Article Outline
Poland’s first democratic local elections since the interwar period were held in 1990; subsequent elections were held in 1994 and 1998. Poland is administered locally through a system of provinces (województwa). The provinces are divided into counties (powiaty), which are subdivided into towns and communes (gminy). Local governors and provincial assemblies administer the local districts. Members of the provincial assemblies are chosen by popularly elected councils that represent the towns and communes. Both the provincial and community levels of government enjoy far greater autonomy than they did under the highly centralized Communist system.
Communist Poland had an extensive system of social welfare funded from the national budget. Both health care and social security benefits were free and comprehensive. After 1989 this sector underwent substantial restructuring and decentralization. Poles now have to pay much more directly for health care and other welfare provisions.
Private general medicine has increased in recent years, as has the practice of charging fees for medical care in hospitals. Most Polish pharmacies are now privately owned. Social security benefits are funded in part by a payroll tax and in part from the state budget. Benefits provided to Polish citizens include pensions, disability payments, child allowances, survivor benefits, maternity benefits, funeral subsidies, sickness compensation, and alimony payments. Unemployment benefits were expanded in the first years after Communism ended in response to the large increase in the unemployment rate, but laws passed in the early 1990s drastically reduced the scope of the unemployment program.
The Polish armed forces were cut drastically after the fall of Communism in the late 1980s. In 2004 Polish military forces included an army of about 89,000 troops, a navy of 14,300, and an air force of 30,000. Military service is compulsory for all men for a period of 18 months, but deferments are granted on various grounds. The last contingent of Russian combat troops—remnants of a Soviet force that had been stationed on Polish soil for decades—withdrew from the country in 1993. In 2003 Poland participated in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, sending about 200 Polish soldiers as part of the invasion force. See also U.S.-Iraq War.
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International Organizations
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Poland is a member of the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe (CE), the Central European Initiative, and the European Union. In March 1999 Poland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as one of three formerly Communist nations chosen to become part of the Western military alliance.
Little is known regarding the early activities of the Slavic tribes that laid the foundations of the Polish nation. According to some experts, a number of these tribes united, about ad 840, under a legendary king known as Piast, but Poland does not begin to figure in European history until the reign of Mieszko, reputedly a descendant of Piast, which lasted from 962 to 992.
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