Poland

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The Polish flag consists of two equal horizontal bands of white (top) and red.[1]

The Republic of Poland (Polish: Rzeczpospolita Polska) is a large Slavic nation in Central Europe. Its history stretches 1000 years, with interruptions when it was controlled or even divided up by powerful neighbors. It is a member of the European Union and NATO.

Geography

Poland in 2007.

Poland is located in Central Europe and occupies a total area of 312,679 square kilometers. It is bordered by Belarus, the Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, a Russian exclave Kaliningrad Oblast, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Poland is predominantly open plains, with the natural borders of the Carpathian Mountains to the south and the Baltic Sea to the north.

Demography

"Peasants of Podolia," Poland about 1860 by Kanhart.[2]

Language, Religion, Culture

Religion was a mainstay of Polish identity for a thousand years. It was a refuge from Communist rule, and before that an act of defiance against Prussians and Russians. As the rest of Europe secularized in the late 20th century, the Catholic faith grew stronger in Poland, symbolized by the selection of Karol Cardinal Wojtyła, Archbishop of Kraków, as Pope John Paul II in 1978. Unlike the rest of Europe, the men of Poland were religious, as were the workers, peasants and middle classes. They disobeyed church edicts on birth control and abortion, but they practiced the rituals faithfully.[3] By the late 1980s, a third of all priests ordained in Europe were from Poland.[4]

Economy

Politics

History

notes

  1. ↑ The colors are somewhat problematic since there is no consensus what are the "correct" colors for the computer screen; this version comes from the CIA World Factbook. Compare with pictures proposed by Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs [1] and the presidential website.[2] For more details see Flag of Poland.
  2. ↑ in Henry Sutherland Edwards, The Polish Captivity (1863) p. 175 at [3]
  3. ↑ In the 1970s there were over 200,000 abortions a year (compared to 600,000 live births), but highly restrictive laws drasticaly reduced the number of abortions after 1988. See Wm. Robert Johnston, "Historical abortion statistics, Poland," (2007) at [4]
  4. ↑ Stanislaw Gomulka and Antony Polonsky, eds., Polish Paradoxes (1991), pp 237-60
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