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The Republic of Poland

Poland celebrates two politically significant national holidays. The Polish National Flag The Polish National Independence Day is celebrated each year on November 11 as a national holiday. The National Independence Day celebrates the foundation of the Second Polish Republic. It commemorates Poland's return to independent statehood on November 11, 1918 after 123 years of partition by Austria-Hungary, Prussia (Germany), and Russia. The Polish Constitution Day celebrates the May 3, 1791 Constitution which was passed (on that date) as an Act of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth government. It was introduced to redress the many defects of its predecessor. It abolished the liberum veto; it replaced elected monarchy with a constitutional hereditary monarchy system. It was short-lived -- in effect for just one year. Its introduction had provoked hostilities by Prussia and Russian and resulted in the second partition of Poland. It remained an inspiration to Polish nationalists struggling to re-establish Poland's sovereignty.

Ancient Slavic tribes, the Polanie, settled in the lowlands of central Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. Around 840 AD a king called Piast united them into the Polish nation. In 966 a descendant of Piast called Mieszko (962 - 992) converted to Christianity and led his people to join the Roman Catholic Church. By the time of the death of his son Boleslaw I (992-1025), the Polish kingdom had expanded beyond the Carpathian Mountains.

Internal disorder and foreign invasions took their toll on Poland from the 11th to the 14th centuries. At the death of Boleslaw III the kingdom was divided among his sons into independent warring principalities. In 1240 and 1241 Poland suffered destructive Mongol invasions. Wladyslaw I became king in 1320 and reunited the Polish kingdom. During the rule of Wladyslaw’s son, Kazimierz III (1333 to 1370), Galicia became part of Polish domains.

In 1386 Jagiello, grand duke of Lithuania married Jadwiga, queen of Poland. Jagiello became king of Poland and took the name Wladyslaw II Jagiello. Poland and Lithuania were united as one country in 1569 by Zygmunt II Augustus. After the death of Zygmunt II Augustus in 1572, Poland entered a period of elected kings and unwise democratic practices. The parliament or Sejm elected the king and any member of the Sejm could prevent the passage of legislation by exercising the liberum veto. Under the constitution the nobles were allowed to form military confederations. This state of affairs marked the beginning of a period of decline for Poland.

For two centuries Poland lost wars and territory to other powers including Russia, the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Ottomans. Despite an important victory over the Ottomans in 1683 under Jan III Sobieski, the decline of Poland continued. Early in the 18th century the Russian Empire began to whittle away what remained of Poland. In 1733 the Russian put the elector of Saxony on the throne of Poland as Augustus III. While the Polish nobles resisted this imposition, Russia, in 1764, invaded Poland and enthroned Stanislaw II Augustus, a friend of Catherine the Great, empress of Russia.

In 1772, Russia, Austria, and Prussia reached a treaty for the partition of Poland. They acquired a quarter of the total area of Poland. Trouble erupted in the Sejm in 1788; as a group of Polish patriots attempted to institute reforms, others with Russian support, resisted them. The patriots drafted a new constitution making Poland a hereditary monarchy on May 3, 1791. With the aid of Russian troops their opponents made war. When Russian troops occupied eastern Poland, the Prussian army quickly occupied the western part. Independent Polish territory was thus further reduced by two-thirds. Attempts by the patriots to regain their nation's lost territories in 1794 ended in disaster. By 1797 Russia, Austria and Prussia had divided all of Poland wiping out the Polish state as an independent political entity.

Poland will not emerge again as an independent state until after the First World War. Part of Polish territories would be reclaimed as the Duchy of Warsaw (1807 - 1815) under French Emperor Napoleon I. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 the Congress of Vienna created the Kingdom of Poland with the Russian Czar as king. After a rebellion by Polish nationalists that began in November 1830, the Russians abolished the Sejm, the constitution and the Polish Army and began a systematic process of assimilating the Poles into the Russian culture. Poles in Prussia were similarly subjected to German assimilation. Only in Austria were they allowed cultural and political identity.

Following the end of the First World War in 1918 Poland re-emerged in November and was proclaimed an independent republic with Józef Pilsudski as head of state.

German chancellor Adolf Hitler's attack of Poland on September 1, 1939 marked the beginning of the Second World War. The Soviet Union also invaded Poland from the east on September 17. Poland was once again an occupied country, this time divided in two by occupying Russian and German troops. Polish nationalists formed a government in exile, led by General Wladystaw Sikorski, first headquartered in France and, after the fall of that country in 1940, in London UK.

As Germany took the war to Russia in 1941 its troops also took over Russian-occupied Poland. But by 1944 the tides of war had changed. By August the Russian army had re-entered Poland and by January 1945, they had reached and occupied Warsaw. By March all of Poland had been liberated from German occupation. In June 1945 a Polish Government of National Unity was established.

In the 1947 parliamentary elections communists won over 85 percent of the vote. By 1949 Poland had become a satellite of the USSR. The communists ruled Poland until 1989 when Premier, General Wojciech Jaruzelski reached agreement with Lec Walesa's Workers' Solidarity Movement for free elections. In August, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a member of Solidarity became the first non-communist premier of Poland. With Mazowiecki's elction, Poland was set on the path to democracy and a free market economy. In 1990 Walesa won election as president of Poland.