Just keep watching!!
The history of Poland begins with the arrival of Slavic tribes , who established permanent settlements of West Slavic people in Poland in the early Middle Ages . The Piast dynasty , the dynasty that first ruled Poland, emerged in the 10th century AD. Duke Mieszko I (died in 992) is revered as the de facto founder of the Polish state, and is glorified as a figure who contributed to spreading Western-style Christianity in Poland after his baptism in 966. The Duchy of Poland founded by Duke Mieszko officially became a kingdom in 1025 thanks to the efforts of his son, King Bolesław the Brave . Among the Polish kings from the Piast dynasty, perhaps King Kazimierz the Great had the greatest power. The last Polish king from the Piast dynasty ruled when Poland experienced economic prosperity and experienced an increase in its sovereign territory. King Kazimierz the Great died in 1370 without leaving a male heir. During the reign of the Polish kings of the Jagiellon dynasty , from the 14th to the 16th century, Poland maintained close relations with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , experienced the Renaissance , and continued efforts to expand its sovereign territory which culminated in the formation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. At first the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was able to maintain the level of prosperity that Poland had achieved during the Jagiellon dynasty by implementing a highly developed system of noble democracy . However, since the mid-17th century, this giant country entered an era of decline due to war and the decline of the political system. Efforts for domestic reform were attempted towards the end of the 18th century, especially by ratifying the Constitution of May 3 1791 , but the surrounding foreign powers did not allow the reform process to run smoothly. The independence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ended in 1795, after the Russian Empire , the Kingdom of Prussia , and the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy invaded and divided the country's territory. From 1795 to 1918, no Polish state was truly independent, despite the Polish people's persistent resistance movements . After the failure of the last armed uprising against the Russian Empire, the January Uprising of 1863, the Polish people maintained the integrity of their national identity through educational initiatives and a program of " organic work " aimed at modernizing the Polish economy and society. The opportunity to achieve independence only emerged after World War I , when the three countries that controlled three fragments of Poland had been weakened by war and revolution. The Second Polish Republic was formed in 1918, and existed as an independent state until it was destroyed in 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the event of the invasion of Poland at the start of World War II . Millions of Poles perished during the Nazi occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945, because the German state classified Poles along with other Slavic tribes , Jews and Roma (gypsies) as subhumans . Nazi officials targeted Jews and Roma for extermination in the short term , but postponed extermination and/or enslaved Slavs as part of the " Generalplan Ost " ("General Plan for the East") initiated by the Nazi regime. However, during the war, the Poles formed the Polish Government in exile and helped the Allies to win the war by participating in military campaigns, both on the Eastern and Western Fronts . The Soviet Red Army's westward advance in 1944 and 1945 forced the retreat of Nazi German forces from Poland, and paved the way for the establishment of a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union, which since 1952 has been known as the Polish People's Republic . As a result of territorial adjustments based on Allied mandates at the end of World War II in 1945, Poland's geographic center of gravity shifted to the west . The country of Poland with its new borders also lost many of the characteristics of ethnic diversity that it originally had as a result of the extermination, expulsion and migration of various ethnic groups during and after the war. In the late 1980s, the Polish reform movement, Solidarity , played an important role in efforts to peacefully transition from a communist form of state to a capitalist economic system and liberal parliamentary democracy . This transition process resulted in the formation of the modern Polish state , namely the Third Polish Republic , which was founded in 1989.
