 – Napoleon establishes the Duchy of Warsaw as a vassal state to achieve Polish assist for his trigger.
1815 – The Congress of Vienna creates a rump Kingdom of Poland dominated by Russia.
1830-1831 – Army rebellion in protest in opposition to Russia’s erosion of the dominion’s political autonomy and civil liberties.
1863-1864 – One other rebellion in opposition to Russian rule is suppressed and the dominion is annexed to Russia.
1864-1914 – The Polish nationwide motion in Russia, Prussia and Austria focuses on strengthening the bottom by means of schooling, tradition and political events.
1918 – After greater than a century of international rule, an unbiased Polish state is restored on the finish of the First World Struggle.
1920 – The offensive of the Soviet Purple Military is repelled.
1939 – Nazi Germany invades, beginning World Struggle II. Germany and the us divide Poland between themselves and deal with the Poles with excessive brutality.
1940 – The Soviet secret police perform a scientific bloodbath of roughly 22,000 Polish military officers, professionals and civil servants, primarily in a forest close to Katyn. The us blamed this crime on the Nazis till it acknowledged accountability for it within the late 1980s.
1941 – Germans start constructing focus camps in Poland. Their names – Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek – turn out to be synonymous with the Holocaust.
1943 – Rebellion within the Warsaw Ghetto in opposition to German makes an attempt to move the remaining Jewish residents to focus camps. The resistance lasts virtually 4 weeks earlier than the ghetto is burned down. The Germans announce the seize of greater than 50,000 Jews.
1944 – Polish resistance forces take management of Warsaw in August. In October the Germans recaptured the town and burned it down.
[1945[1945– Soviet troops expel German troops from Poland, whose borders are decided on the Potsdam Convention; Poland loses territory to the Soviet Union, however features some from Germany.
1947 – Poland turns into a communist folks’s republic after the Soviet-led elections and subsequently joins the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact navy alliance.
1955 – Poland joins the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact navy alliance.
1956 – Greater than 50 folks have been killed in riots in Poznań over calls for for higher freedom.
1970 – Meals worth unrest in Gdansk, Gdynia, Elblag and Szczecin. The protests are suppressed, 44 individuals are killed and greater than 1,000 injured.
1978 – Karol Wojtyla, Cardinal of Krakow, is elected Pope.
1980 – Strikes on the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk result in the creation of the Solidarity commerce union below Lech Walesa.
1981 – Martial regulation declared. A lot of Solidarity’s leaders, together with Walesa, are in jail.
1983 – Martial regulation lifted.
1989 – Spherical desk talks between Solidarity, the communists and the Catholic Church pave the best way for the overthrow of communism in Poland. Partially free elections guarantee a landslide victory for Solidarity, serving to to kind a coalition authorities. Tadeusz Mazowiecki turns into Poland’s first non-communist Polish prime minister since 1946.
1990 – Lech Walesa elected president. Market reforms, together with large-scale privatizations, are initiated.
1991 – First parliamentary elections because the fall of communism. The Soviet troops start to withdraw.
1999 – Poland joins NATO together with Hungary and the Czech Republic.
2004 – Poland is certainly one of ten new states becoming a member of the EU.
2008 Poland agrees in precept to host a controversial US missile protection system.
Poland’s final communist chief, Normal Wojciech Jaruzelski, is on trial in reference to the declaration of martial regulation in 1981.
2010 – President Lech Kaczynski and plenty of different high-ranking officers die in a airplane crash on the best way to a ceremony in Russia marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn bloodbath in World Struggle II.
2014 – Poland is asking NATO to station 10,000 troops on its territory in a visual signal of the alliance’s willpower to defend all its members following Russia’s occupation of Crimea.
2015 – Poland broadcasts buy of US Patriot surface-to-air missiles amid rising tensions with Russia.
2017 – NATO troops can be stationed within the northeast to extend safety after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
2018 – A brand new regulation makes it a felony offense to attribute Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland to the Polish state.
2022 – In the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, round seven million refugees cross Poland’s borders.