Poland

Poland

Poland stretches over an area situated in the geometrical centre of Europe between the Baltic Sea and the northern slopes of the Carpathians and the Sudetes. This land mass is 312,685 km2, and the Vistula and Odra are its main rivers. The country shares borders with Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithua... Read on

Poland

Poland stretches over an area situated in the geometrical centre of Europe between the Baltic Sea and the northern slopes of the Carpathians and the Sudetes. This land mass is 312,685 km2, and the Vistula and Odra are its main rivers. The country shares borders with Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and in the north with the Kaliningrad District of Russia and also with Denmark via the territorial sea. Warsaw, situated on the middle Vistula, now functions as the capital city, however historically, several other cities proudly carried that name.

The Polish landscape is predominantly lowland: the Podlaska, Mazovian, Wielkopolska and Silesian lowlands are utilised as farmland interspersed with both large and small patches of forest. Areas of tourist interest are spread evenly across the whole country. Beaches covered with quartzite powdery sand in shades ranging from white to light beige stretch along the northern coastline. The scenic beauty of the ever choppy Baltic and the possibility of finding amber - the gold of the north, compensate the lack of any guarantee of 100 per cent sunny weather. Further south, the landscape becomes dotted with serene lakes, which constitute a wide belt of lake lands. The lowlands of central Poland are densely populated even though large cities are as common here as large forests. In Warsaw's immediate neighbourhood lies the Kampinos Forest (Puszcza Kampinoska), and in the region of Łódź, a city with a population of nearly a million, there are the Bolimów and the Pilica forests (Puszcza Bolimowska, Puszcza Pilicka).
Below Poznań, there lies the Wielkopolski National Park featuring lakes and forests with clusters of ancient oak-trees. The Silesian Lowland, the most south-reaching, climbs rapidly by several hundred metres and joins the Sudetes. The highest peak of these old mountains is Śnieżka (1602 m) belonging to the Karkonosze range stretching along the border with the Czech Republic. South-East Poland comprises of picturesque uplands and lush vegetation of the northern slopes of the Carpathians. The Lubelska Upland is characterised by a warm summer and atmospheric landscapes. The area of the Małopolska Upland is divided by the not so high but very scenic Świętokrzyskie Mountains, and the Cracow-Wieluń Upland is in itself a range of miniature mountains with fantastically shaped Jurassic rocks. The Silesian Upland has been nearly completely urbanised, but the close proximity to the Carpathians redeems the environmental situation of this multimillion agglomeration. This mountain range retains much of its natural beauty and stretches latitudinally along the whole of the Polish-Slovak border. Its highest cluster - the Tatras - lays claims to be the largest area of alpine wildlife between the Alps and the Caucasus. At 2499 m the northern mountaintop of Mt. Rysy is the highest peak of the Polish Tatras. Poland has 23 national parks out of which the Biebrza (Biebrzański Park Narodowy) is the largest and covers impassable bogs, sometimes called the European Amazonia.

The oldest of parks, the Bialowieza (Bialowieski Park Narodowy), untouched by an axe, is the only remaining lowland forest on the continent, and which up until World War I sheltered the last free-living European bison. Though on the brink of extinction, the species was saved thanks to a breeding programme, and today they can be found in several places in Poland.

Despite many wars, Poland has been left rich in historical sites, mostly in cities, but it is not uncommon to encounter little pearls of architecture in rural areas. The beginnings of human settlements on Polish territory date much further back than the origins of Polish statehood. During the Neolithic age, in the Swiętokrzyskie Mountains, there was a flint-mining centre for tool production purposes. In the Bronze Age, most of the land was dominated by tribes of the Lusatian culture, who built fortified settlements encircled by walls made of earth and wood. A reconstruction of one of those structures can be found at Biskupin. In the period of cultural exchange with the Roman Empire, a trade route called the Amber Road traversed Polish territory. Supratribal communities started to occur in the eighth century. Gradually, the Polanie tribe with their capital in Gniezno started to play the most important role. The oldest records mention the rule of Mieszko of the Piast dynasty. In 966, by marrying Dubravka, a Christian Czech princess, the Duke adopted Christianity and introduced his people into the orbit of Latin civilization. His male descendants ruled in Poland until 1370, in Mazovia until 1526, and in Silesia until 1675. Mieszko's female descendants can be traced among the Polish royalty as far as 1795.

Mieszko's son, Boleslaw I Chrobry furnished Poland with the first martyr when he sent bishop Wojciech to pagan Prussia on a peace mission in 997. Two years later after the missionary's death, Wojciech was announced the first saint patron of Poland (St Adalbert). The second person to be beatified was Stanislaw, bishop of Cracow, who had been slain in 1079 when trying to oppose the injustice of King Boleslaw II Śmiały. The legend of the first saint has implanted in the Polish consciousness respect for action without the use of violence, the second one the conviction of the right to oppose the authorities. Between 1138 and 1295, Poland underwent a process of feudal fragmentation and the weakening of the centralised power base of Cracow. It was also a period of dynamic economic growth, although harvests were plundered by the Mongols in 1241. Earlier, in 1226, Duke Konrad of Mazovia appealed to the Teutonic Knights to help him defend his realm against Prussian and Lithuanian invasions. The situation in the country changed with the return of centralised monarchy at the turn of the 13th century. Most importantly, the Teutonic Knights turned into foes. Władysław Łokietek fought a winning battle against them (Plowce, 1332), however, this did not change the odds. Casimir the Great (the founder of the University of Cracow in 1364) took them to the papal court and managed to regain some of the land, which the Teutonic Order had annexed, but it was not until the Polish-Lithuanian alliance that their lawlessness was brought to an end. After the death of childless Casimir the Great (1370), his nephew, Louis of Hungary ascended the throne (Polish-Hungarian friendship has many far-reaching sources), and after him, his daughter, Jadwiga, who reigned between 1384 and 1399. In 1386, she married the Grand Duke Jagiełło of Lithuania, who christened himself Władysław. Jadwiga died widely revered by the populace (she was canonised in 1997).

Thanks to her generosity, Wladyslaw refurbished the university, which since then has been called "Jagiellonian". In 1410, together with the Lithuanians, Władysław crushed the Teutonic Knights in the battle of Grunwald. His son Kazimierz Jagiellończyk reaped the political fruit of this battle, when he reclaimed Gdansk in 1466, and his grandson Sigismund the Old, who made Albrecht Hohenzollern, the Grand Master of the Order, his liegeman. The political system that evolved in Poland throughout the 15th century was known as the Nobles' Democracy. The rule neminem captivabimus protected Polish szlachta (gentry or nobility) from lawless arrest. In fact, the king became a constitutional monarch. The nihil novi act transferred all legislative power from the king to the Sejm (the chamber of envoys at the parliament). In the days of the Reformation, the strong position of citizens against the monarch nullified the rule cuius regio eius religio, and thus Poland enjoyed guarantees of religious tolerance. The 17th century, a Golden Age for Poland, ended with the reign of Sigismund III Vasa, who embroiled Poland with Sweden for 70 years and with Russia for centuries. The country fell into decline. Yet in 1683, King Jan III Sobieski still managed to overpower a vast Turkish army in Vienna. However, his successor was no longer able to rule without foreign protection. The anarchy of the szlachta, the degeneration of towns, and wars put Poland on a downward course straight into the arms of Tsar Peter the Great. Attempts to restore sovereignty (Confederation of Bar 1768-72 and the Great Sejm 1788-92) ended with a Russian-German pact that sealed the partitioning of Poland. The struggle for independence over the following 123 years culminated in the chaos of World War I, out of which emerged the multiethnic Druga Rzeczpospolita (Second Commonwealth).

Twenty years of interwar independence augmented Poland against erasure from the maps of Europe by the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939-41, and the Yalta decree, which handed the country over to the Soviets. Between 1944 and 1989, Poland was part of the Eastern Bloc. In 1978, Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Cracow, became the Pope. In 1980 Polish workers created a trade union known as Solidarity and by opposing the authorities, they peacefully overturned the system. The fall of the Soviet Union finished the task. In 1992, the last Russian military unit left Poland. Soon, the country joined NATO, and since 2004 Poland has been a member state of the European Union.

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