I.

Introduction

Poland, officially the Republic of Poland (in Polish, Rzeczpospolita Polska), country in central Europe, bordered on the north by the Baltic Sea and Russia; on the east by Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine; on the south by the Czech Republic and Slovakia; and on the west by Germany. The area of the country is 312,684 sq km (120,728 sq mi).

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Poland was one of the major European powers under the Jagiełłon dynasty. With the end of the dynasty in 1572, Poland entered a long period of decline, culminating in the partition of the country between Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1772, 1793, and 1795. Poland was again established as a sovereign state after World War I. It was partitioned for a fourth time in 1939 by Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

After World War II, Polish territory suffered a net loss of about 76,000 sq km (29,344 sq mi), as the land ceded to the USSR in the east was nearly double that acquired from Germany in the west. A Communist-dominated government ruled Poland from 1947 to 1989.

The name Polska (Poland), first applied in the early 11th century, comes from an ancient Slavic people known as the Polanie (field or plains dwellers), who settled in the lowlands between the rivers Oder (Odra) and Vistula (Wisła) in the early Middle Ages.