Both Poland and Czech Republic are located in the center of
Europe and share a common history. Poland was an independent
state for most of its history. Even while it was a part of the
socialist world, it kept its independence and enjoyed
fundamental privileges among socialist countries, such as
prevalence of private property in agriculture and the dominance
of the Roman Catholic Church in spiritual life. The Polish
nobility were famous in Europe for their liberal rules and
liberal freedoms at the time when many other European countries
were authoritarian monarchies. Poland had a parliament and even
some democratic practices for centuries even before it was
partitioned by the end of the eighteenth century. (Larissa)
Poland's Catholicism had puzzled outside countries when in 1980
Polish workers astonished the world by setting genuinely
independent labor unions when the president of the time Lech
Walesa was holding a crucifix and by burly strikers. This was
just the beginning of the Solidarity movement. Even aft