Poland: Ethnic groups: The Polish ethnographic area stretched eastward: in Lithuania, Belarus, and western Ukraine, all of which had a mixed population, Poles predominated not only in the cities but also in numerous rural districts. There were significant Polish minorities in Daugavpils (in Latvia), Minsk (in Belarus), and Kiev…

Warsaw: Education: …of the headquarters of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which coordinates research in both physical and social sciences through a number of institutes and industrial establishments. The Technical University of Warsaw and the University of Warsaw are notable institutions. Major libraries include the library (established in 1817) of the University…

Socinian: …leader in the previously established Minor Reformed Church (Polish Brethren). Socinus succeeded in converting this movement to his own theological system, and for 50 years after his arrival the Minor Church had a brilliant life in Poland, with about 300 congregations at its height. The movement’s intellectual centre was at…

World War II: The campaign in Poland, 1939: Against northern Poland, General Fedor von Bock commanded an army group comprising General Georg von Küchler’s 3rd Army, which struck southward from East Prussia, and General Günther von Kluge’s 4th Army, which struck eastward across the base of the Corridor. Much stronger in troops and in tanks,…

Polonaise carpet, any of various handwoven floor coverings with pile of silk, made in Eṣfahān and other weaving centres of Persia in the late 16th and 17th centuries, at first for court use and then commercially. Because the first examples of this type to be exhibited publicly in Europe in the 19th

Polish checkers, board game, a variety of checkers (draughts) most played in continental Europe. The game is played on a board of 100 squares with 20 pieces on a side. The pieces move and capture as in checkers, except that in capturing they may move backward as well as forward. A piece is promoted

20th-century international relations: The final Allied agreements: …that he would reorganize the Lublin Committee and permit free elections among “non-Fascist elements” within a month after peace. But Stalin reserved the right to decide who was “Fascist” and rejected international supervision of the elections. Roosevelt proposed a Declaration on Liberated Europe, by which the Big Three promised to…

Polish Corridor, strip of land, 20 to 70 miles (32 to 112 km) wide, that gave the newly reconstituted state of Poland access to the Baltic Sea after World War I (1914–18). The corridor lay along the lower course of the Vistula River and consisted of West Prussia and most of the province of Posen

Poland: Emigration and revolt: …more radical stance as the Polish Democratic Society. Czartoryski concentrated on seeking the support of Britain and France for the Polish cause against Russia. The democrats, distrusting governments and blaming the conservatives for the defeat of the November Insurrection, preached a national and social revolution in cooperation with other peoples…

physical culture: Humanism and national revivals: …Czech national awakening, and the Polish Falcons (1867), which had similar aspirations. These kinds of cultural groups often sponsored national dances, songs, language revivals, and traditional athletic contests. The Gaelic Athletic Association closely coincided with the Irish literary and political renaissance in the late 19th century. Everywhere people seemed to…

20th-century international relations: Soviet advances in the east: …from an uprising by the Polish Home Army in Warsaw, underground allies of the London Poles. Expecting momentary liberation from across the Vistula, the Home Army rebelled against the German occupation and seized control of the city. But Stalin called it a “reckless venture,” and the Soviets sat idly by…

directing: Directorial styles: …intense physicality to Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Laboratory Theatre from Wrocław in Poland, though the two companies had been founded independently in the early 1960s.

Polish language, West Slavic language belonging to the Lekhitic subgroup and closely related to Czech, Slovak, and the Sorbian languages of eastern Germany; it is spoken by the majority of the present population of Poland. The modern literary language, written in the Roman (Latin) alphabet, dates

Poland: Accommodation with the ruling governments: …Democratic movement originated with a Polish League organized in Switzerland; by 1893 the organization had transformed into the clandestine National League, based in Warsaw. It stressed its all-Polish character, rejected loyalism, and promoted national resistance, even uprisings, when opportune. Its nationalist ideology tinged with populism gradually evolved into “integral” nationalism,…

Polish literature, body of writings in Polish, one of the Slavic languages. The Polish national literature holds an exceptional position in Poland. Over the centuries it has mirrored the turbulent events of Polish history and at times sustained the nation’s cultural and political identity. Poland

Polish National Catholic Church, independent Catholic church that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among Polish immigrants in the United States who left the Roman Catholic Church. From 1907 until 2003 it was a member of the Union of Utrecht and in full communion of the Old Catholic

Poland: Religion: The Polish National Catholic Church, a schismatic offshoot of Roman Catholicism, never won popular support, despite strong government advocacy following World War II. Two Protestant strongholds remain in Poland—that of the Polish Lutherans in Masuria and the Evangelicals (Augsburg Confession) in Cieszyn, Silesia. An autocephalous Polish…

Poland: The rebirth of Poland: …he had set up a Polish National Committee in Paris, which the French viewed as a quasi-government. Under its aegis a Polish army composed mainly of volunteers from the United States was placed under the command of General Józef Haller.

Orthodox Church of Poland, ecclesiastically independent member of the Eastern Orthodox communion, established in 1924 to accommodate the four million Orthodox Christians residing in the vast Ukrainian and Byelorussian territories acquired by Poland after World War I. As the new political situation

Partitions of Poland, (1772, 1793, 1795), three territorial divisions of Poland, perpetrated by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, by which Poland’s size was progressively reduced until, after the final partition, the state of Poland ceased to exist. The First Partition occurred after Russia became

W. I. Thomas: His major work, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 5 vol. (1918–20), written in collaboration with Florian Znaniecki, applies the comparative method to the study of nationalities and analyzes social problems by means of personal history.

Władysław Gomułka: …the struggle to crush the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), and he was a strong advocate of the merger, on communist terms, of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and the PPR. At the same time, however, he came out against forcible collectivization of agriculture and spoke favourably of the socialist tradition.…

Władysław Gomułka: …the struggle to crush the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), and he was a strong advocate of the merger, on communist terms, of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and the PPR. At the same time, however, he came out against forcible collectivization of agriculture and spoke favourably of the socialist tradition.…

Poland, country of central Europe. Poland is located at a geographic crossroads that links the forested lands of northwestern Europe and the sea lanes of the Atlantic Ocean to the fertile plains of the Eurasian frontier. Now bounded by seven nations, Poland has waxed and waned over the centuries,

Poland: The Second and Third Partitions: …abroad, raised the banner of insurrection in the rump Commonwealth. It may have been a hopeless undertaking, but the Poles could not see their state destroyed without making a last stand. Kościuszko, assuming the title of chief (naczelnik), ignored the king, but crowds in Warsaw, inspired by the example of…

History of film: Russia, eastern Europe, and Central Asia: …gave rise to the so-called Polish school led by Jerzy Kawalerowicz (Matka Joanna od aniołŅw [Mother Joan of the Angels], 1961), Andrzej Munk (Eroica, 1957), and, preeminently, Andrzej Wajda (Pokolenie [A Generation], 1954; Kanał [Canal], 1956; Popiół i diament [Ashes and Diamonds], 1958). Wajda’s reputation grew throughout the 1960s and…

Poland: Accommodation with the ruling governments: …counterpart in Galicia in the Polish Social Democratic Party led by Ignacy Daszyński. The dominant figure in the PPS was Józef Piłsudski, who saw the historic role of socialism in Poland as that of a destroyer of reactionary tsardom.

Józef Piłsudski: Early life and political activities: He joined the newly founded Polish Socialist Party (PPS), of which he soon became a leader. He started a clandestine newspaper, Robotnik (“The Worker”), in Wilno. In July 1899 he married, in a Protestant church, the beautiful Maria Juszkiewicz, the divorced wife of a Polish civil engineer, and moved to…

Poland: Railways: The railways, administered by the Polish State Railways (Polskie Koleje Państwowe), began the process of privatization in the early 21st century. Light rail is available to commuters in more than a dozen cities.

War of the Polish Succession, (1733–38), general European conflict waged ostensibly to determine the successor of the king of Poland, Augustus II the Strong. The rivalry between two candidates for the kingdom of Poland was taken as the pretext for hostilities by governments whose real quarrels with

Podlaskie: History: …be known as the “Polish Thermopylae.”

Poland: Political process: …Poland was governed by the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP; Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza), the country’s communist party, which was modeled on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The postwar government was run as a dual system in which state organs were controlled by parallel organs of the PUWP.…

Poland: Political process: …Poland was governed by the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP; Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza), the country’s communist party, which was modeled on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The postwar government was run as a dual system in which state organs were controlled by parallel organs of the PUWP.…

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, dual Polish-Lithuanian state or “Commonwealth” (Polish: Rzeczpospolita) that was created by the Union of Lublin on July 1, 1569. During its existence it was one of the largest countries in Europe. While Poland in the mid-16th century occupied an area of about 100,000

Poland: Sigismund III Vasa: …policy that contributed to a war with Turkey. Poland suffered a major defeat at Cecorą in 1620 but was victorious at Chocim (now in Khotyn, Ukraine) and negotiated peace a year later. The victory at Chocim was memorialized by poet Wacław Potocki a half century later.

flatware: …surfaces are dull and require polishing. Hand polishing is performed by holding the articles upon rapidly rotating mops dressed with an aluminum compound or rouge. The least expensive plating process is “bright plating,” in which a very thin coating of silver or chromium is deposited bright, thus eliminating final polishing.…

abrasive: Other abrasive products: Polishing sticks consist of waxes or greases impregnated with various-sized abrasive grains, depending on the particular requirements of the work.

Pripet Marshes, vast waterlogged region of eastern Europe, among the largest wetlands of the European continent. The Pripet Marshes occupy southern Belarus and northern Ukraine. They lie in the thickly forested basin of the Pripet River (a major tributary of the Dnieper) and are bounded on the

Ukraine: Plant and animal life: The Polissya zone lies in the northwest and north. More than one-third of its area—about 44,000 square miles (114,000 square km)—is arable land. Nearly one-quarter of it is covered with mixed woodland, including oak, elm, birch, hornbeam, ash, maple, pine, linden, alder, poplar, willow, and beech.…

paper wasp, (genus Polistes), any of a group of wasps in the family Vespidae (order Hymenoptera) that are striking in appearance, about 16 mm (0.63 inch) long, with orange antennae, wings, and tarsi. The body may be jet black or brown with narrow yellow bands and paired segmental spots. The sting

Hymenoptera: Social forms: For nest building, the Polistinae (paper wasps) and Vespinae (e.g., yellow jackets) use paperlike coverings, which they construct by gnawing wood particles from structures such as fences, telephone poles, and barn doors. This is then kneaded together with saliva to form a little ball. After returning to the nest,…

Politburo, in Russian and Soviet history, the supreme policy-making body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Politburo until July 1990 exercised supreme control over the Soviet government; in 1990 the Politburo was enlarged and was separated to a certain degree from control over the

China: Constitutional framework: …CCP—the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau (Politburo), the Political Bureau itself, and the Secretariat—has varied a great deal, and from 1966 until the late 1970s the Secretariat did not function at all. There is in any case a partial overlap of membership among these organs and between these top…

Carlo Cattaneo: …the Risorgimento and whose journal, Il Politecnico (“The Polytechnic”), not only served as a vehicle for his political views but also was influential in introducing new scientific and technical improvements into Italy.

The Republic, one of the most important dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, renowned for its detailed expositions of political and ethical justice and its account of the organization of the ideal state (or city-state)—hence the traditional title of the work. As do other dialogues from

constitution: …Greek word for constitution (politeia) in several different senses. The simplest and most neutral of these was “the arrangement of the offices in a polis” (state). In this purely descriptive sense of the word, every state has a constitution, no matter how badly or erratically governed it may be.

Polytechnical Museum, in Moscow, museum of science and technology that emphasizes the history of Soviet science and technology and contemporary developments and inventions. The museum was founded in 1872 after the first Russian technical exhibition on the bicentennial anniversary of the birth of

Philip II: Last years: In his Politics a few years later he used this incident as an example of a monarch murdered for private and personal motives—which would have been a puerile indiscretion if either he or the world in general had ever taken the canard seriously.

Johannes Althusius: …but his principal work was Politica methodice digesta atque exemplis sacris et profanis illustrata (1603, enlarged 1610 and 1614; Politics Methodically Set Forth, and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples), a systematized tract on all forms of human association.

political action committee (PAC), in U.S. politics, an organization whose purpose is to raise and distribute campaign funds to candidates seeking political office. PACs are generally formed by corporations, labour unions, trade associations, or other organizations or individuals and channel the

anthropology: Political and legal anthropology: …intellectual and methodological roots of political anthropology can be traced to Montesquieu and Alexis de Tocqueville, who viewed politics and governance as cultural constructs, Elizabeth Colson dated the modern field of political anthropology to 1940 and the publication of African Political Systems (1940), edited by Meyer Fortes and Edward Evans-Pritchard.…

probability and statistics: Political arithmetic: During the 19th century, statistics grew up as the empirical science of the state and gained preeminence as a form of social knowledge. Population and economic numbers had been collected, though often not in a systematic way, since ancient times and in many…

asylum, in international law, the protection granted by a state to a foreign citizen against his own state. The person for whom asylum is established has no legal right to demand it, and the sheltering state has no obligation to grant it. The right of asylum falls into three basic categories:

political science: Developments outside the United States: …Tingsten (1896–1973), in his seminal Political Behaviour: Studies in Election Statistics (1937), developed the connections between social groups and their voting tendencies. Before World War II the large areas of the world that were colonies or dictatorships made few important contributions to the growth of political science.

Politburo, in Russian and Soviet history, the supreme policy-making body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Politburo until July 1990 exercised supreme control over the Soviet government; in 1990 the Politburo was enlarged and was separated to a certain degree from control over the

China: Constitutional framework: …CCP—the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau (Politburo), the Political Bureau itself, and the Secretariat—has varied a great deal, and from 1966 until the late 1970s the Secretariat did not function at all. There is in any case a partial overlap of membership among these organs and between these top…

political business cycle, fluctuation of economic activity that results from an external intervention of political actors. The term political business cycle is used mainly to describe the stimulation of the economy just prior to an election in order to improve prospects of the incumbent government

United States campaign-finance laws: …to 2002, when FECA regulated campaigns; the era following the enactment of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002; and the era following Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down crucial provisions of the BCRA.

political system: Development and change in political systems: Students of political systems grapple with a subject matter that is today in constant flux. They must deal not only with the major processes of growth, decay, and breakdown but also with a ceaseless ferment of adaptation and adjustment. The magnitude and variety…

political science: Behavioralism: …of the American study in Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping Electoral Choice (1969). They found that political generation (the era in which one was born) and “duration of partisanship” also predict party identification—that is, the length of time one has been a partisan heavily predicts one’s vote. They also…

Political Communication, quarterly peer-reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal that published research in the fields of politics and communications. Political Communication began publishing in 1994 and was jointly sponsored by the International Communication Association (ICA) and the American

Jacques Bainville: …de la paix (1920; “The Political Consequences of the Peace”), in which he attacked the Treaty of Versailles and predicted the danger of a unified Germany. His Histoire de France (1924) was later republished with other studies under the title Heur et malheur des français (“The Fortunes and Misfortunes of…

China: Attempts to end the war: …the convening of a multiparty Political Consultative Council to plan a liberalized postwar government and to draft a constitution for submission to a national congress. Still, the sides were far apart over the character of the new government, control over the areas liberated by the communists, and the size and…

American Association of Political Consultants: …organization founded in 1969 for political consultants, lobbyists, media producers, fund-raisers, and campaign workers at all levels of government. The American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) is a multi-partisan organization. Headquarters are in McLean, Virginia.

political convention, meeting of delegates of a political party at the local, state, provincial, or national level to select candidates for office and to decide party policy. As representative organs of political parties, party conventions—or party conferences as they are commonly called in

political correctness (PC), term used to refer to language that seems intended to give the least amount of offense, especially when describing groups identified by external markers such as race, gender, culture, or sexual orientation. The concept has been discussed, disputed, criticized, and

political culture, in political science, a set of shared views and normative judgments held by a population regarding its political system. The notion of political culture does not refer to attitudes toward specific actors, such as a president or prime minister, but rather denotes how people view

David Hume: As an economist: …as an economist in the Political Discourses, which were incorporated in Essays and Treatises as Part II of Essays, Moral and Political. How far he influenced Adam Smith remains uncertain: they had broadly similar principles, and both had the excellent habit of illustrating and supporting these from history. He did…

Czechoslovak history: Normalization and political dissidence: ” As first secretary, Husák patiently tried to persuade Soviet leaders that Czechoslovakia was a loyal member of the Warsaw Pact. He had the constitution amended to embody the newly proclaimed Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserted the right of the Soviet Union to intervene militarily if…

anthropology: Environmental and ecological studies in anthropology: The approach known as political ecology criticizes it for portraying premodern societies as timeless and outside of history. Other anthropologists, working under the label historical ecology, reject not only the equilibrium approach but also the notion of static nonhuman environments, stressing that all environments inhabited by human societies in…

political economy, branch of social science that studies the relationships between individuals and society and between markets and the state, using a diverse set of tools and methods drawn largely from economics, political science, and sociology. The term political economy is derived from the Greek

Thomas Tooke: …1821 he helped found the Political Economy Club, whose members included David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and John Stuart Mill.

Noam Chomsky: Politics of Noam Chomsky: In The Political Economy of Human Rights, for example, Chomsky and Herman compared reporting on Indonesia’s military invasion and occupation of East Timor with reporting on the behaviour of the communist Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. The events in the two cases took place in approximately…

Alexander von Humboldt: Professional life in Paris of Alexander von Humboldt: Lastly, his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain contained a wealth of material on the geography and geology of Mexico, including descriptions of its political, social, and economic conditions, and also extensive population statistics. Humboldt’s impassioned outcry in this work against the inhumanities of slavery…

geography: Influence of the social sciences: Political geography was a marginal subdiscipline for several decades after World War II, with geopolitical thinking disparaged because of its association with the work of geographers in 1930s Nazi Germany. Its revival involved regaining an appreciation of how influential political thinkers and politicians develop and…

historiography: Political history: For many people, and for many years, “history” simply meant political history. A large proportion of published works by historians was devoted to political history as late as the 1970s, but even before that time historians had begun to examine other topics. Although E.A.…

William Hone: His The Political House That Jack Built (1819), the first and most famous of a series of satires that he produced with the caricaturist George Cruikshank, ran into 54 editions but failed to keep Hone solvent. A bankruptcy (1828) followed his imprisonment for debts incurred in…

ideology, a form of social or political philosophy in which practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones. It is a system of ideas that aspires both to explain the world and to change it. This article describes the nature, history, and significance of ideologies in terms of the

intelligence: Types of intelligence: Political intelligence is at once the most sought-after and the least reliable of the various types of intelligence. Because no one can predict with absolute certainty the effects of the political forces in a foreign country, analysts are reduced to making forecasts of alternatives based…

Islamism, broad set of political ideologies that utilize and draw inspiration from Islamic symbols and traditions in pursuit of a sociopolitical objective. The aims and objectives of these movements vary widely, as do their interpretations of Islamic tradition and practice, and, as such, the

anarchism: English anarchist thought: In his masterpiece, Political Justice (1793), Godwin not only presents the classic anarchist argument that authority is against nature and that social evils exist because men are not free to act according to reason, he also sketches out a decentralized society composed of small autonomous communities, or parishes.…

John Rawls: In Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls revised the argument for the two principles of justice by construing the contracting individuals as representatives of conflicting comprehensive worldviews in a pluralistic democracy. Other works by Rawls included The Law of Peoples (1999; published together with his essay “The Idea…

liberty: Political liberty consists of the right of individuals to participate in government by voting and by holding public office. Since the proletarian and socialist movements and the economic dislocations after World War I, liberty has been increasingly defined in terms of economic opportunity and security.…

Brazilian literature: Resistance literature during military rule, 1964–85: Political literature in Brazil is not usually treated as a separate category. However, owing to the significant impact that the military regime exerted upon culture and literature between 1964 and 1985, this period can be classified as a notable and separate period of expression in…

political machine, in U.S. politics, a party organization, headed by a single boss or small autocratic group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state. The rapid growth of American cities in the 19th century, a result of both

political science: Behavioralism: >Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (1960) used statistical and historical data to demonstrate that social class is one of the chief determinants of political behaviour. Lipset infuriated Marxists by portraying elections as “the democratic class struggle” in which the working class finds its…

accountability: Some rough distinctions: …to apply to positions of public office. These comprise both political positions, where representatives or people covering other institutional roles deal with public affairs in the name and interest of the citizens, and administrative positions, where the link with the citizens is mediated by the government. The chain of accountability…

oratory: …and statesman, was a great deliberative orator. In one of his greatest speeches, “On the Crown,” he defended himself against the charge by his political rival Aeschines that he had no right to the golden crown granted him for his services to Athens. So brilliant was Demosthenes’ defense of his…

political science: Post-World War II trends and debates: …French political scientist Maurice Duverger’s Political Parties (1951) is still highly regarded, not only for its classification of parties but also for its linking of party systems with electoral systems. Duverger argued that single-member-district electoral systems that require only a plurality to win election tend to produce two-party systems, whereas…

Robert Michels: …in der modernen Demokratie (1911; Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy), he set forth his ideas on the inevitable development of oligarchies, even in organizations committed to democratic ideals, because of such organizational needs as rapid decisionmaking and full-time activity. In his later writings…

political party, a group of persons organized to acquire and exercise political power. Political parties originated in their modern form in Europe and the United States in the 19th century, along with the electoral and parliamentary systems, whose development reflects the evolution of parties. The

spoils system, practice in which the political party winning an election rewards its campaign workers and other active supporters by appointment to government posts and with other favours. The spoils system involves political activity by public employees in support of their party and the employees’

political philosophy, branch of philosophy that is concerned, at the most abstract level, with the concepts and arguments involved in political opinion. The meaning of the term political is itself one of the major problems of political philosophy. Broadly, however, one may characterize as political

partisanship: …a two-party system, known as political polarization, results in the division of a country’s entire population into two diametrically opposed political camps. Polarization of this sort can damage a country’s long-term interests, in part because the resulting dysfunction and gridlock make it difficult for any government to adequately address national…

individualism: …view is the conception of political authority as ultimately derived from or justified by a hypothetical “contract” between individuals, as in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Another is the idea, typical in economics and in other social sciences influenced by economics, that most social institutions and relationships can…

political prisoner, a person who is imprisoned because that person’s actions or beliefs are contrary to those of his or her government. This is the most general sense of a term that can be difficult to define. In practice, political prisoners often cannot be distinguished from other types of

Cesare Pavese: …La bella estate (1949; in The Political Prisoner, 1955). Shortly after receiving the Strega Prize for it, Pavese committed suicide in a hotel room.

history of publishing: Britain: …Institute of International Affairs; and The Political Quarterly (founded 1930), for the discussion of social and political questions from a progressive but nonparty point of view. Of the weekly political reviews, the Spectator (founded 1828), was representative of the right, and the New Statesman (founded 1913), founded by Sidney and…

Ottoman Empire: Reform efforts: The Ottoman reforms introduced during the 17th century were undertaken by Sultans Osman II (ruled 1618–22) and Murad IV (1623–40) and by the famous dynasty of Köprülü grand viziers who served under Mehmed IV (1648–87)—Köprülü Mehmed Paşa

William Cobbett: …in 1802 started a weekly, Political Register, which he published until his death in 1835. Though the Register at first supported the government, the Treaty of Amiens (1802) with France disgusted him, and he promptly called for a renewal of the war. Cobbett believed that commercial interests were dictating English…