HISTORY
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 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 Senate
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--hold-overs 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.
