Portal:Poland

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Welcome to the Poland Portal — Witaj w Portalu o Polsce

Cityscape of Kraków, Poland's former capital

Poland is a country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic to the southwest, Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, Lithuania to the northeast, and the Baltic Sea and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast to the north. It is an ancient nation whose history as a state began near the middle of the 10th century. Its golden age occurred in the 16th century when it united with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the following century, the strengthening of the gentry and internal disorders weakened the nation. In a series of agreements in the late 18th century, Russia, Prussia and Austria partitioned Poland amongst themselves. It regained independence as the Second Polish Republic in the aftermath of World War I only to lose it again when it was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II. The nation lost over six million citizens in the war, following which it emerged as the communist Polish People's Republic under strong Soviet influence within the Eastern Bloc. A westward border shift followed by forced population transfers after the war turned a once multiethnic country into a mostly homogeneous nation state. Labor turmoil in 1980 led to the formation of the independent trade union called Solidarity (Solidarność) that over time became a political force which by 1990 had swept parliamentary elections and the presidency. A shock therapy program during the early 1990s enabled the country to transform its economy into one of the most robust in Central Europe. With its transformation to a democratic, market-oriented country completed, Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, but has experienced a constitutional crisis and democratic backsliding since 2015.

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From Polish history – show another

The Renaissance courtyard of the Royal Wawel Castle in Kraków

The history of Poland during the Jagiellon dynasty spanned the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era. Beginning with Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania, the House of Jagiellon formed the Polish-Lithuanian dynastic union. The partnership brought vast Lithuanian-controlled Rus' areas into Poland's sphere of influence and proved beneficial for the Poles and the Lithuanians, who coöperated in one of Europe's largest political entities for the next four centuries. In the Baltic Sea region, Poland's struggle with the Teutonic Knights included the Battle of Grunwald, and the milestone Peace of Thorn under King Casimir IV. In the south, Poland confronted the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Tatars, while in the east, it helped Lithuania fight the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Poland was developing as a feudal state, with predominantly agricultural economy and an increasingly dominant landed nobility component. The Nihil novi act adopted in 1505, transferred most of the legislative power from the monarch to the Sejm (parliament), beginning a period of "Golden Liberty", when the state was ruled by the "free and equal" Polish nobility. Protestant Reformation resulted in policies of religious toleration that were unique in Europe at that time, while Renaissance currents evoked an immense cultural flowering under kings Sigismund I and Sigismund Augustus. (Full article...)

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Stanisław Ulam

Stanisław Ulam (1909–1984) was a Polish-American mathematician. Born into a wealthy Polish Jewish family, Ulam earned his D.Sc. in mathematics at the Lwów Polytechnic Institute in 1933. He then worked on the ergodic theory at Harvard University, shuttling between Poland and America, and ultimately settled in the United States after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, becoming an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1943, Ulam joined the Manhattan Project, where he made hydrodynamic calculations to predict the behavior of explosive lenses for an implosion-type nuclear weapon. After the war, he became an associate professor at the University of Southern California, but returned to Los Alamos in 1946 to help Edward Teller develop the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons. Ulam contributed to such fields of mathematics as set theory, topology, transformation theory, group theory, projective algebra, number theory, combinatorics, and graph theory. With Enrico Fermi and John Pasta, he studied the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam problem, which became the inspiration for the vast field of nonlinear science. Ulam is perhaps best known for realising that electronic computers made it practical to apply statistical methods to functions without known solutions, and as computers have developed, the Monte Carlo method he invented has become a standard approach to many physical and mathematical problems. (Full article...)

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Old Town Hall of Toruń by night

Toruń is a city on the Vistula River in northern Poland. Known in German as Thorn, it was founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1233 and ceded to the Kingdom of Poland under the terms of a treaty signed here in 1466. Seven years later, it became the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus. Today, Toruń is the seat of the legislature (sejmik) of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, forming with the city of Bydgoszcz, its western neighbor, the Bydgoszcz-Toruń metropolitan area. With its medieval spatial layout preserved almost intact and with many brick Gothic buildings, including the town hall, churches and burgher houses, Toruń is a popular tourist attraction and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also famous for its traditional gingerbread flavored with honey and spices. (Full article...)

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Did you know – show different entries

... that Zofia Daszyńska-Golińska (pictured) taught at Warsaw's Flying University before becoming a Polish senator?
... that during the uprising of 1794, Tadeusz Kościuszko's army successfully defended Warsaw from forces led by King Frederick William II of Prussia?
... that, in the 1970s, the propaganda in the People's Republic of Poland exploited the technique of exaggerating political and economic successes?
... that the Central Committee of Polish Jews, formed in 1944, was instrumental in organizing and implementing the aliyah, or Jewish migration to the new State of Israel?

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Poland now

Recent events

On 18 August, Polish cyclist Katarzyna Niewiadoma (pictured) won the 2024 Tour de France Femmes.
Poland won 10 medals, including one gold, at the 2024 Summer Olympics, ranking 42nd in the medal table.
- On 11 August, Daria Pikulik won a silver medal in track cycling.
- On 10 August, Poland men's team won a silver medal in volleyball, while Julia Szeremeta won a silver medal in boxing.
- On 7 August, Aleksandra Mirosław and Aleksandra Kałucka won, respectively, gold and bronze medals in speed climbing.
On 1 August, Russian–Spanish journalist Pablo González Yagüe, arrested in Poland on espionage charges and held in pre-trial detention for 886 days, was released as part of a multinational prisoner exchange.

Ongoing
Constitutional crisis • Belarus–EU border crisis • Ukrainian refugee crisis

Holidays and observances in August 2024
(statutory public holidays in bold)

Assumption Day and Polish Armed Forces Day (military aircraft pictured), 15 April
Solidarity and Freedom Day, 31 August

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Grodziskie

Credit: Karol Palion

Piwo z Grodziska, a modern recreation of the historical beer style known as Grodziskie or Grätzer, originally brewed in Grodzisk Wielkopolski from the 14th century until 1993. It is a top-fermented beer made from oak-smoked wheat malt and features a crisp taste with a smoky aroma. This style is traditionally served in tall, conical glasses designed to show off the clear, light golden color and high carbonation, which gave Grodziskie the nickname of "Polish Champagne".