The history of Poland, like many states, is full of tragic events. External and internal wars, riots, divisions, desperate defense of their sovereignty. The mighty Speech of the Commonwealth, having appeared in the XVI century, two centuries later disappears from the political map of the world for 123 years. After foreign domination, its independence due to common efforts was restored at the end of the First World War, November 11, 1918.
However, after World War II, Poland again fell into the zone of influence of another country, this time the Soviet Union, where communism was the dominant political doctrine. The concluded allied treaty in 1945 marked the beginning of a new relationship between the two states.
Losses of Poland in World War II
After the treacherous attack by fascist Germany on September 1, 1939 , Poland, which was seized by the occupation by the Soviet troops from the eastern part for 27 days, was erased from the political map. It is with its defeat that the countdown of World War II begins, which entailed enormous human casualties.
The hostilities thoroughly battered the lands of the Polish state and left behind a string of strong destruction and loss. The territories of Western Ukraine and Belarus were finally assigned to the USSR. In general, 20% of industrial facilities, 60% of medical institutions, more than 63% of educational and scientific institutions were destroyed, and Warsaw was razed to the ground. But the most important remain irreparable human losses.
Hundreds of thousands of residents were tortured by heavy forced labor in Nazi concentration camps. Particular cruelty fell on the part of Polish Jews, who were first driven into the ghetto, and after the Reich had decided on the Jewish question in 1942, they were sent to death camps. One of the bloodiest death camps was located near the city of Auschwitz, more than 4 million people were tortured and killed in it.
Undoubtedly, a huge number of Poles died as a result of the Hitler regime, but the Soviet leadership also had a good hand in the destruction of the Polish elite and intelligentsia. Soviet repression was skillfully aimed at the economic use of the Polish people.
New frontiers
The territorial losses and the new borders of Poland after the Second World War are a rather big and controversial topic. And although officially the state was among the winners, from the pre-war regions only its coastal part and the lands of the southern territories were preserved. In compensation for the lost eastern regions, Poland was joined by Germany, which the propagandists called the "Returned Lands".
According to the results of the signed friendship agreement, on April 21, 1945, the Soviet Union transferred to Poland controlled German territories: part of West Prussia, part of East Pomerania, Silesia, Free city of Danzig, East Brandenburg and Schetin district. Thus, after the Second World War, the territory of Poland amounted to 312 thousand square meters. kilometers, despite the fact that until 1939 it was 388 thousand square meters. kilometers. The loss of the eastern regions was not fully compensated.
Population
According to the results of the German-Soviet agreement of 1939 on the division of the borders of Poland, more than 12 million Polish citizens (including about 5 million ethnic Poles) were in the territories that passed to the Soviet Union. The new territorial borders of states have become the reason for the mass migration of peoples.
After World War II, Poland did not account for 17% of its population. In subsequent years, her migration policy was actively aimed at mono-ethnicity of the state and the return of Poles to their homeland. According to a signed agreement with the Soviet government on the mutual exchange of population in 1945, more than 1.8 million people repatriated to Poland. There were Jews among the repatriates, but anti-Semitic sentiments of the post-war years provoked their mass emigration from the country. In 1956-1958, another 200 thousand people were able to return from the Soviet Union.
It is also worth adding that about 500 thousand people from the Poles who fought on the side of the Allies refused to return to the fatherland, where the communists were in power, after the end of the war.
Postwar government
The presence of Red Army units in Poland successfully played in the transfer of power to the Polish Communists. Representatives of the PPR (Polish Labor Party), PPS (Polish Socialist Party) and PPC (Polish Peasant Party) formed a national unity government at the end of the war, but the communists disbanded this coalition in 1947 and founded a state of people's democracy, which was then reflected in the adopted constitution from 1952 year.
In January 1947, the first post-war elections to the Polish parliament (Sejm) were held, as a result of which 382 out of 444 seats were received by the Communists and only 28 by the peasant party. The elected Sejm approved the Head of State Boleslav Bierut, a Communist adhering to the strict Stalinist line. And already in October 1947, opposition activists and some leaders of the Polish Peasant Party were forced to hide in the West because of the persecution. These events gave rise to the "Stalinization" of Poland. And in December 1948, as a result of the merger of the Polish Workers 'Party and the Polish Socialist Party, the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) was established, which subsequently retained a monopoly on political power in the country.
Despite the introduction of a rather tough policy after the Second World War, waves of protest against the current regime rose more than once in Poland. The main reasons for the dissatisfaction of citizens were: low living standards, infringement of personal freedom and civil rights, as well as the impossibility of political participation.
Foreign policy of Poland
Having become one of the state controlled by the USSR, Poland lost the right to make any decisions in its foreign political relations. Her desire to participate in the North Atlantic structures and significantly figure among the states of Western civilization was realized only with the collapse of the socialist bloc.
In 1949, Poland joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, which greatly contributed to the development of close ties with the states of the “new democracy”. And in 1955, the Warsaw Friendship Treaty was signed by Polish representatives in the composition of 8 member countries, which, in fact, was a response step to the FRG's entry into NATO. The Warsaw Pact organization was a military-political alliance led by the Soviet Union, confronting the NATO bloc.
One of the difficult tasks of Poland after the Second World War was to ensure the security of its western borders. Germany only in the 1970s was able to agree with the inviolability of the western border of the Polish state. In Helsinki in 1975 at the Conference on Security and Cooperation of European States, the following was recognized: all borders erected after the war are unbreakable.
Post war economy
The first steps in the development of Poland after the Second World War begin with a three-year economic recovery plan approved by Warsaw and Moscow in 1947. In the same year, an agreement was signed with the USSR on the supply of industrial equipment to Poland in the amount of about 500 million US dollars. As a result, by 1949 the output of industrial goods per capita increased by 2.5 times, and in comparison with the pre-war time, the economic return on their sale improved significantly. A reform has also taken place in agriculture: 814 thousand farms were created, about 6070 thousand hectares of land were transferred to the ownership of peasants, existing plots were increased.
In 1950-1955, with the scientific and financial assistance of the USSR, the stage of industrialization began in Poland, in which the main emphasis was on heavy industry and mechanical engineering. As a result, by 1955 the volume of production increased by 2.5 times, compared with the data of 1950, and the number of agricultural cooperatives increased by 14.3 times.
Finally
In short, after the Second World War, Poland was already a completely different country compared to the interwar period (1918-1939). The formation of a new balance of power in the international arena and the determined policy of the leading states that recognized the division of Europe into zones of influence where the Eastern part was left to the Soviet Union, led to dramatic changes in Poland. The changes that have taken place have affected the establishment of the communist regime in the country, which soon entailed changes in the political system, foreign policy orientation, socio-economic orientation and territorial-demographic situation.