Poland's name, "Polska," derives from the word "Polanie," or "plains people," one of several Slavic groups that settled the North European plain between the Oder and the Vistula Rivers and emerged as distinct groups in the first centuries before Christ. Roman Catholicism came officially to Poland in A.D. 966, when King Mieszko I adopted the religion for himself and the monarchy. The Kingdom of Poland reached its zenith with the Jagiellonian dynasty in the year following the union with Lithuania in 1386 and the subsequent defeat of the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in 1410. The monarchy survived many upheavals but eventually went into prolonged decline, ending with the final partition of Poland by Prussia, Russia, and Austria in 1795.

Independence for Poland was one of the 14 points enunciated by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. Many Polish-Americans enlisted to further this aim, and the United States worked at the postwar conference to ensure its implementation. However, the Poles were largely responsible for achieving their own independence. The United States established diplomatic relations with the newly formed Polish Republic in April 1919.

A turbulent period of parliamentary democracy in Poland lasted from 1919 to 1926, when Marshal Jozef Pilsudski installed an authoritarian regime, which survived until after his death in 1935. In 1939, Poland again fell to foreign invaders; the attack by Nazi Germany marked the onset of World War II. The country remained under either German or Soviet occupation until the end of the war but had a government-in-exile, first in Paris and later in London. The government-in-exile negotiated with the Soviet authorities concerning the organization, evacuation, and deployment in the west of an army of 110,000 Polish prisoners-of-war captured after the September 17, 1939, Soviet invasion of Poland. The number of armed Poles reached about 600,000 during World War II--400,000 in an army formed in the Soviet Union under Soviet command and 200,000 fighting on Western fronts in units loyal to the London government-in-exile.

The Soviet Union broke relations with the exiled Polish Government in April 1943 on the pretext that the Poles had insulted the U.S.S.R. by requesting that the Red Cross investigate mass graves of murdered Polish Army officers found by German military authorities at Katyn. On July 22, 1944, the Soviet Union installed a communist-controlled "Polish Committee of National Liberation" at Lublin, in the area of Poland that advancing Soviet armies had brought under their control. In January 1945, the U.S.S.R. recognized this committee as the Polish Government. Meanwhile, Polish underground elements staged an unsuccessful uprising against the Germans in Warsaw (August 1 - October 2, 1944). After suppressing the uprising, the Germans evacuated the surviving population of Warsaw and leveled the city as they retreated in January 1946.

Following the Yalta Conference of early 1945, a Polish Provisional Government of National Unity was formed on June 28, 1945, and was recognized by the United States on July 5, 1945. Stanislaw Mikolajczyk was the principal noncommunist participant. Although the Yalta agreement called for free elections, those held on January 19, 1947, were controlled by the Communist Party. The communists then established a regime entirely under their domination.

In October 1956, after the 20th ("de-Stalinization") Soviet Party Congress at Moscow and the serious "bread and freedom" riots at Poznan, a shakeup in the communist regime returned Wladyslaw Gomulka to power as first secretary. Gomulka, a former head of the Polish Communist Party, had been ousted in 1948 and later imprisoned for refusing to support certain Stalinist policies. While retaining most traditional communist economic and social aims, the Gomulka regime liberalized Polish internal life until a reverse trend set in during the 1960s.

In December 1970, workers' discontent erupted into riots on Poland's Baltic coast. Disturbances and strikes in the port cities of Gdansk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, triggered by a price increase for essential consumer goods, reflected deep dissatisfaction with living and working conditions in the country. Gomulka was replaced as first secretary by Edward Gierek.

Gierek improved economic conditions by increasing real wages, easing food distribution problems, providing more and better consumer goods, and modernizing Polish industry, for which much of the equipment and technology came from the West. Fueled by large infusions of Western credit, Poland's economic growth rate was one of the world's highest during the first half of the 1970s. But much of the borrowed capital was misspent, and the Soviet-style Polish economic mechanism was unable to use effectively the new resources. The growing debt burden became insupportable in the late 1970s, as recession in the West and inflation and market problems at home became more severe. Economic growth slowed and actually became negative by 1979.

In October 1978, the Bishop of Krakow, Cardinal Karol Woytyla, became Pope John Paul II, head of the Roman Catholic Church. The elevation of a Pole to the papacy electrified Polish Catholics, and his visit to Poland in June 1979 caused an outpouring of emotion from enormous throngs, who turned out to greet "their" pontiff.

The Gierek government continued to try to stop the spiraling economic decline. More and more loans were secured from the West until, by the summer of 1980, the Polish foreign debt stood at more than $20 billion. The government made another attempt to increase meat prices in July 1980. This time, a chain reaction of strikes virtually paralyzed the Baltic coast by the end of August and, for the first time, closed down most of the coal mines in Silesia. Poland had entered the most extended crisis of its postwar history and a period of nearly revolutionary upheaval.

On August 31, 1980, striking workers--led by Lech Walesa and a government negotiating team led by Vice Premier Mieczyslaw Jagielski--signed a 21-point agreement at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, which ended the strike there. Similar agreements were signed at Szczecin and in Silesia. The key provision of all these agreements was the guarantee of worker's right to form independent trade unions and the right to strike. Following the signing of the Gdansk agreement, a new national union movement, "Solidarity," swept Poland.

The discontent underlying the strikes was intensified by revelations of widespread corruption and mismanagement among the Polish state and party leadership. At the sixth Central Committee Plenum of the Polish United Workers' (communist) Party (PZPR) in September 1980, Gierek was ousted and replaced by Stanislaw Kania as first secretary. Other changes in party and state cadres continued during the succeeding months as the Kania program of odnowa (renewal) was proclaimed and initial attempts were made to overhaul the state and economic machinery in the midst of continuing worker unrest.

The rapid deterioration of the PZPR's authority in the months following the August agreement alarmed the Soviet party leadership and led to a massive buildup of Soviet forces along Poland's border during December 1980. In February 1981, Defense Minister Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski assumed the position of prime minister as well and called for a 3-month strike moratorium. The strikes continued sporadically, nonetheless, and in March 1981, a violent confrontation between the security police and Solidarity organizers in Bydgoszcz resulted in the first bloodshed since the beginning of the crisis.

The first national congress of Solidarity met in Gdansk in September and October 1981. Lech Walesa was elected national chairman of the union but only after being chastized by many of the local leaders for being too moderate. The union continued to push for far-reaching reforms in the Polish economic and political systems. Finally, in October, Stanislaw Kania was replaced by Gen. Jaruzelski as party first secretary. The collapse of talks between party, union, and church leaders on a front of national understanding in November was followed by a call from Solidarity for democratic elections and a referendum on the party's continued leadership role in the state. On December 12-13, the regime responded with a declaration of martial law under which the army and special riot police were used to crush the union. The police took virtually all of the Solidarity leadership by surprise and arrested and detained them, together with many affiliated intellectuals. In October 1982, the Sejm (pronounced "same"--parliament) adopted a new trade union law abolishing Solidarity and all other unions.

The United States and its allies responded to these Soviet-inspired crackdowns in Poland by imposing economic sanctions against the Polish martial law regime and against the Soviet Union. Unrest in Poland continued for several years following martial law.

In a series of slow, uneven steps, the Polish Government ended many of the extraordinary repressive measures associated with martial law and released all remaining internees, although a large number of political prisoners remained in Polish jails at that time. The government formally ended martial law in July 1983, having incorporated several martial law statutes into the civil and penal codes, and enacted a general amnesty, which, however, still left several hundred political prisoners in jail.

In July 1984, the government enacted another general amnesty to commemorate the 40th anniversary of founding of the Polish People's Republic. However, the kidnapping and murder of a pro-Solidarity priest, Father Jerzy Popieluszko, by officers of the Polish security police in October 1984 shocked and angered the Polish people. The trial of the four security officers accused of the murder, although marred by the government's efforts to use it as a vehicle for anticlerical propaganda, was an unprecedented event in Poland and in the communist world. The four officers were found guilty and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

Finally, in September 1986, the government released nearly all political prisoners. Following that amnesty, the Sejm passed a law providing that some political offenses could be treated as misdemeanors rather than as criminal offenses. However, this has since served as a basis for continued harassment of dissidents and Solidarity activists as it allows the authorities to mete out severe fines and to confiscate private property, such as private automobiles. As of mid-1987, there were several political prisoners still being held on what the government terms "criminal charges," although there were no prisoners incarcerated under the political articles of the criminal code.

Also in late 1986, the government convened a Consultative Council to the Council of State, a new body in which independent voices were supposed to be given a fair hearing. It was boycotted by Solidarity, although a handful of Catholic social activists and independent intellectuals have participated.

Poland's economic recovery has continued slowly, constrained by substantial difficulties, including a large foreign debt and a stalled process of economic reform. The government has committed itself to a so-called "second stage" of reform but, so far, little has been accomplished.

Source: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, September 1987.