History Of Poland (1945–1989)
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History Of Poland (1945–1989)
The history of Poland from 1945 to 1989 spans the period of Marxist–Leninist regime in Poland after the end of World War II. These years, while featuring general industrialization, urbanization and many improvements in the standard of living, were marred by early Stalinist repressions, social unrest, political strife and severe economic difficulties. Near the end of World War II, the advancing Soviet Red Army, along with the Polish Armed Forces in the East, pushed out the Nazi German forces from occupied Poland. In February 1945, the Yalta Conference sanctioned the formation of a provisional government of Poland from a compromise coalition, until postwar elections. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, manipulated the implementation of that ruling. A practically communist-controlled Provisional Government of National Unity was formed in Warsaw by ignoring the Polish government-in-exile based in London since 1940. During the subsequent Potsdam Conference in July–Aug ...
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History Of Poland
The history of Poland spans over a thousand years, from medieval tribes, Christianization and monarchy; through Poland's Golden Age, expansionism and becoming one of the largest European powers; to its collapse and partitions, two world wars, communism, and the restoration of democracy. The roots of Polish history can be traced to ancient times, when the territory of present-day Poland was settled by various tribes including Celts, Scythians, Germanic clans, Sarmatians, Slavs and Balts. However, it was the West Slavic Lechites, the closest ancestors of ethnic Poles, who established permanent settlements in the Polish lands during the Early Middle Ages.. The Lechitic Western Polans, a tribe whose name means "people living in open fields", dominated the region and gave Poland - which lies in the North-Central European Plain - its name. The first ruling dynasty, the Piasts, emerged in the 10th century AD. Duke Mieszko I is considered the ''de facto'' creator of the Polish sta ...
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Polish Government-in-exile
The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile ( pl, Rząd Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchodźstwie), was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union, which brought to an end the Second Polish Republic. Despite the occupation of Poland by hostile powers, the government-in-exile exerted considerable influence in Poland during World War II through the structures of the Polish Underground State and its military arm, the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) resistance. Abroad, under the authority of the government-in-exile, Polish military units that had escaped the occupation fought under their own commanders as part of Allied forces in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. After the war, as the Polish territory came under the control of the communist Polish People's Republic, the government-in-exile rema ...
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1947 Polish Legislative Election
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 19 January 1947, Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p1491 the first since World War II. According to the official results, the Democratic Bloc (''Blok Demokratyczny''), dominated by the communist Polish Workers Party (PPR) and also including the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), People's Party (SL), Democratic Party (SD) and non-partisan candidates, gained 80.1% of the vote and 394 of the 444 seats in the Legislative Sejm. The largest opposition party, the Polish People's Party, was officially credited with 28 seats. However, the elections were characterized by violence; anti-communist opposition candidates and activists were persecuted by the Volunteer Reserve Militia (ORMO). The results were blatantly falsified; the opposition claimed that it would have won in a landslide had the election been conducted in a fair manner.Janusz Wrona (ed.), ''Kampania wyborcza i wybory do Sejmu Ustawoda ...
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Kresy
Eastern Borderlands ( pl, Kresy Wschodnie) or simply Borderlands ( pl, Kresy, ) was a term coined for the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period (1918–1939). Largely agricultural and extensively multi-ethnic, it amounted to nearly half of the territory of pre-war Poland. Historically situated in the eastern Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, following the 18th-century foreign partitions it was annexed by Russia and partly by the Habsburg monarchy ( Galicia), and ceded to Poland in 1921 after the Peace of Riga. As a result of the post-World War II border changes, none of the lands remain in Poland today. The Polish plural term ''Kresy'' corresponds to the Russian ''okrainy'' (), meaning "the border regions". It is also largely co-terminous with the northern areas of the "Pale of Settlement", a scheme devised by Catherine the Great to limit Jews from settling in the homogenously Christian Orthodox core of the Russian Empire, such as Moscow and Sa ...
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Polish Population Transfers (1944–1946)
The Polish population transfers in 1944–1946 from the eastern half of prewar Second Polish Republic, Poland (also known as the expulsions of Poles from the Kresy macroregion), were the forced migrations of Poles toward the end and in the aftermath of World War II. These were the result of Soviet Union, Soviet policy that was ratified by the Allies of World War II, Allies. Similarly, the Soviet Union had enforced policies between 1939 and 1941 which targeted and expelled ethnic Poles residing in the Soviet zone of occupation following the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland. The second wave of expulsions resulted from the retaking of Poland by the Red Army during the Soviet counter-offensive. It took over Territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II, territory for its republic of Ukraine, a shift that was ratified at the end of World War II by the Soviet Union's then Allies of the West. The postwar population transfers, targeting Polish nationals, were part of an offi ...
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Operation Vistula
Operation Vistula ( pl, Akcja Wisła; uk, Опера́ція «Ві́сла») was a codename for the 1947 forced resettlement of 150,000 Ukrainians (Boykos and Lemkos) from the south-eastern provinces of post-war Poland, to the Recovered Territories in the west of the country. The action was carried out by the Soviet-installed Polish communist authorities with the aim of removing material support and assistance to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army continued its guerilla activities until 1947 in both Subcarpathian and Lublin Voivodeships with no hope for any peaceful resolution. Operation Vistula effectively brought an end to the hostilities. In a period of three months beginning on 28 April 1947 and with Soviet approval and aid, about 141,000 civilians residing around Bieszczady and Low Beskids were forcibly resettled to formerly German territories, ceded to Poland at the Yalta Conference at the end of World War II. The operation was named after the ...
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Flight And Expulsion Of Germans (1944–50)
Flight or flying is the process by which an object moves through a space without contacting any planetary surface, either within an atmosphere (i.e. air flight or aviation) or through the vacuum of outer space (i.e. spaceflight). This can be achieved by generating aerodynamic lift associated with gliding or propulsive thrust, aerostatically using buoyancy, or by ballistic movement. Many things can fly, from animal aviators such as birds, bats and insects, to natural gliders/parachuters such as patagial animals, anemochorous seeds and ballistospores, to human inventions like aircraft (airplanes, helicopters, airships, balloons, etc.) and rockets which may propel spacecraft and spaceplanes. The engineering aspects of flight are the purview of aerospace engineering which is subdivided into aeronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through the atmosphere, and astronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through space, and ballistics, the study of the flight of p ...
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The Holocaust In Poland
The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust. The Holocaust in Poland was marked by the construction of death camps by Nazi Germany, German use of gas vans, and mass shootings by German troops and their Ukrainian and Lithuanian auxiliaries. The extermination camps played a central role in the extermination both of Polish Jews, and of Jews whom Germany transported to their deaths from western and southern Europe. Every branch of the sophisticated German bureaucracy was involved in the killing process, from the interior and finance ministries to German firms and state-run railroads. Approximately 98 percent of Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust were killed. About 350,000 Polish Jews survived the war; most survivors never lived in Nazi-occupied Poland, but ...
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History Of The Jews In Poland
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long period of statutory toleration, religious tolerance and Qahal, social autonomy which ended after the Partitions of Poland in the 18th century. During World War II there was a nearly complete genocide, genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community by Nazi Germany and its collaborators of various nationalities, during the German occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945, called the Holocaust. Since the fall of communism in Poland, there has been a renewed interest in Jewish culture, featuring an annual Jewish Culture Festival, new study programs at Polish secondary schools and universities, and the opening of Warsaw's Museum of the History of Polish Jews. From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland (1025–1385), Kingdom of Poland i ...
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Piast Dynasty
The House of Piast was the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland. The first documented Polish monarch was Duke Mieszko I (c. 930–992). The Piasts' royal rule in Poland ended in 1370 with the death of king Casimir III the Great. Branches of the Piast dynasty continued to rule in the Duchy of Masovia and in the Duchies of Silesia until the last male Silesian Piast died in 1675. The Piasts intermarried with several noble lines of Europe, and possessed numerous titles, some within the Holy Roman Empire. The Jagiellonian kings after John I Albert were also descended in the female line from Casimir III's daughter. Origin of the name The early dukes and kings of Poland are said to have regarded themselves as descendants of the semi-legendary Piast the Wheelwright (''Piast Kołodziej''), first mentioned in the '' Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum'' (Chronicles and deeds of the dukes or princes of the Poles), written c. 1113 by Gallus Anonymus. However, the ter ...
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Curzon Line
The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I. It was first proposed by George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, The 1st Earl Curzon of Kedleston, the British Foreign Secretary, to the Supreme War Council in 1919 (based on a suggestion by Herbert James Paton) as a diplomatic basis for a future border agreement. The line became a major geopolitical factor during World War II, when the Soviet Union, USSR Soviet invasion of Poland, invaded eastern Poland, resulting in the split of Poland's territory between the USSR and Nazi Germany along the Curzon Line. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Operation Barbarossa, the Allies did not agree that Poland's future eastern border should be kept as drawn in 1939 until the Tehran Conference. Churchill's position changed after the Soviet victory at the Battle of Kursk. Fol ...
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Oder–Neisse Line
The Oder–Neisse line (german: Oder-Neiße-Grenze, pl, granica na Odrze i Nysie Łużyckiej) is the basis of most of the international border between Germany and Poland from 1990. It runs mainly along the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers and meets the Baltic Sea in the north, just west of the ports of Szczecin and Świnoujście (German: ''Stettin'' and ''Swinemünde''). All prewar German territories east of the line and within the 1937 German boundaries—comprising nearly one quarter (23.8 percent) of the Weimar Republic—were ceded under the changes decided at the postwar Potsdam Conference (Potsdam Agreement), with the greatest part becoming part of Poland. The remainder, consisting of northern East Prussia with the German city of Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad), was allocated to the Soviet Union, as the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian SFSR (today Russia). However this did not become completely official until the peace treaty for Germany was signed. The ethnic Germa ...
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