Polish People's Republic
The Polish People's Republic (, ) was a state in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989, and the predecessor of the modern democratic Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million inhabitants near the end of its existence, it was the most populous state of the Eastern Bloc after the Soviet Union. Having a unitary Marxist–Leninist communist government, it was also one of the main signatories of the Warsaw Pact. The official capital since 1947 and largest city was Warsaw, followed by industrial Łódź and cultural Kraków.
History of Poland (1918–1939)
Poland re-emerged in November 1918 after more than a century of partitions by Austria-Hungary, the German, and the Russian Empires. Its independence was confirmed by the victorious powers through the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919, and most of the territory won in a series of border wars fought from 1918 to 1921. Poland's frontiers were settled in 1922 and internationally recognized in 1923.
The Polish political scene was democratic, but was chaotic until Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935) seized power in May 1926 and democracy ended. The policy of agrarianism led to the redistribution of lands to peasants and the country achieved significant economic growth between 1921 and 1939. A third of the population consisted of minorities—Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians and Germans—who were either hostile towards the existence of the Polish state because of the lack of privileges or often discriminated against in the case of Ukrainians and Belarusians who faced Polonization. There were treaties that supposedly protected them but the government in Warsaw was not interested in their enforcement.