Demographics of Poland
According to the 2011 census by the Polish Central Statistical Office (GUS), at the end of 2011 Poland had a population of 38,538,447, which translates into an average population density of 123 people/km (urban 1105 per 1 km², rural 50 per 1 km²). 61.5% of the Polish population lives in urban areas, a number which is slowly diminishing. Poland is the 33rd most populous country in the world (9th in Europe, with 5.4% of the European population). Total population of Poland is almost stagnant (population growth was 0.08%). Average life expectancy was 70.5 for men and 78.9 for women. In 2009, it was expected to be 73.1 for men and 79.5 for women. Population distribution is uneven. Ethnically, Poland is a very homogeneous country, with 96.7% of population being Polish.
Soviet partisans
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which marked the beginning of World War II, the Soviet Union invaded the eastern regions of the Second Polish Republic (referred to as the "Kresy") and annexed the lands totalling with a population of 13,299,000 inhabitants including ethnic Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Czechs and others. Belarusian emigre sources said that the actual number of Belarusians in Poland in 1931 was over 3.4 million or 77.9 percent of the total population in West Belarus. A Ukrainian geographer concluded that out of 9,198,000 people living in western Ukraine (Galicia and Volhynia), Ukrainians amounted to 64.5 percent. Soviet era sources state that in 1939, Soviet forces took control of regions of the Polish Republic that had "a population of more than 12 million, including more than 6 million Ukrainians and about 3 million Belarusians."