Poland. Officially, the Polish Republic or the Republic of Poland. Country located in Central Europe that is part of the European Union (EU) and NATO. Poland, from the Polish term of Polska, was the name of the Polanie tribes, it comes from “pole / pola”, field (area of fields), due to the plains of Poland, they were then, the residents of the fields.
According to Programingplease.com, Poland borders Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, an exclave of Russia, to the north.
History
Slavic peoples settled on this territory 1500 years ago and the history of Poland as a state spans almost a millennium.
In the 16th century, during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it formed the largest state in Europe, before the growth of the Russian Empire. In the 10th century Poland appears as a nation; It was ruled by a series of strong leaders who converted Poles to Christianity, created a powerful kingdom, and integrated Poland into European culture. In the 13th century, internal fragmentation caused the erosion of the initial state, but throughout the century the base of a new dominant state was consolidated that was yet to come.
During the various invasions of Russia (1605 – 1618), weakened by the Time of Troubles, Commonwealth troops took Moscow from September 27, 1610 to November 4, 1612, until they were driven out by the patriotic uprising of Russia.
Since the summer of 1915, Germany and Austria – Hungary had occupied all historically Polish territories, thanks to the effectiveness of the Gorlice-Tarnów offensive. The Germans proposed the creation of a Polish kingdom on November 5, 1916. The election of a king was postponed, always considering themselves as candidates for members of the nobility of the House of Habsburg.
In the Treaty of Versailles, Polish independence was internationally recognized, and its western border was defined, the creation of a Polish corridor being one of the most controversial innovations. While Poland was at peace with Germany, its territorial integrity was far from secure.
Although Polish policy during the interwar period stipulated that the military alliance with France obtained in the Locarno Treaties was the best guarantee against Germany and the Soviet Union, this did not prevent Poland from signing non-aggression pacts with the Soviets in 1932. Although the Bolsheviks threatened to break the pact if Poland occupied Czechoslovak territories during the Sudeten Crisis, these threats were not carried out, and Poland annexed Zaolzie [1] and other regions with Polish minorities. This pact was reaffirmed in 1938. [2]
Poland also signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1934. After the Poles refused to allow the Free City of Danzig to be returned to Germany, Hitler annulled the pact in April 1939. [3]
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, the United Kingdom and France declared war on the aggressor country, starting World War II in Europe. On September 17, the Soviet invasion of Poland began. The German and Soviet armies did not attack each other, and Poland was divided, as they had agreed in a secret clause of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.
After the German defeat, the allied powers agreed in Yalta to form the Provisional Polish Government of National Unity, with representatives of pro-Soviet and exile groups, which should call for elections. In 1945, the provisional government and the USSR signed an agreement on the eastern border of Poland, along the Curzon line. The Allies established the western frontier, on the line of the Oder (Odra) and the Neisse (Nysa Luzycka).
In 1970, the Federal Republic of Germany recognized the Polish border stemming from the war, as the German Democratic Republic had done in 1950. The 4 of June of 1989 legislative elections in which the Solidarity trade union, led by held Lech Walesa, defeated the communist Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) and 24 August Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the non – communist prime minister of Poland from the Second World War. In December 1989, the National Assembly approved to regain the name of the Republic of Poland. In january In 1990, Poland started an economic adjustment program agreed with the IMF, applied to join the Council of Europe and established relations with the EEC. Joining NATO was contingent on the result of economic reforms and arms reconversion. The POUP dissolved itself in January 1990
Joining NATO was voted in February 1999 by a parliamentary majority of 409 votes to 7. The reforms to prepare the country for entry into the European Union (EU) left thousands of workers unemployed. In September 1999, more than 30,000 farmers and workers staged a protest march in Warsaw, calling for early elections.
Poland, the only continental European country that supported the US invasion of Iraq with troops, commanded at the beginning of 2004 one of the four reconstruction zones into which the country was divided. The 1 as maypole as 2004, Poland and nine other countries were admitted as full members of the EU, which now has 25 members.
Poland recently allowed the United States to deploy a Patriot missile battery just 60 kilometers from the northern enclave of Kaliningrad, home to the Russian Baltic Sea fleet. In addition, the arrangement provides that a temporary facility for Patriot missiles will be created in the city of Morong, which from 2012 will be permanent.
Russia’s reaction went from a discretion and an effort to ignore that fact to statements reminiscent of those made when rejecting the White House plans to establish the third tier of its anti-missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Government and constitution
It is a democratic state with a parliamentary and presidential regime. It was proclaimed as an independent republic on November 11, 1918. Currently the Constitution is the Constitution adopted on 2 of April of 1997 and signed by the President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski. It entered into force on October 17 of the same year.
Poland was the first European state to pass a constitution, in 1791. This first constitution is called the Constitution of May 3.
Political-administrative organization
From the 1 of January of 1999, Poland is divided into three levels of territorial units: voivodships or voivodships 16, 379 districts and 2478 municipalities.
The capital is Warsaw, the largest cities are: Cracow (Kraków), Wroclaw (Breslau), Lodz, Posen (Poznań), Danzig (Gdańsk), Szczecin, Bydgoszcz, Lublin, Katowice, Białystok, Toruń, Olsztyn, Rzeszów.
Demography
Currently, Poland has a population of 38,501,000 residents. 95% of Poles practice Catholicism whose Church still exerts an influence on the political life of Poland. Likewise, a high percentage of Poles consider themselves practitioners, well above the European average.
