Polish People’s Republic

Abstract

Poland is both in area and in population the largest and the most important of the eight European people’s democracies. She suffered massive population and economic losses as a result of the Second World War, and emerged from the war diminished in size but territorially more compact than she had been in the interwar period. The cession of territories in the east to the USSR was counterbalanced by Poland’s new de facto frontier on the Odra (Oder) and Nysa (Neisse) rivers and the acquisition of most of East Prussia, although this was not legally accepted by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) until 1970. On balance Poland gained in terms of national resources and ethnic homogeneity. By 1978, ethnic and largely Roman Catholic Poles made up 98 per cent of the population. Processes of industrialisation and urbanisation and associated social and demographic transformations have changed Poland dramatically since communist rule was set up at the end of the Second World War.