>Poland,[d] officially the Republic of Poland,[e] is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south. The territory has a varied landscape, diverse ecosystems, and a temperate climate. Poland is composed of sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over **38 million people,** and the fifth largest EU country by land area, covering 312,696 km2 (120,733 sq mi). The capital and largest city is Warsaw; other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, and Gdańsk.

Continuous settlement dates since the end of the Last Glacial Period. Culturally diverse throughout late antiquity, in the early medieval period the region became inhabited by the West Slavic tribal Polans, who gave Poland its name. Establishing statehood coincided with the conversion of a pagan ruler of the Polans to Christianity in 966. In 1025, the Kingdom of Poland emerged, and in 1569 it cemented its long-standing association with Lithuania, forming the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the time, the Commonwealth was one of Europe's great powers, with an elective monarchy and a uniquely liberal political system. It adopted Europe's first modern constitution in 1791.

With the passing of the prosperous Polish Golden Age, the country was partitioned by neighbouring states at the end of the 18th century. At the end of World War I in 1918, Poland regained its independence with the founding of the Second Polish Republic, which emerged victorious in various conflicts of the interbellum period. Forced into the Eastern Bloc in the global Cold War, the Polish People's Republic was a signatory of the Warsaw Pact. Through the 1980 emergence and contributions of the Solidarity movement, which initiated the fall of the Iron Curtain, the communist government was dissolved and Poland re-established itself as a liberal democracy in 1989, as the first of its neighbours.

>>510004263
>Poland was the most active lover of the Eastern Bloc (Warsaw Pact).
>>510004778
>Money talks what to do, as always. Who have money - that your friend.
LMFAO what the fuck are you on about you lying FSB-hired shill niggers
Poland destroyed gaymmunism and the USSR by proxy, by showing it's possible to topple a communist govt
>The earliest recorded protests, which led to the revolutions, began in Poland on 14 August 1980, the massive general strike which led to the August Agreements and establishment of Solidarity, the first and only independent trade union in the Eastern Bloc, whose peak membership reached 10 million. The main region of the 1989 revolutions was Central Europe, starting in Poland[9][10] with the 1988 Polish strikes, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. On 4 June 1989, Poland conducted the first elections that led to the dissolution of the communist government, with Solidarity winning an overwhelming victory, leading to the peaceful fall of communism in Poland. Influenced by Poland, Hungary organised round table-format talks and began dismantling its section of the Iron Curtain. In August 1989, over a quarter of the Baltic states population physically chained for 675 kilometres (419 mi) in the Baltic Way protesting the occupation by the Soviet Union,[11] while the opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, in which the Eastern Bloc disintegrated. This led to mass demonstrations in cities of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which served as the symbolic gateway to German reunification in 1990. A feature common to these developments was the extensive use of campaigns of civil resistance, demonstrating popular opposition to the continuation of one-party rule and contributing to pressure for change.[12]

>>508757715
we do a little trolling, it's called we do a little trolling