Demographic history of Poland

The Poles come from different West Slavic tribes living on territories belonging later to Poland in the early Middle Ages.

[6] The Ruthenians composed most of the population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: this is the reason that the late GDL is often called a Slavic country, alongside Poland, Russia, etc.

[7] Another estimate for the combined population at the beginning of the 16th century gives 7.5 million, roughly split evenly, due to the much larger territory of the Grand Duchy (with about 10-15 people per square km in Poland and 3-5 people per square km in the Grand Duchy, and even less in the south-east Cossack borderlands).

[9] Major towns in Poland included: Gdańsk (70,000), Kraków (28,000), Warsaw (20,000-30,000), Poznań (20,000), Lwów (Lviv) (20,000), Elbląg (Elbing) (15,000), Toruń (Thorn) (12,000), Sandomierz (4,000-5,000), Kazimierz Dolny (4,000-5,000) and Gniezno (4,000-5,000).

This resulted from Poland's possession of Ukraine and federation with Lithuania; in both these countries ethnic Poles were a distinct minority.

The Commonwealth comprised primarily four nations: Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians and Belarusians (the latter two usually referred to together as Ruthenians).

Shortly after the Union of Lublin (1569), at the turn of the 16th to 17th century, the Commonwealth population was around 7 million, with a rough breakdown of 4.5m Poles, 0.75m Lithuanians, 0.7m Jews and 2m Ruthenians.

[10] In 1618, after the Truce of Deulino the Commonwealth population increased together with its territory, reaching 12 million that could be roughly divided into: Poles – 4.5m, Ukrainians – 3.5m, Belarusians – 1.5m, Lithuanians – 0.75m, Prussians – 0.75m, Jews – 0.5m, Livonians – 0.5m; at that time nobility formed 10% and burghers, 15%.

[14] To be Polish, in the non-Polish lands of the Commonwealth, was then much less an index of ethnicity than of religion and rank; it was a designation largely reserved for the landed noble class (szlachta), which included Poles but also many members of non-Polish origin who converted to Catholicism in increasing numbers with each following generation.

For the non-Polish nobility such conversion meant a final step of Polonization that followed the adoption of the Polish language and culture.

[15] Poland, as the culturally most advanced part of the Commonwealth, with the royal court, the capital, the largest cities, the second-oldest university in Central Europe (after Prague), and the more liberal and democratic social institutions proved an irresistible magnet for the non-Polish nobility in the Commonwealth.

Moreover, the decades of peace brought huge colonization efforts to Ukraine, heightening the tensions among nobles, Jews, Cossacks (traditionally Orthodox), Polish and Ruthenian peasants.

The latter, deprived of their native protectors among the Ruthenian nobility, turned for protection to cossacks that facilitated violence that in the end broke the Commonwealth.

The tensions were aggravated by conflicts between Eastern Orthodoxy and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church following the Union of Brest, overall discrimination of Orthodox religions by dominant Catholicism,[17] and several Cossack uprisings.

[18] The Counter-Reformation in Poland, influenced by the Commonwealth tradition of religious tolerance, was based mostly on Jesuit propaganda, and was very peaceful when compared to excesses such as the Thirty Years' War elsewhere in Europe.

The six biggest cities of Poland (as of 1 January 1939) were Warsaw, Łódź, Lwów, Poznań, Kraków and Vilnius (Wilno).

The official figures for nationality from the 1931 Polish census based on the mother tongue put the percentage of ethnic Poles at 68.9%, Jews 8.6% and other minority groups 22.5%.

Piotrowski cited a study by the Polish historian Jerzy Tomaszewski that puts that the adjusted census figures (taking religious affiliation into account) of ethnic Poles at 64.7%, Jews 9.8% and other minority groups 25.5% of Poland's population.

[33] Polish demographer Piotr Eberhardt maintains that it is commonly agreed that the criterion of declared language to classify ethnic groups led to an overestimation of the number of Poles in pre-war Poland.

The Polish ethnographic area stretched eastward: in eastern 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.

By late-1941 following Operation Barbarossa Nazi Germany controlled the entire territory of the former Second Polish Republic, but in 1944-1945 the Red Army's offensive claimed the region for the USSR.

Included with the Poles are 1,300,000 Eastern Orthodox & Greek Catholic adherents who are sometimes classified with the Ukrainian and Belarusian groups.

[51] Andrzej Paczkowski puts the number of Polish deaths at 90–100,000 of the 1.0 million persons deported and 30,000 executed by the Soviets.

Included with the Poles remaining in the USSR are about 700,000 Eastern Orthodox & Greek Catholic adherents who are sometimes classified with the Ukrainian and Belarusian groups.

Under the National Repatriation Office (Państwowy Urząd Repatriacyjny), millions of Poles were forced to leave their homes in the eastern Kresy region and settle in the western former German territories.

The population of Jews in Poland, which formed the largest Jewish community in pre-war Europe at about 3.3 million people, was all but destroyed by 1945.

Between 40,000 and 100,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust in Poland, and another 50,000 to 170,000 were repatriated from the Soviet Union, and 20,000 to 40,000 from Germany and other countries.

Groups of Ukrainians and Polish Ruthenians also live in western Poland, where they were forcefully resettled by communists.

As a result of the migrations and the Soviet Unions radically altered borders under the rule of Joseph Stalin, the population of Poland became one of the most ethnically homogeneous in the world.

[59] Demographics estimates for period before statistics and reliable data collection from censuses should be seen as giving only a rough order of magnitude, not any precise number.