Posted 14 July 2010 - 09:02 AM
Allrighty, so I've been circling this topic like the young Ay in MoI circled the peat trap, but it's time to enter it.
So, Poland. We're a nation of 38 million with something like over 20 million living abroad. The polish state has been founded by duke Mieszko in the second half of the 10th century, consequently christianised. At the start we were buddies with the HRE, but after Otto III's death it started going to hell - the next 20 years saw 3 wars between us. In 1025 we became a kingdom.
The early history of Poland is a history of attempts at expansion and sometimes raiding neighbours. We've had our own secession peroid when one of our kings decided to divide the country between his 7 sons. Way to go, dumbass. Miraculously enough, nobody conquered us in that time. The time when Poland started rising to power is Casimir the Great's rule in the 14th century. Even though the king died without an heir and a new dynasty started (we imported a king from Lithuania, go us), our rise to power continued. We've had heavy feuds with the Teutonic Order, which is regarded as something between demons and manic rapists to this day. Our common struggle against the Order brought us together with Lithuania, a relationship that would define both of our nations' histories for centuries to come. The Golden Age came under the rule of Sigismund the Old, and his son after him, Sigismund August, who was quite possibly systematically poisoned by the queen imported from Italy, Bona, all over succession for HER child instead of his previous kid. Suffice to say, the dynasty ended, and it went downhill from there.
History of Poland, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, is a history of dwinlindg central power, growing anarchy and weak diplomatics. Since the next kings were elected by the nobles, they ceded more and more power to them to buy their votes (something that started with the start of the second, Jagiellon, dynasty). In the 17th century we fought Russians, Turks, Cossacks and Swedes in several wars that completely devastated us. Even though we did hold Moscow for 2 years, even though we beat them Turks at Vienna (something we get very agitated about when westerners say that austrians won it), eventually the growing inability of kings to enforce anything, dwindling resources and archaic social structure and no technological progress to speak of led to disaster. Countries that rose to power around us as we waned - Russia, Prussia and Austria - decided to divide the barely breathing body of ours and make us disappear for 123 years.
Well, they would if they could. What our own country couldn't do, repression did - there was plenty resistance all around. Over these 123 years we've had 5+ major uprisings (amusingly enough, those that succeeded are the least known and revered - should tell you a lot about my people). Attempts at erasing our national identity (prohibition of using the polish language in public, prohibition of teaching polish history, that kind of thing) only strengthened it.
We got our independance back in 1918. The second republic struggled all around to maintain it's existance and expand it's borders to former lands in the east. We've stopped the soviet onslaught in 1920, effectively halting their progress to bring communism to all of Europe. The country was struggling with everything - baring the lack of infrastructure, you had differences between the three occupants clashing - different rail width, differently organised traffic, currencies, etc - three completely different administrative systems had to be unified. And then the 3rd Reich came around and kicked us back into stone age. Not going into WW2 much (the brutality of our occupants is pretty well known methinks), we came under the influence of the Soviet Union (or, how others would say, Churchill and FDR sold us out at Yalta). From there it's the usual for central Europe - commie state, heavy propaganda nad repression, lightening of the mood after Stalin's death, generally not going ALL that bad until the 80s, collapse, revolution. We came into the capitalistic world, and year after year the people started to see that it wasn't like flipping a switch that would instantly make us rich. The last 20 years is a time of trying to catch up to the west.
What we get from our history is:
- animosity towards Germans
- animosity towards Russians
- cold feelings from Lithuanians
- a sense of entitlement for once being a major power
- cult of martyrs
Poland is, for european standards, a mostly rural country. The capital, Warsaw, is something like Manhattan - high prices, high salaries and everyone's in a rush. There are several other major cities that follow it, but not to such an extent. Each large city has a climate of it's own, there's some differences here and there that set them apart. Generally speaking, the population is split four ways politically - liberals following the current coalition leaders, the Civic Platform (who are really just conservatives), the nationalistic traditionalists following the conservative Law and Justice (who are just facist socialists), the Imperial Remnant of the People's Republic, the socialists (who are surprisingly openminded to progress and the west) following Democratic Leftwing Alliance, and the largest part of them all - people who just don't give a shit and see all of these guys as different faces of the same evil and think they can hardly change anything by voting and just go on about their lives. Generally speaking, democracy has had limited success here, seeing how the people just don't care anymore. It's probably the politicians' fault.
The country is split geographically - you've got the more modern, liberal, cosmopolitan northwest: Silesia, Pomerania, Greater Poland, Kuyavia and Warsaw; then you've got the more traditional, fundie southeast. We don't get along all that well.
Some of you might recall that we've lost the previous president to a plane crash back in April. As was expected from the high culture of politics in this country, the even has been used in populistic attempts to sway voters in the resulting election. It has to be said that it seems like the only kind of politics our leaders can do is saying bad stuff about each other, instead of proposing good changes and concepts.
Poland lacks a leader figure that could make the massess care. We lack a Vladimir Putin type guy here (I really envy them Russians on that).
What else is there to say... we like to drink. We're generally welcoming to foreigners. We've had several important people in the history of the world (Kopernik, Chopin, Skłodowska-Curie, Jan Paweł II, Kościuszko, Pułaski).
You face a Pole with a simple problem, you're gonna see procrastination and fuckups. Face him with a hard problem and he'll perform better than most.
Also, our females possess superior mammaries.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Help
Obdigore, on 12 July 2010 - 12:49 PM, said:
). I don't think it's an accident that none of the English have posted until you, and that only you and the Americans have said anything about nationalism being 'weird'. I am reminded of a map that Brood posted once. I think he made it himself. It was a map of the world, with England in the center, and arrows pointing to about half the rest of the countries in the world saying 'USED TO OWN THESE BITS'. 
