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Poles in Austria generally enjoyed the right to speak their language and quite a bit of self-rule, and were fairly supportive of the Habsburgs (even today, Emperor Franz Josef is remembered fondly in southern Poland, while praising other rulers of the "three black eagles" would make Poles twitch). Poles in Prussia were originally well-treated (Frederick the Great required the heir to the throne to be fluent in Polish, although this was never really implemented). After the Napoleonic War, borders were shuffled and the smaller number of Poles left in Prussia were mostly in ethnically-mixed areas such as Upper Silesia and found their circumstances hard, especially after the abolition of their autonomy in 1848. Political hardship only led to a strengthening of Polish national spirit, but economic hardship compelled many Polish Germans (or German Poles) to move to the thriving Rhineland or over the Atlantic.
Poles in Russia had it bad. Not surprising, then, that they tried to change the situation twice (twice-and-a-half including the rioting during the Revolution of 1905). The first time, the November Uprising, they actually had the means to change the situation, as the Russian part of Poland was technically autonomous and in personal union with Russia, and as such had a rather manageable army. Not surprisingly, the second uprising, the January Uprising, was restricted to guerilla warfare and ended in tragedy, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|the abolition of Polish autonomy]], and many Poles being [[Reassigned to Antarctica|sent to Siberia]]. <ref>Interestingly enough, many of these Poles became great explorers of Siberia -- as commemorated by Chersky Range, though it actually wasn't discovered by Jan Czerski himself.</ref>
So during [[WW 1]], many Poles, including future leaders such as [[Badass Moustache|Pilsudski]] and Sikorski, joined Austro-Hungarian forces (though there was a Russian-loyal faction, led by a Nationalist leader Roman Dmowski) and helped the Central Powers to establish a puppet Polish Kingdom in former Russian territory, as the lesser of two evils. If sent to the western front, they usually deserted to join the French Foreign Legion. After the war, a new independent Poland was created, and had [[Polish Soviet War|its moment of glory]] saving the world from [[Reds
Things then started taking turns for the worse. Immediately after the collapse of the Russian Empire resulted in the renewed independence of most of the former Commonwealth, Poland laid claim to the Lithuanian city of Vilnius,<ref>''both'' a home city of many Poles (among them Piłsudski's himself) '''and''' the long-standing Lithuanian capital</ref> leading to a war between the former allies. The Ukrainians who had invited the Poles in to rescue them from the Reds found that Warsaw had none of their best interests at heart (Piłsudski personally was very ashamed by this). Their German minority were also treated in a rather nasty way. Poland was making powerful and numerous enemies, its industrialization was slow and faltering, and its internal tensions came to the fore when the military staged a coup and established the [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|"Government of Moral Sanitation"]].
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Poland lost a fifth of its population in the war- ''seven million'' people in all, mostly civilians. Out of a pre-war Jewish population of 3.3 million, only 300,000 survived (Poland's Jewish population were Polish citizens; Israel did not exist until after the war.)
After the war, the country was taken over by the [[Reds
Post-1989, Poland joined [[NATO]] and the [[European Union]]. The latter led to a large movement of Poles to the UK.
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Home of the trade unionist with the impressive moustache (who became President) and formerly had identical twins as its President and Prime Minister. Also home of a very famous and popular former [[The Pope|pontiff]].
See also:
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* [[Fryderyk Chopin]] - his father was a Frenchman, but he was very much a Pole.
* Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's advisor.
* [[
** [[Philip K. Dick]] suspected him of being a group of KGB agents, to be accurate.
* Pawel Edmund Strzelecki - an explorer of large swaths of Australia and a person who named the continent's tallest mountain after...
* Tadeusz Kosciuszko - A revolutionary and [[Badass]] enough to be a national hero in four countries - Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and USA (he founded West Point).
* [[
* Zdzisław Beksiński - Surrealist painter
* Ernest Malinowski - An engineer. Constructed at that time the world's highest railway Ferrocarril Central Andino in the Peruvian Andes in 1871-1876.
== The Polish Flag ==
[[File:Flag of Poland.svg|thumb]]
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[[Category:Useful Notes/Europe]]
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