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| Poland | Plants and Animal | Back to Top |
Poland’s forests are dominated by conifers, which are particularly vulnerable to acid rain and other forms of air pollution, many of them are now extensively damaged. The spruce forests of the Sudety have been particularly affected by ecological damage. A large portion of Poland’s forest growth has also been destroyed to create farmland, and reforestation levels are currently very low. This combination of factors has made Poland’s forests among the most vulnerable in Europe. Poland’s wildlife is of limited variety. Although most species are found in other parts of Europe, Poland is home to a number of species that are absent or rare elsewhere. Those animals include chamois, lynx, wildcat, elk, boar, and deer. Bison, as well as a rare breed of pony, are preserved in the world-famous Bialowieza National Park, which straddles Poland’s border with Belarus. Wolves and brown bears survive in the higher mountains, and elk, deer, and mouflon (wild sheep) are fairly numerous in the lake districts. Grouse, heathcock and black stork inhabit Poland’s grain-producing areas, lakes, marshes, and forests.
| Poland | Communications | Back to Top |
underdeveloped and outmoded system; government aimed to have 10 million telephones in service by 2000; the process of partial privatization of the state-owned telephone monopoly has begun; in 1998 there were over 2 million applicants on the waiting list for telephone service domestic: cable, open wire, and microwave radio relay; 3 cellular networks; local exchanges 56.6% digital international: satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat, NA Eutelsat, 2 Inmarsat (Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions), and 1 Intersputnik (Atlantic Ocean region)
| Poland | Culture | Back to Top |
The seventh largest country in Europe, Poland is located in the middle of the North European Plain that extends from the Netherlands to the Ural Mountains of Russia. Although its topography is broken by some terrain variations, especially in the south, most of Poland lacks significant changes of elevation. The combination of geographic location and topography has strongly influenced Polish society and the country's relations with surrounding nations.
In the years following World War II, Poland, like other East European countries, underwent a rapid, planned transition from a predominantly agrarian to a predominantly industrial society. When the country came under communist control in 1945, Polish society also was subjected to a set of rigid ideological tenets. Communist dogma failed to change the intellectual or spiritual outlook of most Poles, however, because traditional institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church and the family remained strong support structures for alternative viewpoints. On the other hand, the institutions created by the communist regimes fundamentally influenced the day-to-day functions of Polish society. This influence was especially pervasive in areas such as health and education, where state programs made services accessible to more of the population, albeit in a homogenized and regimented form.
Among the permanent results of communist ideology was the disappearance of the landed aristocracy, which had played an especially large role in governance and in preserving Polish culture and national consciousness, especially during the more than 100 years when Poland was partitioned. The disruption of traditional social hierarchies and barriers also brought substantially more upward mobility as the urban population came into direct contact with the peasants. Within a decade of the communist takeover, however, the initial benefits of this social engineering had faded, and in 1956 the first of several waves of unrest swept the country. Subsequent social and economic stagnation mobilized intellectuals and workers to stage increasingly widespread and effective protests. These protests eventually overthrew communism and ended its suppression of social diversity. Nevertheless, the forty-four-year postwar communist period left permanent marks on the Polish way of life even after the state control structures crumbled in 1989.
World War II resulted in a marked homogenization of the Polish population, which previously had been ethnically and religiously rather diverse. Massive relocations of ethnic populations resulting from boundary changes and the destruction of most of Poland's Jewish population in the Holocaust meant that a country previously two-thirds ethnically Polish and spiritually Roman Catholic entered the postwar era with a population over 90 percent Catholic and over 98 percent ethnically Polish.
Demographically, Poland in 1992 was a young country, more than 64 percent of whose population was under forty years of age. The country also had one of Europe's highest birth rates. By 1980 nearly half of employed Poles belonged to a socioeconomic group different from that of their parents, showing the mobility of the younger generations across traditional class lines. By 1980 less than one-quarter of working Poles remained in agriculture, and about two-thirds were either manual or white-collar workers in urban areas. About one-third of the postwar intelligentsia came from worker families, while about one-quarter came from peasant families. These numbers represented a drastic change from the predominance of the aristocracy in the intelligentsia before World War II.
Both by cultural tradition and by recent social policy, Poles were relatively well educated. The 1990 literacy rate was 98 percent. At that time, more than 17 percent of Poles had postsecondary education, and 4 percent had achieved advanced college degrees.
The end of communist rule in 1989 presented new challenges to Polish society and to government policy makers. The concept of universal, state-guaranteed protection from unemployment, sickness, and poverty was challenged as Poland turned toward privatization and opened its economy to market forces. Although society had retained a healthy skepticism about the benefits of total socialization, postcommunist governments could not devise replacement social programs fast enough to avoid bitter social dissatisfaction when the security of the old system disappeared.
| Poland | Defence | Back to Top |
Military branches: Army, Navy, Air and Air Defense Force
Military manpower - military age: 19 years of age
Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 10,447,931 (2001 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service: males age 15-49: 8,139,245 (2001 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually: males: 344,781 (2001 est.)
| Poland | International Disputes | Back to Top |
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| Poland | Economy | Back to Top |
World War II, Poland’s economy depended largely on agriculture. However, the Communists, who had achieved a monopoly on power by 1947, adopted a Soviet-style planned economy in which heavy industry and engineering were emphasized. Nearly all branches of large industry, trade, transportation, and finance came under the control of the Communist government. Private ownership was limited to agriculture, handicrafts, and certain services. During the first several decades of the Communist period, Poland’s economy grew. However, in the late 1970s the country began to experience severe economic difficulties, caused by a series of poor harvests, unrest among industrial workers, shortages of consumer goods, lagging technology, rising inflation, and a massive foreign debt. These economic problems, which worsened during the 1980s, were responsible in large part for the collapse of the Communist regime and its replacement by a non-Communist coalition in 1989.
From the mid-1970s the Polish economy experienced limited growth, largely as a result of an antiquated industrial infrastructure, government subsidies that masked inefficient production, and wages that were artificially high relative to the standard of living. In the late 1980s a swelling government deficit and hyperinflation brought about economic crisis. With the fall of communism and the demise of Comecon, the Polish economy became increasingly involved with the market-oriented global economy, for which it was ill-suited. To try to achieve economic stability, the postcommunist government introduced an approach known as “shock therapy,” which sought both to control inflation and to expedite Poland's transition to a market economy. As part of that plan, wages were frozen, price controls were removed, subsidies to state-owned enterprises were phased out, and large-scale private enterprise was again permitted. As a result, in the early 1990s, industrial output and gross domestic product (GDP) dropped significantly.
Poland has steadfastly pursued a policy of liberalizing the economy and today stands out as one of the most successful and open transition economies. GDP growth has been strong and steady since 1992 - the best performance in the region. The privatization of small and medium state-owned companies and a liberal law on establishing new firms has allowed for the rapid development of a vibrant private sector. In contrast, Poland's large agricultural sector remains handicapped by structural problems, surplus labor, inefficient small farms, and lack of investment. Restructuring and privatization of "sensitive sectors" (e.g., coal, steel, railroads, and energy) has begun. Structural reforms in health care, education, the pension system, and state administration have resulted in larger than expected fiscal pressures. Further progress in public finance depends mainly on privatization of Poland's remaining state sector. The government's determination to enter the EU as soon as possible affects most aspects of its economic policies. Improving Poland's outsized current account deficit and reining in inflation are priorities. Warsaw leads the region in foreign investment and needs a continued large inflow.
| Poland | Education | Back to Top |
Throughout the modern history of Poland, education has played a central role in Polish society. Together with the church, formal and informal education helped to preserve national identity and prepare society for future independence during the partition period. In the communist era, education was the chief mode of restructuring society and improving the social mobility of hitherto unprivileged workers. The postcommunist era brought an extensive debate over the goals of restructuring the system and the role of the church in secular education.
Poland's postcommunist education legislation left intact the public structures established by the 1961 education law. In that system, the first stage was kindergarten, attended by children between three and seven years of age. City kindergarten schools were open from seven to eleven hours per day and designed their programs to accommodate the schedules of working parents. Schools in rural areas were open from five to eight hours, depending on the season and on agricultural requirements. The level of education and auxiliary services was generally much lower in rural schools, and kindergarten attendance there was roughly half that in the cities. Some primary schools also had kindergarten sections, whose graduates continued to the next level in the same institution. The cost of kindergarten education was shared by the government and parents. Under the communist system, the cost of kindergarten education had been paid wholly by the parents. In 1992 the 23,900 kindergartens in operation included 11,000 separate kindergartens and 12,900 kindergarten sections.
Eight years of primary school were obligatory in both the communist and the postcommunist systems. Children entered this phase at age seven and remained until they completed the program or until they turned seventeen. Foreignlanguage instruction was widely available. Some special schools were available for students gifted in the arts or sports, and special courses were designed for physically or mentally handicapped students.
Poland's acute shortage of classroom space required double shifts and large classes (thirty to forty students) in most primary schools. Some schools provided after-school programs for students in grades one to three whose parents both worked; older students, however, were released at the end of the school day, regardless of their home situation. In 1992 some 5.3 million children were in primary school; new enrollments dropped 2.9 percent from the previous year.
In 1991 over 95 percent of primary-school graduates continued to some form of secondary education. Admission to the secondary level was by examination and overall primary-school records. In general, the students with the highest primary achievement went into a college preparatory track, those with the lowest into a trade-school track. Of pupils completing primary school in 1991, about 43 percent went to three-year trade schools (specializing in various trades, from hairdressing to agriculture), 25 percent to four-year vocational lycea and to technical schools, and 26 percent to college preparatory schools. The last category grew by 3.2 percent between 1990 and 1991, while the other two fell slightly. Of the three categories, only the first provides a trade immediately upon graduation. Students in the other two categories require further education at a university or at a twoyear postsecondary schools to prepare them for employment. Some college preparatory schools combine a variety of nontechnical subjects in their curricula; others specialize in humanities, mathematics and physical sciences, biology and chemistry, sports, or classical subjects. In 1987 these schools enrolled more than twice as many girls as boys; about 11 percent of secondary-school students received scholarships. Students passing final exams in the college preparatory program are permitted to take university entrance exams.
Most technical programs are five years in length. Such programs are offered in economics, art, music, theater production, and teacher training (a six-year track). Many students live at secondary technical schools because some districts have only one such school. The government and parents share board and room expenses; tuition is free. The Polish Catholic Church also operates fourteen high schools, whose curricula were state-mandated until 1989.
To enroll at the university level, students have to pass entrance exams. Institutions at this level include full universities (of which Poland had twelve in 1990), polytechnical schools, academies, and specialized colleges. In 1988 the largest of these were Warsaw University (23,300 students), Marie CurieSklodowska University in Lublin (12,900), Adam Mickewiecz University at Poznan (12,100), the Warsaw Technical School (12,000), and the Silesian University at Katowice (11,400).
The polytechnical schools offer theoretical and applied training in such fields as electronics, engineering, computer science, and construction. Academies specialize in medicine, fine arts, economics, agriculture, sports, or theology; thirty-four academies were in operation in 1990. In that year, twenty-nine specialized colleges were training students in pedagogy, oceanography, and art. College enrollment increased each year between 1989 and 1992. In 1992 some 430,000 persons attended college, 330,000 as full-time students; initial enrollment for the 1991-92 school year was 17.7 percent higher than for the previous year.
As a rule, students pursue postgraduate degrees as members of an academic team working under a single professor. Continued progress through the academic ranks depends on regular evaluation of scholarly activity and publications, and failure to meet requirements means removal from the program. Polish postgraduate studies programs, which culminate in doctoral degrees, suffer from lack of material support, low salaries, and low demand for individuals with advanced degrees in the job market. In the late 1980s, these factors made the dropout rate very high and forced cancellation of several programs. Between 1982 and 1992, Poland suffered a serious "brain drain" in higher education and the sciences as more than 15,000 scientists emigrated or changed their profession.
Education in Poland is free and compulsory for all children between the ages of 7 and 15, although growing financial and space constraints sometimes require large classes and double shifts for students within the school day. On completion of the eight-year elementary school program, nearly all children enter the secondary school system. About one-fourth of these pupils attend four-year general secondary schools that prepare them for college or university entrance. The rest attend vocational and technical schools, which provide five-year courses combining vocational and general education, or basic vocational schools, which provide three-year courses. There are also a number of private schools.
| Poland | Government | Back to Top |
Government: Prescribed by 1952 constitution, its many amendments, and 1992 Little Constitution that defines executive powers. Legislative power centered in popularly elected bicameral National Assembly (upper, 100-member Senate; lower, 460-member Sejm). President, popularly elected to five-year term, acts as head of state, approves Sejm nominations for prime minister (head of government), and has decree power on many issues. Prime minister chooses Council of Ministers (cabinet), responsible to Sejm and president, to administer government.
Politics: Domination of communist Polish United Workers Party Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (PZPR) ended 1989. Umbrella opposition coalition Solidarity split several ways in 1990, joined by various new and revived groups in complex structure dominated by none. All governments 1989-93 based on at least seven parties in coalition, with constant threat of conflicting agendas causing collapse. Influential parties had religious (Party of Christian Democrats, Christian National Union), class-based (Polish Peasant Party, Peasant Alliance), or broadly political (Democratic Union, Liberal-Democratic Congress) agendas. Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland succeeded PZPR, maintained some power with democratized platform, and achieved plurality in 1993 election as dominant faction of Alliance of the Democratic Left coalition.
Administrative Divisions: Forty-nine districts and three municipalities (Warsaw, Kraków, ód ) with special status. Counties basic form of local government, run by directly elected county councils. Both levels with substantial autonomy from central government.
Foreign Relations: After collapse of Soviet Union and its alliances, 1990-91, major shift toward relations with individual former Soviet states, especially Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine. Long-term national security goal integration into Western Europe, including European Community (EC) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Regional security sought in Visegrád alliance with Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. Improved relations with Germany, continued tension with Lithuania 1992.
| Poland | History | Back to Top |
The poles possess one of the richest and most venerable historical traditions of all European peoples. Convention fixes the origins of Poland as a nation near the middle of the tenth century, contemporaneous with the Carolingians, Vikings, and Saracens, and a full hundred years before the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066. Throughout the subsequent centuries, the Poles managed despite great obstacles to build and maintain an unbroken cultural heritage. The same cannot be said of Polish statehood, which was notoriously precarious and episodic. Periods of independence and prosperity alternated with phases of foreign domination and disaster. Especially in more recent centuries, frequent adversity subjected the Poles to hardships scarcely equaled in European history.
Soviet success in liberating Poland began an entirely new stage in Polish national existence. With the reluctant blessing of the Allies, the communist-dominated government was installed in 1945. During the next seven years, Poland became a socialist state modeled on the Soviet Union. Although Poland remained within this political structure through the 1980s, open social unrest occurred at intervals throughout the communist period. Protests in 1980 spawned the Solidarity (Solidarnosc) labor movement, which forced fundamental compromise in the socialist system.
Many foreign observers perceive Poland as a perennial victim of history, whose survival through perseverance and a dogged sense of national identity has left a mixed legacy of indomitable courage and intolerance toward outsiders. To Poles, their history includes brighter recollections of Poland as a highly cultured kingdom, uniquely indulgent of ethnic and religious diversity and precociously supportive of human liberty and the fundamental values of Western civilization. The contrast between these images reflects the extremes of fortune experienced by Poland. The two visions of history combine in uneasy coexistence in the Polish consciousness. One striking feature of Polish culture is its fascination with the national past; the unusual variety and intensity of that past defy tidy conclusions and produce energetic debate among Poles themselves on the meaning of their history.
The list of English-language literature on the history of Poland, formerly sparse, has improved considerably in recent years, stimulated in great part by the dramatic events of contemporary times. The leading survey is Norman Davies's twovolume God's Playground. Davies covers the same territory in a single volume in Heart of Europe, recommended despite its confusing reverse chronological organization. The older, twovolume , Cambridge History of Poland and Oskar Halecki's The History of Poland are standard but dated. Adam Zamoyski's The Polish Way is a popular account aimed at the general reader. One of the most significant and controversial topics arising from the Polish tradition of heterogeneity receives sound and balanced coverage in the composite work The Jews in Poland, edited by Chimen Abramsky and others.
For the medieval period, Eastern and Western Europe in the Middle Ages, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough, discusses Poland in its regional context. Pawel Jasienica's The Commonwealth of Both Nations addresses the early modern era in colorful style. The nineteenth century is best summarized in The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 by Piotr S. Wandycz.
Recommended general sources for the modern period include M.K. Dziewanowski's Poland in the Twentieth Century, The History of Poland since 1863, edited by R.F. Leslie, and Hans Roos's A History of Modern Poland (all of which predate the upheavals of the 1980s).
Monographic treatment has not caught up with the collapse of East European communism, and no complete English survey of the rise and fall of the Polish People's Republic yet exists. The most perceptive commentator on contemporary Central Europe, the journalist Timothy Garton Ash, covers the developments of the decade from the rise of Solidarity to the end of communist rule in his three works The Polish Revolution, The Uses of Adversity, and The Magic Lantern. (For further information and complete citations.
| Poland | Introduction | Back to Top |
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland (in Polish, Polska Rzeczpospolita), country in central Europe, bordered on the north by the Baltic Sea and Russia; on the east by Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine; on the south by the Czech Republic and Slovakia; and on the west by Germany. The area of the country is 312,677 sq km (120,725 sq mi).
Official Name - Republic of Poland| Poland | Land | Back to Top |
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| Poland | Languages | Back to Top |
Polish is the official language of Poland and is used by nearly all of the population. The language contains a number of dialects, some of which are intermediate between Polish and German or Ukrainian. The Polish language is written using the Latin alphabet and includes some letters that are additional to those used in the English language. Some members of ethnic groups speak their own native languages in addition to Polish.
| Poland | Legal | Back to Top |
Legal system: mixture of Continental (Napoleonic) civil law and holdover communist legal theory; changes being gradually introduced as part of broader democratization process; limited judicial review of legislative acts although under the new constitution, the Constitutional Tribunal ruling will become final as of October 1999; court decisions can be appealed to the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg Suffrage: 18 years of age; universal Executive branch: chief of state: President Aleksander KWASNIEWSKI (since 23 December 1995) head of government: Prime Minister Leszek MILLER - Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) - (since 19 October 2001), Deputy Prime Ministers Marek POL (since 19 October 2001), Jaroslaw KALINOWSKI (since 19 October 2001), Marek BELKA (since 19 October 2001) cabinet: Council of Ministers responsible to the prime minister and the Sejm; the prime minister proposes, the president appoints, and the Sejm approves the Council of Ministers elections: president elected by popular vote for a five-year term; election held 8 October 2000 (next to be held NA October 2005); prime minister and deputy prime ministers appointed by the president and confirmed by the Sejm election results: Aleksander KWASNIEWSKI reelected president; percent of popular vote - Aleksander KWASNIEWSKI 53.9%, Andrzj OLECHOWSKI 17.3%, Marian KRZAKLEWSKI 15.6%, Lech WALESA 1% Legislative branch: bicameral National Assembly or Zgromadzenie Narodowe consists of the Sejm (460 seats; members are elected under a complex system of proportional representation to serve four-year terms) and the Senate or Senat (100 seats; members are elected by a majority vote on a provincial basis to serve four-year terms) elections: Sejm elections last held 25 September 2001 (next to be held by NA September 2005); Senate - last held 25 September 2001 (next to be held by NA September 2005) election results: Sejm - percent of vote by party - SLD-UP 41%, PO 12.7%, Samoobrona 10.2%, PiS 9.5%, PSL 9%, LPR 7.9%, AWSP 5.6% UW 3.1%, other 1%; seats by party - SLD-UP 216, PO 65, Samoobrona 53, PiS 44, PSL 42, LPR 38, German minorities 2; note - SLD-UP have split: SLD has 200 deputies and UP has 16; Senate - percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party - SLD-UP 75, Senate Block 2001 15, PSL 4, Samoobrona 2, LPR 2, independents 2 note: two seats are assigned to ethnic minority parties Judicial branch: Supreme Court (judges are appointed by the president on the recommendation of the National Council of the Judiciary for an indefinite period); Constitutional Tribunal (judges are chosen by the Sejm for nine-year terms)
| Poland | Life | Back to Top |
By the mid-1970s, nearly half the Polish work force was made up of women. On a purely statistical basis, Poland, like the rest of the Soviet alliance in Eastern Europe, offered women more opportunities for higher education and employment, than did most West European countries. Between 1975 and 1983, the total number of women with a higher education doubled, to 681,000 graduates. Many professions, such as architecture, engineering, and university teaching, employed a considerably higher percentage of women in Poland than in the West, and over 60 percent of medical students in 1980 were women. In many households in the 1980s, women earned more than their husbands. Yet the socialist system that yielded those statistics also uniformly excluded women from the highest positions of economic and political power. In the mid-1980s, only 15 percent of graduates in technical subjects were women, while more than 70 percent of jobs in health, social security, finance, education, and retail sales were filled by women. During the 1980s, very few women occupied top positions in the PZPR (whose 1986 membership was 27 percent women). Similar statistics reflected the power relationships in Solidarity, the diplomatic corps, and the government. By definition, women were excluded completely from the other great center of power, the Catholic Church. In mid1992 , Poland elected its first woman prime minister, Hanna Suchocka. Her coalition government included no other women. In 1992 the head of the National Bank of Poland, a very powerful position, was a woman, and Ewa Letowska, former commissioner of citizens' rights, was prominently mentioned as a presidential candidate.
Some experts asserted that the male power structure protected its dominance by limiting the opportunities for the advancement of Polish women to those that filled an existing need in the male-dominated society. Another factor in the role of women, however, was the high priority that Polish society continued to give to their role within the family and in raising children. In the 1980s, one in ten Polish mothers was single, and many single mothers had never been married. In 1991 over 6 percent of Polish families consisted of a single mother caring for one or more children. The extended family provided support for such unconventional arrangements. During the 1980s, both the state (by adjusting school schedules and providing nurseries and substantial paid maternity leave) and the church (by its influential emphasis on the sanctity of the family) successfully promoted the traditional role of women in raising the next generation. In the early 1980s, a very small women's liberation movement began at Warsaw University, but in the years following it failed to expand its membership significantly. In 1990 women in Warsaw set a precedent by demonstrating against church-inspired legislation making abortion illegal.
Even with the support of state institutions, however, during the communist era working women with families often had the equivalent of two full-time jobs because their husbands did not make major contributions to household work. According to one study, working women averaged 6.5 hours per day at their jobs and 4.3 hours per day on household duties. In the times of scarcity in the 1980s, standing in line to make purchases occupied a large part of the latter category. Women without jobs, by contrast, spent an average of 8.1 hours per day on household duties. The increased unemployment of the early 1990s generally affected more women than men. According to official figures, in 1992 forty women were jobless for every vacancy they were qualified to fill, while the ratio for men was fourteen to one. Women made up 52.4 percent of the total unemployed, a higher percentage than their overall share of the work force.
In 1992 women ran about 20 percent of Polish farms, a much higher percentage than in Western countries. In most cases, such arrangements reflected necessity rather than choice. Nearly 70 percent of these women were single, and over 40 percent were over age sixty. In most cases, grown children had left the farm for better opportunities and the husband had died or become incapacitated.
The end of communist government brought a new debate about women's role in Polish society. After 1989 many Poles began to associate women's rights with the enforced equality of the discredited communist past. A significant part of society saw the political transformation as an appropriate time for women to return full-time to the home after communism had forced them into the workplace and weakened the Polish family.
The rights of women were central to the controversy over state abortion law that escalated sharply in 1991 and 1992, although few women had policy-making roles and no major women's groups took advocacy positions. Some of the social policies of the postcommunist governments complicated the situation of working mothers. A 1992 national study revealed discrimination against women in hiring practices and payment of unemployment benefits, and no law prohibited such sex discrimination. Because childsupport payments were not indexed to the cost of living, the payments many women received became nearly worthless in periods of high inflation. In the communist system, daycare for the children of working mothers had been cheap and widely available, but by 1992 more than half the Polish daycare centers had closed. Striving to become self-supporting, the remaining centers raised their prices sharply in the reform period.
| Poland | organization | Back to Top |
ACCT (observer), Australia Group, BIS, BSEC (observer), CBSS, CCC, CE, CEI, CERN, EAPC, EBRD, ECE, EU (applicant), FAO, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICFTU, ICRM, IDA, IEA (observer), IFC, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, IOM, ISO, ITU, MINURSO, MONUC, NAM (guest), NATO, NSG, OAS (observer), OECD, OPCW, OSCE, PCA, PFP, UN, UNCTAD, UNDOF, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNIFIL, UNIKOM, UNMEE, UNMIBH, UNMIK, UNMOP, UNMOT, UNOMIG, UPU, WCL, WEU (associate), WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO, ZC
| Poland | People | Back to Top |
In the immediate postwar period, Poland's birth rate surged upward and many Poles were repatriated from military duty or imprisonment abroad. This population increase was tempered, however, by continued emigration of ethnic groups such as the Jews and non-Polish Slavs after the war ended. The annual growth rate peaked in 1953 at more than 1.9 percent; between 1955 and 1960, it averaged 1.7 percent before dropping to 0.9 percent in 1965. The growth rate then remained fairly steady through 1980. In the early 1980s, however, Poland's growth rate of 1.0 percent placed it behind only Albania, Ireland, and Iceland among European countries. The population increase in the early 1980s was attributed to childbearing by women born in the postwar upswing as well as to lower death rates.
Later in the 1980s, as many women passed their peak childbearing years, projected growth rates again dropped. From 1985 through 1991, the actual population increase was smaller every year. The actual increase in 1991 was 122,000. Nevertheless, in 1988 one in five persons added to the population of Europe outside the Soviet Union was a Pole. Experts forecast that in the year 2000 Poland would be contributing virtually all the natural growth in Europe's employed population. In 1990 the shape of Poland's population pyramid was expected to remain relatively constant; it was composed of a relatively small base of young people, with a wider component of citizens over age sixty and a bulge in the cohort born during the postwar upswing. In 1990 this group ranged in age from thirty-five to forty-four. At the end of 1991, the total population was estimated at 38.3 million; projected population in the year 2000 was 39.5 million.
In 1988 about 51 percent of Poland's population was female, a statistic reflecting the fact that average life expectancy was about nine years greater for women (66.5 years for men, 75.5 for women). The ratio of men to women was significantly higher (as much as five to two) in rural areas, from which many women migrated to escape poor conditions on private farms. Over a period of years, a lower rural birth rate led to a smaller agricultural work force. Already in 1981, only 55 percent of the rural population was of working age, compared with 63 percent of the urban population. (Working age was defined as eighteen to fiftynine for women, eighteen to sixty-four for men.) In 1991 some 29.4 percent of the overall population was below working age, and 13 percent was past working age. The former figure had fallen since the mid-1980s, while the latter rose in the same period. The 547,000 live births in Poland in 1991 equaled 14.3 births per 1,000 people. However, the 74 deaths versus 100 births recorded that year was a higher ratio than in any recent year. (In the early 1980s, the ratio was less than 50 to 100.)
In the late 1980s, emigration from Poland was stimulated mainly by poor economic conditions. The 1989 total of 26,000 émigrés dropped to 18,500 in 1990, but the slow progress of economic reform caused the rate to increase again in 1991. In this period, the group most likely to emigrate was healthy men between the ages of twenty-six and thirty who had completed high school or trade school. The majority in this group came from regions of high unemployment and had experience working abroad. In 1991 polls showed that as much as one-third of the Polish population viewed emigration as at least a theoretical option to improve their standard of living.
1988 census Poland had a population of 37,878,641. The 2001 estimate was 38,633,912, yielding an average population density of 124 persons per sq km (320 per sq mi). Poland’s highest population densities are in the southern upland areas; the lowest densities are in the northwest and northeast. The average annual rate of population growth was very high in the period following World War II, but after the 1960s it declined to less than 1 percent, and in 1997 the population was estimated to be decreasing. Reasons for the decline include high unemployment and increases in the cost of child rearing. The rate of urbanization in Poland has accelerated since the end of World War II.
Before World War II the Polish lands were noted for the richness and variety of their ethnic communities. In the provinces of Silesia, Pomerania, and Masuria (then in Germany) there was a significant minority of Germans. In the southeast, Ukrainian settlements predominated in the regions east of Chelm and in the Carpathians east of Nowy Sacz. In all the towns and cities there were large concentrations of Yiddish-speaking Jews. The Polish ethnographic area stretched eastward: in Lithuania, Belarus, and western Ukraine, all of which had a mixed population, Poles predominated not only in the cities but also in numerous rural districts.
| Poland | Politics | Back to Top |
Citizens Platform or PO [Maciej PLAZYNSKI]; Democratic Left Alliance or SLD (Social Democracy of Poland) [Leszek MILLER]; Freedom Union or UW [Bronislaw GEREMEK]; German Minority of Lower Silesia or MNSO [Henryk KROLL]; Law and Justice or PiS [Lech KACZYNSKI]; League of Polish Families or LPR [Marek KOTLINOWSKI]; Polish Accord or PP [Jan LOPUSZANSKI]; Polish Peasant Party or PSL [Jaroslaw KALINOWSKI]; Samoobrona [Andrzej LEPPER]; Solidarity Electoral Action of the Right or AWSP [Marian KRZAKLEWSKI]; Social Movement-Solidarity Electoral Action or RS-AWS [Jerzy BUZEK]; Union of Labor or UP [Marek POL]
| Poland | Provinces | Back to Top |
16 provinces (wojewodztwa, singular - wojewodztwo); Dolnoslaskie, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Lodzkie, Lubelskie, Lubuskie, Malopolskie, Mazowieckie, Opolskie, Podkarpackie, Podlaskie, Pomorskie, Slaskie, Swietokrzyskie, Warminsko-Mazurskie, Wielkopolskie, Zachodniopomorskie
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