Poland's written history begins with the reign of Mieszko I, who
accepted Christianity for himself and his kingdom in AD 966. The
Polish state reached its zenith under the Jagiellonian dynasty in
the years following the union with Lithuania in 1386 and the
subsequent defeat of the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in 1410. The
monarchy survived many upheavals but eventually went into a decline,
which ended with the third and final partition of Poland by Prussia,
Russia, and Austria in 1795.
Independence for Poland was one of the 14 points enunciated by
President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. Many Polish Americans
enlisted in the military services to further this aim, and the
United States worked at the postwar conference to ensure its
implementation.
However, the Poles were largely responsible for achieving their own
independence in 1918. Authoritarian rule predominated for most of
the period before World War II. 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
Katyn, 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 Poles were killed, and 2.5 million
were deported to Germany for forced labor. More than 3 million Jews
(all but about 100,000 of the Jewish population) were killed in
death camps like those at Oswiecim (Auschwitz), Treblinka, and
Majdanek.
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.
Communist Party Domination
In October 1956, after the 20th ("de-Stalinization") Soviet Party
Congress in 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 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 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.
In July 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 coalmines in Silesia.
Poland was entering into an extended crisis that would change the
course of its future development.
The Solidarity Movement
On August 31, 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.
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.
Roundtable Talks and Elections
The government's inability to forestall Poland's economic decline
led to waves of strikes across the country in April, May, and August
1988. In an attempt to take control of the situation, the government
gave de facto recognition to Solidarity, and Interior Minister
Kiszczak began talks with Lech Walesa on August 31. These talks
broke off in October, but a new series, the "roundtable" talks,
began in February 1989. These talks produced an agreement in April
for partly open National Assembly elections. The June election
produced a Sejm (lower house), in which one-third of the seats went
to communists and one-third went to the two parties which had
hitherto been their coalition partners. The remaining one-third of
the seats in the Sejm and all those in the Senat were freely
contested; virtually all of these were won by candidates supported
by Solidarity.
The failure of the communists at the polls produced a political
crisis. The roundtable agreement called for a communist president,
and on July 19, the National Assembly, with the support of some
Solidarity deputies, elected General Jaruzelski to that office. Two
attempts by the communists to form governments failed, however.
On August 19, President Jaruzelski asked journalist/Solidarity
activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to form a government; on September 12,
the Sejm voted approval of Prime Minister Mazowiecki and his
cabinet. For the first time in more than 40 years, Poland had a
government led by non-communists.
In December 1989, the Sejm approved the government's reform program
to transform the Polish economy rapidly from centrally planned to
free-market, amended the constitution to eliminate references to the
"leading role" of the Communist Party, and renamed the country the
"Republic of Poland." The Polish United Workers' (Communist) Party
dissolved itself in January 1990, creating in its place a new party,
Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland. Most of the property of
the former Communist Party was turned over to the state.
The May 1990 local elections were entirely free. Candidates
supported by Solidarity's Citizens' Committees won most of the races
they contested, although voter turnout was only a little over 40%.
The cabinet was reshuffled in July 1990; the national defense and
interior affairs ministers--holdovers from the previous communist
government--were among those replaced.
In October 1990, the constitution was amended to curtail the term of
President Jaruzelski. In December, Lech Walesa became the first
popularly elected President of Poland.
The Republic of Poland
The Republic of Poland in the early 1990s made great progress toward
achieving a fully democratic government and a market economy. In
November 1990, Lech Walesa was elected President for a 5-year term.
Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, at Walesa's request, formed a government and
served as its Prime Minister until October 1991, introducing world
prices and greatly expanding the scope of private enterprise.
Poland's first free parliamentary elections were held in 1991. More
than 100 parties participated, representing a full spectrum of
political views. No single party received more than 13% of the total
vote.
Since 1991, Poland has conducted six general parliamentary elections
and four presidential elections--all free and fair. Incumbent
governments have transferred power smoothly and constitutionally in
every instance to their successors. The post-Solidarity center-right
and post-Communist center-left have each controlled the parliament
and the presidency since 1991. Most recently, Poles elected Law and
Justice (PiS) candidate and Mayor of Warsaw Lech Kaczynski to a
5-year term as President. Kazcynski narrowly defeated Civic Platform
(PO) candidate Donald Tusk and was sworn in December 23, 2005.
PiS was also the top vote-getter in September 25, 2005,
parliamentary elections. After coalition talks with runner-up PO
collapsed, PiS alone formed a minority government under Prime
Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. Frustrated by its inability to
achieve its legislative program alone, PiS formed a formal coalition
government with Self-Defense (SO) and the League of Polish Families
(LPR) in April 2006. In July 2006, Prime Minister Marcinkiewicz
resigned and was replaced by PiS party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski as
Prime Minister. Parliamentary elections were held again in October
2007, and Donald Tusk became Prime Minister in November 2007. |
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