Talk:Second Polish Republic

Skipping 5 years

Sorry, the original edit somehow lost itself. Alright, the People's Republic of Poland seems to not appear in the succession part of the Second Republic of Poland, instead the only link refers to the government in exile. The government in exile overtakes the SRP in 1939, but the PRP has began in 1944, which is technically skipping 5 years of Polish history. We cannot add the PRP to the succession list of the SRP, because it has started in 1944, but we cannot add it into the exile's succession list, as the government in exile ended in 1990, and the PRP has ended a year before that. This means the enitre page of PRP is skipped entirely from the Polish History. According to sources or facts, do we change the dissolution date of the SRP to 1944, or do we transfer-power to the PRP in 1944? — Preceding unsigned comment added by PantherBF3 (talk • contribs) 21:22, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

{untitled]

What does this paragraph mean?:

Occupied by German and Austro-Hungarian in the summer of 1915, the former Russian-ruled part of Poland was proclaimed an independent kingdom by the occupying powers on 5 November 1916, with a governing Council of State and (from 15 October 1917) a Regency Council (Rada Regencyjna) to administer the country under German auspices pending the election of a king.

Are we talking about the same place? The sentence seems to be starting to talk about the former Russian-ruled part of Poland. Are we talking about all of Poland, or just the part that was formerly ruled by Russia? I got very confused. -- Zoe

Occupation and colonisation of Lithuania and ethnic Balts' lands

when polish degenerates give back Lithuanian ethnic lands - Palenke, Pamarenia, Prussia, Jotva-Mozuria??? it's aout 150 000 km2...and of cause all polish colonists must go back to poland —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.13.243 (talk) 14:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The map

In the map Germany looks like it has its pre 1918 borders. Its not a massive problem but we might as well fix it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Onthehook (talk • contribs) 01:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Split

This article will soon be splitted into several subarticles. See Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Poland/Periodization. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:22, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikify

Just gets messy near the bottom. Needs to be cleaned up a tad. --Woohookitty 06:09, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

--- What was the First Republic? Känsterle 11:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 14:56, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Over 17 years later, I also came to this talk page trying to confirm what the "First Republic" was. The PLC article explains it a bit, but this article is currently really unclear on what previous political entity the term Second Republic is supposed to be distinguishing from. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Polish history feels too weak for me to try clarifying. (I'm afraid I'd just muddy things more.) CAVincent (talk) 04:10, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

@CAVincent The article does not even use the term "First Republic", so I am not sure which part of the article is confusing? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:32, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, your edit clarified this. For someone with limited knowledge of pre-20th century Polish history (i.e. me), it wasn't entirely clear why the subject of this article was considered the second and not the first. CAVincent (talk) 04:23, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Cleanup

Five edits in nearly four years. Can only a mother love this? --Matthead 04:18, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• I have no idea what you're talking about. Deltabeignet 01:48, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Minorities

I added some statistics on minorities and the number of ethnically Jewish in the Second Republic to the demographics section. The statements are sourced. Please build upon them if you wish. Aaрон Кинни (t) 10:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Coat of Arms

Was the Piast Coat of Arms used as the Coat of Arms of the Second Polish Republic between 1927 and 1939? WhyNotFreedom 05:18, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Cities, area, population etc.

I own a Statistical Year-Book of Poland 1939 (Maly rocznik statystyczny 1939). This is the best source one can get and little by little, I will be making corrections to the data given so far, as well as adding some more information. I will start up with population of biggest cities of Poland in 1939, there are some differences. Greetings to all Tymek 05:05, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This is actually available on line as pdfs here (click through to last page for the old ones).Volunteer Marek (talk) 04:16, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Second paragraph

Second paragraph needs to cite sources or be deleted. It also contains possible POVs. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 10:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The article is poorly referenced, but I see no controversial information it may contained. Lack of references is no reason for deletion, unless the information is clearly wrong or insulting.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  17:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I would have to disagree, it seems an obvious reason for removal to me. References are a fundamental part of Wikipedia (see WP:RS, WP:A, WP:NOR and WP:V). And as I have stated before it contains sentences that sound a bit POV. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 03:48, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

No map of 1919 borders?

I wonder why there is no map of the original borders of 1919, according to Versailles?-- Matthead ^discuß!     O       14:47, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

See Category:Maps of the history of Poland. But indeed many maps are missing. There may be some in various atlases, though; some hopefully PD.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  16:47, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Map from 1919 as requested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Europe_map_1919.jpg

It seems somebody already uploaded such a map.--Molobo (talk) 23:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Added detailed map

I added detailed map from Romer's atlas.--Molobo (talk) 03:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Polish POW-users removing map

User:Piotrus and his "friends" can´t accept sources not showing the past as polish propaganda wants it to claim area (no polish majority in vilnius area e.g.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polska1912.jpg and deleted my map http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polska-ww1-nation.png. I can only say, fight for a neutral wikipedia or let extremist wrote the articles from the beginning. Polish propandism is strong in wikipedia, but if we follow this path we also could use nazimaps claiming area for germany or turkish maps showing no kurds (Exec (talk) 01:51, 15 June 2009 (UTC))

The difference in pre WWI and post WWI maps are due to the matter of falsification in census records, especially those of Russia. According to the 1897 Russian census [1], there were 1,175,804 Poles living outside of Congress Poland of which 905,650 lived within the eastern 'governments' of the territories which formed part of pre-partition Poland. The 'governments' in question were/are; Courland, Grodno, Kiev, Kovno, Minsk, Mogilev, Podolia, Vilna, Vitebsk and Volhynia. However there were 3,870,510 Catholics living in that region same region. Even if one excludes the Lithuanians (1,633,827), Latvians of Polish Livonia (264,062), Czechs (39,267), as well as smaller groups such as Frenchmen, Italians, Portuguese and Spaniards (1,825), your left with 1,931,529 Catholics, suggesting that the true Polish population of that region matched the religious figure, thus being some twice the official figure. It also suggests that the Polish population outside of Congress Poland in Russia was some 2,200,000 (assuming no falsification in the rest of Russia, something which is doubtful to say the least), this figure including Bilaystok however excluding Eastern Galicia.

If you wish to discuss Nazi-style ideology, I would recommend the supposed justification for the 'Recovered Territories' being Polish. The same style is used in both cases, people A lived in territory Z in ancient times so therefore it's theirs, and the native inhabitants need to be expelled, assimilated or killed. Hitler's usage of the Goths inhabiting the bulk of Poland as far as East as the Vistula as of the year 375 and the extent of Austrasia in northern France and the Low Countries in the late fifth and early sixth centuries as justification for German settlement of those areas are examples of this just as much as Poland's borders as of 1000 AD. Prussia1231 (talk) 00:57, 13 September 2009

Apparently my math was a bit off and I failed to account for Latvians living outside of Courland and Vitebsk. Even thought the bulk of the Latvian population was Lutheran, one could argue that they constituted a Catholic minority, although they only numbered 45,436. Nonetheless, the religious data in the Russian 1897 census shows that there was no Polish POV but rather that the Russians skewed the data to minimize minorities.

The initial figure 3,870,510 Catholics in Poland's pre-partition territory outside of Congress Poland therefore stays the same. If one adds the non-Polish Catholics above along with the Latvians outside of Polish Livonia in Vitebsk, a figure of 1,984,417 emerges. Given that there were officially 905,650 Poles in those regions, that means that 980,443 Poles were counted as Russians, Ukrainians or Belorussians and that the true number of Poles was 1,886,093. Given that there was an official total of 7,931,307 Poles in Russia of whom 6,755,503 lived in Congress Poland, 905,650 in the other former Polish outside of Congress Poland, there were officially additional 270,154 Poles throughout the rest of the Russian Empire. At the minimum, there were a total of 2,156,247 Poles in Russia outside of Congress Poland. If one uses the discrepancy shown for the eastern commonwealth territories, that the 'official figure' only constitutes 48% of the actual Polish population, then one would expect 562,619 Poles in the rest of Russia for a total of 2,448,712 or 2,450,000 for easier calculations, outside of Congress Poland.Prussia1231 (talk) 21:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Polish government-in-exile

I think it should be add as one of the succeeded country (if there is polish underground, it should be also). Papapolak (talk) 15:14, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

No need; it was just a government of the Polish Underground State, and we linked the state (country) in the infobox as a succeeding state.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:30, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Second Polish Republic until 1939 or until 1945?

I see a lingering problem here. The article is restricted by the end date of 1939. By international law however, the Second Polish Republic did not end on the first day of the 1939 German-Soviet invasion of Poland, but rather, when it became a new state in 1945 with borders redrawn by Joseph Stalin following the Tehran Conference of 1943, and thus it became recognized as such by all Allies. The question is, should this article be renamed? The same can be said about all articles about the voivodeships of Second Polish Republic, because their history sections usually go beyond the invasion. User:Piotrus considers the Second Polish Republic defunct as of September '39, replaced by the Polish Underground State. However, the administrative division of the Polish Underground State is an under-researched issue. It mostly mirrors the pre war borders of Poland. There's the question also about the German/Soviet border agreements during and after the invasion of Poland... were they legal? Let's discuss this first in here, as we should start by deciding on the date the state ended in the infobox. Also, please take a look at the book Poland, 1918-1945: an interpretive and documentary history by Peter D. Stachura. I don't know where the idea of the Second Polish Republic ending with the two invasions came from? And, what would the exact date be? Stachura defines the Second Polish Republic as part of "Poland 1918–1945". Quote:

In the turbulent history of twentieth-century Europe, the reborn Polish State faced the most formidable and diverse array of problems imaginable. From 1918 until the end of the Second World War, Poland struggled to retain and consolidate independence... [2]

Without going into extensive research, I'd like to find out from you if the dates are necessary at all, and if so, how the members of the Polish government-in-exile referred to themselves in official documents and functions... as members of the government of what country? Second Polish Republic, or the Polish Underground State, or anything in between?--Poeticbent talk 17:31, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I tend to see the PUS/PGiE as successors to SPR, but we need to research this more; it is certainly true they were many links between them. I think that the changes were drastic enough in scope to warrant seeing PUS/PGiE as more than just "a new government". As a temporary measure, I'd support adding changing the end date to 1945, and adding a note to the lead and infobox that would elaborate on the two possible dates, based on the arguments above (and others). I'd be surprised if we couldn't find reliable sources that state that Second Polish Republic ended in 1939, so we are probably dealing with the case where there are two valid, reliable viewpoints that both need to be described here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:35, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Minorities in 1931--official and revised

I was looking into the falsifications of the Polish 1931 census and stumbled across some interesting figures which go beyond simply counting the 'Locals' of Polesia with the Belorussians as shown below:

Official:

• 21,993,000 Poles (68.9%)
• 4,442,000 Ukrainians (13.9%)
• 2,733,000 Jews (8.6%)
• 990,000 Belorussians (3.1%)
• 741,000 Germans (2.3%)
• 139,000 Russians (0.4%)
• 83,000 Lithuanians (0.3%)
• 38,000 Czechs (0.1%)
• 707,000 Tutejsi or Locals* (2.2%)
• 11,000 Others (0.1%)
• 39,000 Not Given (0.1%)
• 31,916,000 Total

Revised:

• 20,644,000 Poles (64.7%)
• 5,114,000 Ukrainians (16.0%)
• 3,114,000 Jews (9.8%)
• 1,954,000 Belorussians (6.1%)
• 780,000 Germans (2.4%)
• 139,000 Russians (0.4%)
• 83,000 Lithuanians (0.3%)
• 38,000 Czechs (0.1%)
• 11,000 Others (0.1%)
• 39,000 Not Given (0.1%)
• 31,916,000 Total

• *-Counted with Belorussians in the revised data

Of course, this data does not count the Ukrainians and Belorussians who would later label themselves as Poles in 1959 [3], as shown under point 8.

Source Page [4] Prussia1231 (talk) 01:54, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Economy

The section on the Economy is confused, mostly unsourced and in places contradictory. I tagged the statements about prosperity as dubious - while there were some very real achievements (successful economic integration of regions from different partitions, transportation network, Gdynia, monetary stabilization etc.) it was hardly a period of prosperity - though this was mostly due to world wide events and situation. In fact the last sentence of the section, which discusses unemployment and poverty contradicts these claims of prosperity.Volunteer Marek (talk) 04:13, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

GDP per head Europe, 1937, relative to UK

I made this graph based on Mark Harrison's estimates [5]. Note that there are other estimates out there but roughly speaking this is correct. Also note that one reason why Soviet Union looks high is because non-communist economies at this time either still were in the midst of Great Depression or just beginning to recover from it. As can be seen, Poland was probably richer (per person) than Portugal (Spain too, though it's not in this graph), was comparable to Greece, MAYBE comparable to Austria (I have seen estimates which put Poland and Austria at parity at some point in the interwar period, pre-Great Depression though - can't find them right now), but not really comparable to rest of Western Europe.Volunteer Marek (talk) 05:44, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Two more graphs, more relevant to this article, both showing pretty much the same thing in different ways:

Wholesale prices in interwar Poland, 1928=100

Inflation (% change in wholesale prices) in interwar Poland, 1923-1938

I'm not sure which version speaks more to the general reader but I'd like to include one of these in the article. The thing is the article is already cluttered up with lots of images. Maybe we could remove one of the numerous maps (many of which repeat the same information)?Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:44, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

File:National Flag of Poland.svg Nominated for speedy Deletion

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I find a problem, the People's Republic of Poland does not link into the Second Polish Republic, instead the only link refers to the Government in exile, which hasn't ended until 1990, which entirely excludes the listing of the communist state of Poland. According to the infobox, the SPR existed until 1939, then the exile government continued it's way, however the PRP has started in 1944, which somehow manages to skip 5 years of Polish history. According to facts or sources, do we change the dissolution date of the SRP to 1944, or the government in exile's power-transfer to PRP in 1944? — Preceding unsigned comment added by PantherBF3 (talk • contribs) 21:17, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

File:Second Polish Republic 1930.svg Nominated for Deletion

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Where was Yiddish Spoken?

The linguistic map ignores Yiddish completely. I wonder why... My understanding is that in 1920, it was the majority language in Warsaw, Vilna, and other cities. 68.5.46.193 (talk) 08:29, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Date format

A fairly mundane topic here: what date format should we use in this article? Currently, the article's dates use an inconsistent format, which is counter to the Manual of Style. Since WP:TIES doesn't really apply here (no strong ties to any variety of English) and both are used throughout I thought some other opinions might be useful. When created (all the way back in 2002) the article used day-month-year, but it was created using an automated script (I'm not entirely sure what it was converted from though - the Polish article wasn't created until 8 months later) so I don't think that is really usable as a basis for the format to use. Personally I favour day-month-year, but that's nothing more than a personal preference. Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 02:26, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

History

I would like to replace the timeline with a summary based on the History of Poland (1918–39) article. Thoughts or objections? Rsloch (talk) 14:40, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Only country without Hyperinflation?

«The currency helped Poland to bring under control the massive hyperinflation, the only country in Europe which was able to do this without foreign loans or aid.[15]» I can’t understand the polish source, but I am a bit skeptical about this sentence. Poland wasn’t for sure the only cuntry in Europe without hyperinflation, and that the other countries in Europe avoided Hyperinflation only with external aid seems to me a myth. If ALL the other european countries had hyperinflation or needed external aid to avoid hyperinflation, who could have given such an aid? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flauius Claudius Iulianus (talk • contribs) 13:32, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Why Second Republic?

Presumably, the predecessor of the Second Republic was the Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth; but that state had a King of Poland (who was simultaneously also the Duke of Lithuania). Therefore, by definition, it was not a Republic. Take France, for example: the current state is the Fifth Republic, established in the 1950s, following the Fourth Republic (established after World War II). The First Republic was established in the 1790s, but between the First and Third Republics there were several incarnations of French Empires and reincarnations of the Kingdom of France, which are not numbered among the republics. Firejuggler86 (talk) 14:29, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

@Firejuggler86: The PLC's political system was pretty weird. See Golden Liberty for more information. I do like the description there of it as a "republic under the presidency of the King". Double sharp (talk) 13:11, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Content revert

@Havsjö: - It is unprofessional to just say "no" as an explanation for reverting content. Some micronations and regions which were not recognized are not appropriate predecessors. Please have a looks at other articles, such as the German Empire. There is no needs for dozens of flags to clutter the infobox. Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes, irrelevant content or content which is not mentioned in the article's body should not be placed in the infobox. Oliszydlowski (talk) 03:01, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Oliszydlowski,

this remove goes against common practice and sense, for the territories the Second Polish republic covered currently not just the Regency stands as predecessor, and by practise, not fully recognized entities we also include (see Austria-Hungary article or discussion). I am ready to negotiate if we should remove or add parts, but such strange cutting not (you may also check Kingdom of Yugoslavia or Ukranian SSR articles as well). The fact some states had less predecessors territorially involved may happen, but it's not an argument for inconsistency.(KIENGIR (talk) 11:01, 2 February 2021 (UTC))

@KIENGIR: - The removal has to do with clutter and styling, not with the Regency of the Kingdom of Poland which indeed was not a state of its own. I'll be happy to accept Austria Hungary, Congress Poland and German Empire as the three predecessors instead of countless microstates which did not appear on maps or were not recognized. Oliszydlowski (talk) 12:33, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

What KIENGIR already said basically. That you think "they were too small" is not a enough reason to remove what was in actual-real-life the political entities which preceded the 2nd Polish republic historically "on the ground". We cant "clean up" reality because the period was a chaos at the time --Havsjö (talk) 18:28, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Oliszydlowski, yes, Havjsö has the point. We also had a discussion regarding Austria-Hungary, I'd also abandon unrecognized entities, but could not gain consensus for that, and I admit yes, there may be complex and uneasy issue at both solutions. To trim the list, you have to generally check for redundancy. Basically every entity is included as predecessor and successor interlaced, that anytime shared any territory from the entity (which may have changed borders as well meanwhile, these cases are included as well in both ways). Redundancy/accuaracy test check may exlcude entities which never shared the territory, or by causality, e.g. two entities overlapped each other and not just the direct predecessor in time is identifed, etc. Do you find any kind of such in the list? If yes, put it here and we analyze it. For now I'd say Polish-government-in-exile and Polish underground state could be removed, as they were not countries/territorial entities - shall they recogonized or unrecognized -, simply they don't fit to the list.(KIENGIR (talk) 01:03, 3 February 2021 (UTC))

KOP was proposed(to distract from German ethnic cleansing plans) but never formed.It has no place here.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 10:21, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Edit war engaged recently by apparent bad acting editors as of March 5th 2023.

Everything is from a perspective. Documentation is a perspective.

The original language states Poland's "most important" trading partner was Germany. How is that neutral exactly?

The lands Poland regained in independence were originally settles by Lechite Slavs. They didn't "belong" to Prussians or Unified Germany. 91.217.105.54 (talk) 19:51, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

to remove what was in actual-real-life the political entities which preceded the 2nd Polish republic KoP wasn't a " real life political entity". It was never formed and only existed as proposal with some propaganda measures by German occupiers while they were planning to ethnic cleanse Poles.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 10:24, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

If case you refer Kingdom of Poland, it was a client state/polity, but apart from that what you say, if you read back, we as well present unrecognized entities/formations, so I don't see how it could be abandoned.(KIENGIR (talk) 04:37, 5 February 2021 (UTC))

If case you refer Kingdom of Poland, it was a client state/polity.

It was a proposed state, it was never created in the end.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 00:10, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

The lead of the article says short lived polity/state, it would be wrong?(KIENGIR (talk) 20:48, 17 February 2021 (UTC))