Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Poland is a member of the European Union, NATO, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Poland currently has a population of over 38 million people, [3] which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world [18] and one of the most populous members of the European Union.
Poland, [d] officially the Republic of Poland, [e] is a country in Central Europe.It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia [f] to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west.
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.
This is a timeline of Polish history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in Poland and its predecessor states.To read about the background to these events, see History of Poland.
The borders of Poland resembled the borders of the German-Russian gains in World War 2, with the exception of the city of Bialystok. This is called the Curzon line. The small area of Trans-Olza, which had been annexed by Poland in late 1938, was returned to Czechoslovakia on Stalin's orders. [citation needed]
The total area of Poland is 312,679 km 2 (120,728 sq mi), [2] making it the 69th largest country in the world and 9th in Europe. Poland has a population of over 38.5 million people, which makes it the 33rd most populous country in the world. [3]
The government's inability to forestall Poland's economic decline led to waves of strikes across the country in April, May and August 1988. In an attempt to take control of the situation, the contemporary government gave de facto recognition to the Solidarity union, and Interior Minister Czesław Kiszczak began talks with Solidarity's leader Lech Wałęsa on August 31.
Nation-building is a long evolutionary process, and in most cases the date of a country's "formation" cannot be objectively determined; e.g., the fact that England and France were sovereign kingdoms on equal footing in the medieval period does not prejudice the fact that England is not now a sovereign state (having passed sovereignty to Great ...