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 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070027-9

The Polish Nation (u/ou)

Poland was born in A.D. 966 when Mieszko I, the first known ruler of the native Piast dynasty, united the Slavic tribes living in the Vistula and Oder river basins between the Carpathian Mountains and the Baltic Sea, adopted Christianity, and placed his principality under the protection of the Papacy. A purported later copy of the instrument by which Mieszko performed the latter act indicates that the boundaries of his domain closely approximated those of present-day Poland. The validity of this document has been challenged, but it makes little difference. Piast control over the territory described therein was soon firmly established by Mieszko's son, Boleslaw I ("the Brave"), who succeeded his father in A.D. 992 and who had himself crowned as Poland's first king 33 years later.

Poland's geographic location astride the flat plains of the north-central European corridor has resulted in an almost uninterrupted struggle for national identity and territorial integrity in the face of real or threatened domination by neighboring powers. No other European country has known such contrasts in its fortunes. There have been times of grandeur when Poland was the largest and most populous state in Europe west of Russia. And there have been times - in the late 18th century and again in 1939 - when a strong Germany and a strong Russia have joined forces to erase Poland from the map (in the first instance, for 123 years).

Their turbulent history, in turn, has been the main determinant of the characteristics and attitudes of the Polish people. Centuries of adversity and of externally encouraged rivalry between members of their native nobility have made the Poles tough, individualistic, resistant to change, and disrespectful of authority. Above all, however, their long struggle for national survival has imbued the Poles with a fierce and unique form of patriotism, one in which Poland's Roman Catholic Church is seen as the essence of all that is Polish and as the principal guardian of the nation's interests.

The roots of this identification between Roman Catholicism and the nation extend back to Mieszko's action in making Poland an eastern outpost of the church. Later, during the Middle Ages, Polish forces fighting under the sign of the cross stemmed the advance of the Turks and Tatars into Europe on several occasions. But the bond was really sealed in 1655 when a Polish victory over superior Swedish forces at Czestochowa was attributed to the miraculous intervention of a holy painting, the so-called Black Madonna. The grateful Polish monarch proclaimed the Madonna as Queen of Poland (an appointment that has been renewed annually in colorful religious ceremonies ever since). In the years that followed, the aggressive actions of a Lutheran Prussia and an Orthodox Russia further tempered the link between Polish patriotism and the Roman Catholic Church.

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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070027-9