 Poland officially Republic of Poland
Country, central Europe.  
Area: 120,728 sq mi (312,685 sq km). Population (2002 est.): 38,644,000. Capital: Warsaw. Most of the people are Polish; there are minorities of Ukrainians, Germans, and Belarusians. Language: Polish (official). Religions: Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy. Currency: zloty. Poland consists almost entirely of lowlands in the northern and central regions. The southern border is largely formed by the Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains. The Vistula and Oder, the principal river systems, both drain into the Baltic Sea. Industries include mining, manufacturing, and public utilities. Poland is a republic with two legislative houses; its chief of state is the president, and its head of government is the prime minister. Established as a kingdom in 922 under Mieszko I, Poland was united with Lithuania in 1386 under the Jagiellon dynasty (1386–1572) to become the dominant power in east-central Europe and enjoyed a prosperous golden age. In 1466 it wrested western and eastern Prussia from the Teutonic Order, and its lands eventually stretched to the Black Sea. Wars with Sweden (see First and Second Northern War) and Russia in the later 17th century led to the loss of considerable territory. In 1697 the electors of Saxony became kings of Poland, virtually ending Polish independence. In the late 18th century Poland was divided between Prussia, Russia, and Austria (see partitions of Poland) and ceased to exist. After 1815 the former Polish lands came under Russian domination, and from 1863 Poland was a Russian province, subjected to intensive Russification. After World War I an independent Poland was established by the Allies. The invasion of Poland in 1939 by the U.S.S.R. and Germany precipitated World War II, during which the Nazis sought to purge its culture and its large Jewish population. Reoccupied by Soviet forces in 1945, Poland was controlled by a Soviet-dominated government from 1947. In the 1980s the Solidarity labour movement, led by Lech Wałesa, achieved major political reforms, and free elections were held in 1989. An economic austerity program instituted in 1990 sped the transition to a market economy. Poland became a member of NATO in 1999 and followed a program of democratic reform into the 21st century. © 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
 Chopin, Frédéric (François) orig. Fryderyk Franciszek Szopen
born March 1, 1810, Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, Duchy of Warsaw
died Oct. 17, 1849, Paris, France Polish-French composer. Born to middle-class French parents in Poland, he published his first composition at age seven and began performing in aristocratic salons at eight. He moved to Paris in 1831, and his first Paris concert the next year thrust him into the realm of celebrity. Renowned as a piano teacher, he spent his time in the highest society. He contracted tuberculosis apparently in the 1830s. In 1837 he began a 10-year liaison with the writer George Sand; she left him in 1847, and a rapid decline led to his death two years later. Chopin stands not only as Poland's greatest composer but perhaps as the most significant composer in the history of the piano; he exhaustively exploited the instrument's capacities for charm, excitement, variety, and timbral beauty. His innovations in fingering, his use of the pedals, and his general treatment of the keyboard were hightly (sic!) influential. Apart from two piano concertos (both 1830) and four other works for piano and orchestra, virtually all his compositions are for solo piano; they include some 60 mazurkas, 27 études, 26 preludes, 21 nocturnes, some 20 waltzes, 16 polonaises, 4 ballades, 4 scherzos, and 3 sonatas. © 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
|  Curie, Marie
orig. Maria Sklodowska
born Nov. 7, 1867, Warsaw, Pol., Russian Empire
died July 4, 1934, near Sallanches, France
Polish-born French physical chemist. She studied at the Sorbonne (from 1891). Seeking the presence of radioacti
vity, recently discovered by Henri Becquerel in uranium, in other matter, she found it in thorium. In 1895 she married fellow physicist Pierre Curie (1859–1906). Together they discovered the elements polonium and radium, and they distinguished alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. For their work on radioactivity (a term she coined), the Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics with Becquerel. After Pierre's death, Marie was appointed to his professorship and became the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. In 1911 she won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry for discovering polonium and isolating pure radium, becoming the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. She died of leukemia caused by her long exposure to radioactivity. In 1995 she became the first woman whose own achievements earned her the honour of having her ashes enshrined in the Pantheon in Paris. © 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
 Wałȩsa, Lech born Sept. 29, 1943, Popowo, near Włocławek, Pol.
Polish labour leader and president of Poland (1990–95).
An electrician, he worked in the Lenin Shipyard at Gdańsk, Pol. (1967–76), but he was fired for his antigovernment activities. In 1980 he joined workers in a strike and soon became leader of the Solidarity trade union. The union was banned in 1981, and he was detained into 1982. In 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace; fearing involuntary exile, he remained in Poland while his wife, Danuta, traveled to Norway to accept the prize on his behalf. He continued to direct the outlawed union until it received legal recognition in 1988. Solidarity won an overwhelming victory in free elections in June 1989, and after Wałȩsa refused to form a coalition government with the communists, the Parliament was forced to accept a Solidarity-led government, though Wałȩsa himself refused to serve as premier. In 1990 he won Poland's first direct presidential election by a landslide, and he helped guide Poland into a free-market economy. His confrontational style eroded his popularity, and he was narrowly defeated in his bid for reelection in 1995.
© 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
 Solidarity Polish Solidarność Polish trade union. A workers' strike in 1980 at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk inspired other labour strikes in Poland and compelled the government to agree to the workers' demands for independent unions. Solidarity was founded to unite the regional trade unions, and Lech Wałesa was elected chairman. The movement won economic reforms and free elections before pressure from the Soviet Union forced the Polish government to suppress the union in 1981. The focus of worldwide attention, it continued as an underground organization until 1989, when the government recognized its legality. In the free elections of 1989, Solidarity candidates won most of the contested seats in the assembly and formed a coalition government. In the 1990s the union's role diminished as new political parties emerged in a free Poland. © 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
|  Copernicus, Nicolaus
Polish Mikołaj Kopernik
born Feb. 19, 1473, Toruń, Pol.
died May 24, 1543, Frauenburg, East Prussia
Polish astronomer.
He was educated at Kraków, Bologna, and Padua, where he mastered all the knowledge of the day in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and theology. Elected a canon of the cathedral of Frauenburg in 1497, he took advantage of his financial security to begin his astronomical observations. His publication in 1543 of Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs marked a landmark of Western thought (see Copernican system). Copernicus had first conceived of his revolutionary model decades earlier but delayed publication because, while it explained the motion of the planets (and resolved their order), it raised new problems that had to be explained, required verification of old observations, and had to be presented in a way that would not provoke the religious authorities. The book did not see print until he was on his deathbed. By attributing to Earth a daily rotation around its own axis and a yearly revolution around a stationary Sun, he developed an idea that had far-reaching implications for the rise of modern science. He asserted, in contrast to Platonic instrumentalism, that astronomy must describe the real, physical system of the world. Only with Johannes Kepler was Copernicus's model fully transformed into a new philosophy about the fundamental structure of the universe. © 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
 Mickiewicz, Adam (Bernard) born Dec. 24, 1798, Zaosye, near Nowogródek, Belorussia, Russian Empire
died Nov. 25, 1855, Constantinople, Tur.
Polish poet. A lifelong apostle of Polish national freedom and one of Poland's greatest poets, Mickiewicz was deported to Russia for his revolutionary activities in 1823. His Poetry, 2 vol. (1822–23), was the first major Polish Romantic work; it contained two parts of Forefathers' Eve, a cycle combining fol
klore and mystic patriotism. Mickiewicz left Russia in 1829 and eventually settled in Paris. There he wrote The Books of Our Pilgrimage (1832), a prose interpretation of the history of the Poles; and his masterpiece, the poetic epic Pan Tadeusz (1834), which describes the life of the Polish gentry in the early 19th century. © 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
 John Paul II orig. Karol Wojtyła
born May 18, 1920, Wadowice, Pol.
died April 2, 2005, Vatican City
Pope (1978–2005), the bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic church, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and the first ever from a Slavic country.
He studied for the priesthood at an underground seminary in Kraków during World War II and was ordained in 1946. He earned a doctorate in philosophy in Rome (1948) and returned home to serve in a parish, earning a second doctorate (also 1948), in sacred theology, from the Jagiellonian University. He became archbishop of Kraków in 1964 and cardinal in 1967. Elected pope after the 33-day pontificate of John Paul I (b. 1912
d. 1978), he became known for his energy, charisma, and intellect as well as for his conservative theological views and fervent anticommunism. In 1981 John Paul was shot in St. Peter's Square by a Turkish gunman, but he recovered, resumed his work, and forgave his would-be assassin. His trips abroad attracted some of the largest crowds ever assembled. His nonviolent activism spurred movements that contributed to the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. He championed economic and political justice in developing nations. In naming 44 cardinals from five continents (February 2001), John Paul reached out to cultures around the world. He also canonized more saints, from more parts of the world, than had any other pope. His ecumenical efforts included meetings with Jewish, Muslim, and Eastern Orthodox religious leaders. Although afflicted with Parkinson disease since the early 1990s, John Paul remained active and made a historic trip to Jerusalem in March 2000, during which he sought to improve relations between the Roman Catholic church and Jews.
© 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
 Gdańsk German Danzig
City (pop., 2000 est.: 456,574), capital of Pomorskie province, northern Poland.
Located at the mouth of the Vistula River on the Baltic Sea, it was first mentioned in the late 10th century as a Polish town. The capital of the dukes of Pomerania in the 13th century, it was taken by the knights of the Teutonic Order in 1308. In 1466 Casimir IV regained the territory for Poland, and Gdańsk expanded greatly. From 1793 it was controlled mainly by Prussia; following World War I, it was a free city governed by Poland. In 1938 Adolf Hitler demanded that Gdańsk be given back to Germany; Poland's refusal was the excuse for his attack on Poland in 1939, which precipitated World War II. The city, greatly damaged during the war, was returned to Poland in 1945. It is now fully restored, with renewed port facilities. The independent labour union Solidarity was founded there in 1980.
© 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
 Warsaw Polish Warszawa City (pop., 2001 est.: 1,610,471), capital of Poland, on the Vistula River.
Founded с 1300, it flourished as a trade centre, came under Polish control in 1526, and became the capital in 1596. During the late 18th century it expanded rapidly, but it was destroyed in 1794 by the Russians. In 1807 it was made the capital of the Duchy of Warsaw by Napoleon. Taken by the Russians in 1813, it was the centre of Polish insurrections in 1830–31 and 1860. It was occupied by the Germans in World War I and again in World War II, when its large Jewish population revolted in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943). The Warsaw Uprising in 1944 was unsuccessful, and the Germans virtually destroyed the city. Modern Warsaw, rebuilt after the war, now houses government bodies, including the Sejm (parliament); it is also an industrial and educational centre. Among its historic buildings are a 14th-century Gothic cathedral and a medieval castle. © 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
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The highlight of the year has now finished. The show, this year held in Moscow, yet another dose of campy performance, good, bad and worse songs and of course, although to a lesser than usual extent, neighbour voting.
