Lost in my first translation

 Tradurre e` Tradire (translation is treason)
 -Italian Proverb

I have just completed the rough draft of my first formal translation of a journal article from Polish to English, and let me just say, I am glad to be writing some of my own stuff for a change. It turned out to be a much trickier job than I thought it would be, and oddly, the hardest part has been dealing with ENGLISH.

People in our lab group have been kind of running around for the last few days, as everything is happening at once. I have been a little bit restless recently, as this general busyness means that nobody has really gotten around to thoroughly talking to me about my project. I have been doing some reactions, and an awful lot of reading of the scientific literature, but that gets old pretty quickly. So I rather eagerly took the opportunity to translate a paper that the group hopes to submit for publication shortly. And it has been quite a challenge, which is surprising considering that 1) English is my native language, 2) I had 16 years of writing practice in school and 3) on top of that, I wrote for a newspaper once a week, and was actively involved in speech and debate for 8 years in one capacity or another. I think my expository writing is pretty good, and considering that you are reading this, evidently so do you. But translating is a different skill.  

Both English and Polish have some handy shortcuts that the other language does not have. For example, whenever I speak Polish I start to miss the apostrophe to indicate the possessive, and definite and indefinite articles. On the other hand, I am gradually starting to see the beauty of case-endings in Polish. It makes word order less important, as whether something is a subject, definite object or indefinite object is made clear just by looking at the word. What's funny is that I (and anybody who has ever tried to speak Polish, ever) have problems producing the correct endings for particular situations. Yet I am somehow able to pick them up when reading or listening, and they can be handy.

Unfortunately, this is part of what makes translations difficult. From time to time, I have to effectively reverse the word order when translating, as a literal, word-for-word translation is understandable but weird. For example, some literally-translated lines: "choosing the correct conditions of synthesis can allow to a large extent control of morphology of obtained ceramics and through it control of properties" or "observed in the last few years is progress in science regarding materials, which is finding application in all areas of science." I think the average reader would understand what I'm trying to say, but who writes that way? Translating also flies in the face of something that I'm trying to do while learning Polish, namely, to think in Polish, as I find that if I think in English and try to translate in my head I start having problems with finding words. What's also funny is that after translating, I have to spend about half an hour adjusting to writing my own prose in English, as certain habits of Polish writing tend to sink in after a while. 

All sorts of other things have to be considered in a translation. One important facet is a linguistic concept called "register," which just means the level of formality that is used in a piece of work. Much as you would not speak to the President of the United States by saying "how's it hangin'?", there is a certain academic style that needs to be followed when writing an academic work. The problem is, when I am translating for myself, either in my head or while reading, any word that reasonably approximates its Polish equivalent will do. All I have to do is remember that certain Polish words are "fancier" synonyms. This approach does not work when you are trying to translate something for a formal paper and the sentence that pops into your head is "A lot of folks have dealt with various things that can readily be considered members of a particular class of objects, and this paper touches on the various theories that surround them and how our results line up with the theory." If you heard that on the street, that would be OK. It's perfectly understandable. But in an encyclopedia it would look weird. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a non-native speaker writing English is the sudden inclusion of bracing colloquialisms.

I had some unexpected difficulties with the English language, and some things started to dawn on me about the language I grew up speaking. Word order is important and occasionally unforgiving. Consider "the boy eats a hot dog", "a hot dog eats a boy", "a hot boy eats a dog", "the dog eats the boy and feels hot", "the boy eats the dog, who feels not so hot." All very, very different sentences, and this in a sentence with just one subject, one object, one verb and one adjective. Imagine what a headache it must be to put together complex sentences! Don't even get me started on parenthetical thoughts. At any rate, all this taken together has forced me to occasionally write a sentence out twice, first more or less literally, then a second time in order to have it make any sense.

Translating is also strange for me as it is the first time in my life that I have had to write something in a style and with a word choice that is not my own. I have edited papers before, quite a few of which had writing styles that were different from my own, but that was entirely different as it involved changing a few words, rearranging them, but leaving the basic voice and structure roughly the same. Imagine trying to write an essay that imitates, say, Mark Twain to the point where the essay is mistaken for one of his works. Now imagine that Mark Twain didn't speak English and you are trying to write the essay as if he did. You aren't trying to imitate Mark Twain, you are trying to be Mark Twain, because as a translator to a foreign language, you are. And that's hard.  

Strangely enough, the fact that it is a technical paper means that I found it easier to translate. The experimental section and data analysis parts were easier than the introduction. I ascribe this to the fact that I already know a lot of the technical terms in English, so if I see a picture or get a description of how that picture is analyzed, I know exactly what to call the picture. There are also a fair number of cognates here, which is very helpful. It is also much easier to pull out terms from context, as I have a fair idea of what that context is.

Translating has been pretty slow work. I estimate that I translated a 1500-word document in about 6-7 hours, and that's a rough draft that still needs improvement. Google Translate has been very helpful, and I think that the second time will be easier. However, on getting home tonight I did indulge in a well-deserved cocktail.

The most familiar things are the most foreign

One thing that is always striking about being in Europe is that it feels close enough to home that there are times when it feels like you never left. The faces are familiar. So are the cars, buses, and a lot of the products in the stores. Heck, if you are surrounded by Americans, like I was during orientation in Torun, it's sometimes easy to think that you're on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago someplace having lunch. The wait staff of course speaks Polish, but you and your buddies are jabbering away in English as always.

But then there are those subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that you aren't in Kansas anymore. Street signs are an obvious example, but a little bit more jarring is what happens when you walk into a supermarket and try to find stuff. The first thing I noticed is that a lot of the stuff that is readily available in any supermarket in the States is either in a specialty store or simply not available over here. Take lentils, for example. I'm aware of one store in Krakow that carries them. Also, it's not like you can hop over to the equivalent of the Giant Eagle (or the Jewel or Food Lion or Aldi or whatever) and pick up a bunch of jalapenos. And just last night I asked a woman who works in the Jubilat for baker's chocolate. Either my Polish is really bad or it simply doesn't exist over here, based on the look I got. Granted, it could be that elsewhere there is such a thing: try walking into Giant Eagle and asking for daikon root and you probably will get the same look. Still, based on a bit of shopping around, I'm going to have to change what I cook and how I cook it. I had absolutely no problem cooking bigos, a Polish stew, for instance.

Lest I be accused of saying "man, there's no food in this country!" I should point out that there's a great variety of stuff, just different priorities as to what kind of variety. In the supermarkets I've visited I have seen entire aisles of tea, separate from the entire aisle of coffee and other hot drinks. You want candy or chocolates? You can probably combine the "foreign novelty sweets" at several supermarkets in the States (except for that Ginormous Giant Eagle across from Bayer on I-376 in Robinson Township that looks like it was built in an aircraft hangar). In the average Polish supermarket, there is an entire other aisle of beer, both domestic and foreign, in cans and in bottles but oddly not in six-packs. The standard supermarket probably has at least 10 different kinds. There are 4 or 5 varieties of eggs at the Jubilat, which are sold in packages of 10, not 12. Also extremely popular over here are "poprawki", or packages of spices that are pre-set to just sprinkle on chicken or beef or turkey or whatever it is that you are making. Think of it as Laury's Seasoned Salt on steroids. There's an entire aisle of these packages at the Jubilat. You want macaroni or pasta? Well, here's five different brands of linguini and macaroni and rotini, but no wagon wheels. Finding potato flour is no problem, whereas that's a somewhat special item in the States. So, a lot of my time in Poland has been spent marveling at a very peculiar set of circumstances: supermarket clutter that is difficult to wade through, coupled with the perception that there really isn't any food in the store.

Another thing that we all take for granted on entering a supermarket is that we know at least roughly where everything is. Well, I've spent a fair amount of time blundering around grocery stores here, because the conventions are somewhat different and cutting through clutter often requires knowing the conventions. There are so many items in so many varieties that if you had to read literally every single label, it would take you quite a bit of time.

Take a simple purchase like baking powder. When you're looking for it, what is it you look for? A red can, about 5 inches tall, with "Rumford" in big white letters on it, next to the flour and down the aisle from the instant frosting and instant cake. Having found the flour at the Jubilat, I proceeded to look in the immediate area for about five minutes, as I was looking for a can. Surprise! Polish baking powder is sold in smaller amounts and in things that look like oversized yeast packets. These were in smallish boxes embedded within the numerous packets of instant pudding, gelatin, etc. I didn't manage to locate baking soda or vanilla extract. I did, however, manage to locate a whole vanilla bean. The theory, I guess, is that you can make your own darn extract.

There are other subtleties too. I bought "Poznańska" flour. That label tells me absolutely nothing. It literally means "Poznań-style." There was also "Wrocław-style" flour on offer. The difference between the two of them eludes me, other than that the former would come from Greater Poland and the latter from Silesia. The difference will probably not elude me for very long.

Polish History Part III: What does it all mean?

Polish history can and does fill volumes in libraries, and yet so much of it is not really taught in high schools or colleges around the United States. This is a shame, because Poland, like any nation, only makes sense in the context of its history. I have sensed the importance of history around here, from plaques on walls that honor either heroes of the past or those who were murdered by the Nazis or Soviets, to what is discussed on TV or in newspapers. There are several magazines dedicated to just history, and they are about as common and widespread as The National Geographic: Historia can be found on the same shelves as People in the mall, for instance. But what, exactly, is that importance? I'd like to consider the importance of history on the past, the present, and the future.

History can have an impact on the past, as the past is written in the present. A major question facing the Polish government and educational establishment is how to teach history. If you were to teach it as "totally awesome 1350-1795, totally sucked 1795-1919, was OK 1919-1939, major bummer 1939-1989, 1989-present?", that wouldn't be very nuanced or probably particularly accurate. Also difficult is that there is a strong generational divide. People my age are too young to remember Communism. Those my parent's age remember it vividly. And those my grandparent's age remember Nazis goosestepping past their house. And you thought it was bad enough when your grandfather talked about the Depression!

There's also the question about what to do with those who were influential members of the Communist government, or those who collaborated with those awfully persuasive secret police. Do you pass something like the 14th Amendment, which in its less-read articles disenfranchises a bunch of ex-rebels? Do you prosecute Jaruzelski and people like him? Is that just "victor's justice?" As far as I can tell, there is no one answer. There are and have been ex-communists in the Polish government, and it doesn't seem like a big deal. However, whenever it comes out that somebody collaborated, that does tend to be a big deal. This problem will end up solving itself in 30 years when everybody dies or retires, but for now it is a going concern.

In the present, I've noticed that Poles are possessive of their history. Literally. Don't ask me to bring you antiques, because it is illegal to remove any item created before 1945 from this country. I might be able to manage a distributor cap from a Wartburg or Trabant, but that's probably the best I can do. This is probably attributable to the fact that Poland was not a country for over a century, and many items of cultural significance were either taken or lost as a result of the numerous wars that have criss-crossed the landscape. Most famous of these artifacts were the Grunwald Swords, the formal invitation to battle sent by the Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order to the Polish king before the battle of Grunwald in 1410. The swords became a symbol of Poland-Lithuania (and of beating up the Germans), but were lost in 1853 and their fate is unknown. In general, the powers that partitioned Poland tended to try to eliminate Polish identity as thoroughly as possible, and that included Polish history. In more recent times, while the communists did not attempt to destroy Polish history, there was a definite party line and slant to the way that history was taught. I have a book of Polish history written in English in 1977, which says that, in essence, absolutely nothing good happened while the bourgeois pig-dogs ran Poland between 1919 and 1939. I also understand that under the Communists, there were certain topics that were not politically-correct to discuss, such as the Home Army during World War II. Now that Poles are free to talk about their history, and free to debate it, it seems like they can do little else. It would be as if there had been a long moratorium in the U.S. about discussing the Civil War that just got lifted.

Another example of historical possessiveness is the idea of a national literature. Ask an American who the national bard is, and you'll get all kinds of answers from Twain to Steinbeck to Faulkner to Frost. Here, there is a somewhat smaller number of figures: Mickiewicz has statues of himself everywhere you go, and there are the four Nobel laureates in literature that Poland has produced, who are definitive literary figures. Everybody who is educated over here, it seems, has read Pan Tadeusz or some Sienkiewicz, whereas in the States I don't know if everybody has read, say, Huckleberry Finn. I am also struck by the fact that what is considered literature, as far as I can tell, extends to fairy tales as well.

I am a big believer in the study of national themes. Whenever you look at history, certain things keep coming up again and again in different guises. In the States, the debates about state vs. federal power, exactly how much liberty the government should permit people (and whether that amount should be different for different groups of people), and the desire to blaze new frontiers define us as a country. The Russians have been all about acquiring warm-water ports. The British have long wondered what their proper role is in the world. In the case of Poland, the biggest national theme is not having a nation, and of struggling to keep Polish identity alive. And that theme just went out the window. 

Poland is now in an intense period of transition, because in a way it has seen the much-ballyhooed "end of history" that resulted from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Poland today is an independent republic with free elections, and its governmental system was robust enough to survive the death of the Polish president and a whole bunch of other important officials in the Smolensk plane crash two years ago. While there are still economic and political spats with Russia, and EU policy arguments with Germany, Poland is not really under any serious threat of military invasion and is not under foreign occupation. Heck, in the States we seem more worried about national security and terrorism than they do around here, though I did see airport police armed with submachine guns in Warsaw. Meanwhile, the economy is growing, and the zloty is a stable-enough currency despite some inflation.

Not only does the State have to redefine itself, so do a lot of non-governmental organizations, the most important of which is probably the Catholic Church. The Church has long been a counterweight to the State, and as I noted previously, it was so heavy a counterweight that the Communists were not able to destroy it. Now that politicians are actively trying to be on the good side of the Church, the relations between the Catholic Church and the State look to get very complicated very soon.

This combination of circumstances has never happened in Polish history before. As Poland gropes its way forward, it can't really look to its past. So what, exactly, can Poles look to? This is perhaps the greatest irony of all, that the greatest legacy of Polish history is to make the future so uncertain.   

Searching for an Apartment

So much to write about! The long gap in posts was caused largely by my search for a residence, as well as my first few days of work at the Polytechnika, a few get-togethers and so forth. Last week was apartment-hunting in earnest, and I got a very good sense of at least some of the housing stock around here, as well as some of the neighborhoods in Krakow. I have to say, this is one seriously beautiful city, now that I have had more than a cursory look at it.

The housing stock I saw was variable, from brand-new-can-still-smell-the-paint to old but well-maintained to just old. One of my early trips took me to Bronowice, which is to the west of downtown. There, I looked at an apartment in the "Eastern Apartment Bloc" style. As a side-note, I don't think that we'll see "Eastern Bloc Revival" as an architectural style anytime soon. Though the buildings were kind of large and grim, there was a nice green-space in the middle of them. Although it was a set of blocs I did get a sense that people knew each other in the community, as I saw people conversing with each other and gossiping. I think that this is what the designers of a lot of the housing projects in the United States were trying for: cheap, stacked housing with a pleasant space in the middle. However, where those designers had failed in the U.S. it appears that the architects over here succeeded. I also really liked the potential landlords, an older couple, but the apartment itself smelled strongly of cat.

The most entertaining landlord I met was a lady leasing an apartment about 2 or 3 blocks east of the Planty, a circular park where the old city wall used to be. It was also convenient to the main train station and therefore also to the Polytechnika, which is a few blocks further north from the trains. Given the location of the place, I was quite enthusiastic about checking it out. And then I actually went there. The landlady showed up with her boyfriend, who was putting on/buttoning up his collared shirt as he walked up to the building (and no, he was not wearing an undershirt). We went up to the fourth floor and looked into the apartment. First, the kitchen was hilariously small. It was probably possible to turn around in there, but not easily. Imagine a room that is maybe 6 feet by 6, and has in it a four-burner stove, refrigerator, sink, and small table. Second, the bathroom was remarkable in that it had NO SINK. However, the kitchen had a sink with TWO faucets, one of which was functional but the landlady said it was better not to use. The bathroom had a toilet with the tank and the bowl connected by shop-vac line, as I had seen in Macedonia.

                The landlady then went on to demonstrate the cabinets. The first door she opened fell off. She and her friend then proceeded to argue about the best way to fix this particular problem, and a few other things besides. Boyfriend at this point also nonchalantly opens the window, sits in the sill and lights a cigarette as we continue to look through the apartment. I noticed that some of the other cabinets were held closed by a series of rubber bands. The refrigerator and washing machine were both old, which prompted “As you can see, the washer is old, um, hey Ed [not his real name], how old would you say this thing is?” “Oh, wow, uh, I dunno, I’d say pretty old. Might have seen something like it in a museum.” There was a fair amount of chatter between those two that I just kind of stood and listened to, trying hard not to burst out laughing. Which only made the situation even funnier.

                Those probably would have made for some entertaining landlords, but I was in this for housing not entertainment. I continued my search and probably looked at about 8 places in varying degrees of niceness. There was one very nice place for not very much a month that was unfortunately quite a ways from downtown. I probably would have had to take a bus to work every day, and there was only one bus that went out that far. Another place was right around the corner from the Polytechnika, but it looked like it came out of a Charles Dickens novel. Another one near downtown was an apartment in alright repair at the end of a very creepy staircase with a bannister that probably hadn’t been dusted since the Jaruzelski Administration. I settled on a sprawling apartment on Kościuszki Street, almost a rock’s throw from Wawel Castle and very convenient to the Jubilat, one of Krakow’s main department stores. It is right on a tram line, and about 2 miles from work. I’m still doing a thorough walkthrough of the apartment, but so far everything seems to be alright with the usual minor irritations to be found in an apartment.

                One funny thing about this apartment was that the guy who showed us around was not the landlord but rather somebody’s brother-in-law. Prof. Kowal was suspicious, as apparently there’s a kind of fraud that occurs here in Poland where somebody will lease an apartment, claim to be the landlord of it, make copies of the keys, lease the apartment to 4 different parties, and then disappear as those 4 parties show up on the same day with boxes of stuff, demanding to know what the other three are doing in “their” apartment. So, we told this guy that we would only deal with him further if he produced a notarized statement that he had power of attorney, otherwise we would only deal directly with the landlord. And when the landlady showed up, we took a very thorough look at her ID as well as the title to the apartment.

                I’d like to give props to Prof. Kowal and Pani Kowal for all their help in this apartment search. Prof. Kowal came with me to sign the lease, and he caught two potentially-tricky problems and solved them. The first had to do with the language of the lease and the way the property was described. This place has a kitchen, an antechamber, and two rooms along with toilet and bath. The lease as initially written referred to a “garderoba,” which Prof. K pointed out could very well refer to the antechamber. After some wrangling, we were able to get language inserted that explicitly referred to my exclusive use of the entire apartment of two rooms etc, as described in the title.

                The second thing that Prof. Kowal was really helpful with was utilities. Apparently, the way utilities are paid for in Poland make no sense at all. Say that the previous tenant was a jerkoff and didn’t pay their gas bill. It is up to you, the incoming tenant, to in some way track down the previous tenant and get him to agree as to where his responsibility for gas ends and where yours begins. And you have to show up in person at the gas company together in order to do this. If you don’t want to do this, either you have to pay the gas company to have the meter read, you have to pay whatever was not paid by the previous tenant, or the gas company shuts off your gas (screw you!) I understand the electric company operates similarly. Oh yes. And because I’m a foreigner this gets even more complicated: the gas company is worried that I might pick up stakes suddenly, leave the country, and leave them holding the bag for all those unpaid bills. So, they make it hard for a foreigner to even set up an account with them.

                The solution we came up with is that the gas company will send the landlady a bill, that bill will be forwarded to me, I will pay the bill and return the receipt to the landlady. All this almost makes me miss People’s Gas and Duquesne Light.

                Speaking of gas: it’s expensive over here. Just how expensive I’m going to find out shortly I’m sure, but I was told it was five times the price of that in the States. I’ve noticed that even in the semi-sleazy apartments I looked at, the windows were new and probably for exactly this reason. Most all of Poland’s gas comes from Russia, as does most of Europe’s gas in general. This gives Gazprom significant monopoly power over pricing and most everything else that goes on gas-wise. The EU has not presented a united front on this….because the Russians ran a pipeline under the Baltic to Germany that bypasses Poland. It used to be that the Germans did not want gas to get too expensive in Poland because the Poles always had the option of turning off Germany’s gas. Now the Germans cut their own deal with the Russians. So, not only do the Russians have monopoly power, they are able to price-discriminate as the market for gas is fragmented.

In general, there is not much of a global market for natural gas because unlike oil it is difficult to transport natural gas overseas. Thus, the energy boom that hit the U.S. has had little effect on natural gas prices over here. There was talk of doing hydraulic fracturing and unconventional gas recovery in Poland, as there was a newly-discovered gas shale in eastern Poland. However, the estimate of the amount of gas in that field keeps being revised downward. Finally, perhaps the most alarming thing about gas in this country is that it does not have t-butyl mercaptan added to it. Natural gas by itself does not smell. That “I smell gas” smell in the states comes from the mercaptan (and in fact there was a small gas-leak scare at Pitt that happened when one of the lab groups was using t-butyl mercaptan in a synthesis , and somebody in the hallway smelled it). Now, the gas in my apartment that comes out of the stove does have a particular smell, it just isn’t one that I’m used to. I’m just astonished that that additive is not present.

Heating in Krakow is generally provided in one of about four ways. First is gas, like I mentioned. Second, there is a citywide steam-heating system, rather like that of New York or Pittsburgh, except that it is used to heat private residences as well as just houses. Third, there is electric heat, which I understand is expensive. What makes electric heat more expensive is that, at least in some areas, there are different rates for different times of day, in other words there is a peak price and an off-peak price. To keep heating costs down, it makes sense to heat the apartment at night. But that doesn’t seem to make much logical sense now, does it? There are still some buildings around here that are heated with coal. I didn’t see any on my tours, but I definitely saw advertisements for places with coal heat.

So, now I have a place! Sometime soon I’m going to start having to talk nerdy to you, and talk about what I’m actually doing over here with my allotment of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

Polish History Part II: The XX Century

In order to restore Poland, a very unusual thing had to happen: Russia, Austria, and Germany had to fight each other, and they all had to lose the war. Oddly enough, that’s exactly what happened in World War I, and one of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points was the restoration of an independent Poland. The Poles pressed their case at Versailles, obnoxiously so, according to some of the delegates, and they got a new Polish republic, which is part of the reason there is an Aleja Wilsona in Warsaw.

But what were the borders to be of the new Polish state? This was quite unclear, particularly considering that the regions of Pomerania and Silesia, as well as the port of Gdańsk, had significant numbers of Germans and Austrians in them who did not want to belong to Poland. There were also disputes as to where the line between Poland and the newly-formed Czechoslovakia were supposed to be drawn. This lead to controversial plebiscites marred by violence and a lingering mutual resentment between the Czechs and Poles that was to prove most unhelpful in the crisis of 1938. 

On the Eastern side of Poland, the newly-formed Soviet Union got into some territorial disputes with the new Polish government, as well as coming into conflict with the inhabitants of modern-day Belarus. In February 1919 the Polish-Soviet War broke out, and early Polish offensives met with considerable success. However, Polish logistics were poor, the army outran its supply lines, and the entire Polish front was thinly held. The Red Army also benefited from the diminishing threat of White Russian forces in the Russian Civil War, allowing more troops to be used against the Poles. The Soviets launched a series of devastating counterattacks that would ultimately see Russian troops a mere 13 kilometers from Warsaw. The Soviets then committed a fatal mistake. The rapid advance of Red forces had opened a large gap in the line between forces in the north that were attacking Warsaw and forces in the south that were attacking southwards towards Lwow (or Lviv if you're a Ukrainian). Polish intelligence and radio intercepts found this hole, and Marshal Józef Piłsudski was able to send a newly-organized force right through it. That force then wheeled to the north, cutting off the Red Army forces threatening Warsaw. This regained Polish momentum and threw the Russians into disarray. The front moved eastward, yet both sides decided that the exhausting struggle should end, with a definitive peace in place by March 1921. 

The Polish-Soviet war is most significant in perhaps two regards. First, there was a lingering resentment in the Soviet Union of Poland, which was made somewhat personal by the fact that the commissar of the Southern army that had made the disastrous turn towards Lwow happened to be Josef Stalin. Second, the war cemented the reputation and influence of Josef Pilsudski, who was to be a very important figure in the Second Polish Republic (1919-1939). 

Marshal Józef Piłsudski can in some ways be considered the Juan Peron of Poland. Though his formal title for much of this time was Minister of Defense, as an elder statesman he had considerable power and influence, enough so that he can be considered a virtual dictator of Poland. Part of his influence can probably be traced to the fact that the government of Poland between the wars was very unstable, and faced continuing pressure from both the far-left and the far-right. There were also serious economic problems, not only during the worldwide depression of the 1930s but also in the early 20s before the government had really figured out how to manage important things like monetary policy. Most governments only lasted a year or so, the first Polish president (Gabriel Narutowicz), was assassinated, and Piłsudski led a successful coup in May 1926. Piłsudski was sort of the great constant in the life of the Republic until his death in 1935, and his legacy is very mixed.  While he did bring a measure of stability to Poland at a chaotic time, and while he stood against antisemitism and while ethnic minorities were better treated under his rule than before or after it, some of Piłsudski's methods were fascistic in nature. There is also some debate as to whether Piłsudski stood in the way of modernization of the Polish armed forces, placing too much faith in cavalry and not enough faith in airplanes. Personally, I think that he may have believed too much in cavalry largely because unlike on the Western Front of World War I, cavalry had been quite effective on the Eastern front of the same war, as well as during the Polish-Soviet war. The decision to keep cavalry was not stupid, it was just based on a different set of assumptions. Also keep in mind that tanks in, say, 1933 were still primitive, generals are always fighting the last war, and Piłsudski was no exception. As to the air force: the Polish planes of 1931 were actually among the best in the world when they were released, enough so that Willi Messerschmidt himself was allegedly caught snooping around a Polish airbase. At any rate, Piłsudski remains a controversial figure today, though in many circles he's considered a national hero, complete with statues and streets named after him (there's one of both here in Krakow, for instance).

Polish foreign policy at this time also had to be somewhat adept, and as events were to prove the policies followed by Foreign Minister Józef Beck were unsuccessful. Poland was engaged in squabbles with Lithuania over Lithuanian independence and how much land that new state was to possess. Gdańsk (Danzig) was a free city under League of Nations administration, which meant that Poland had to build a completely new port city at Gdynia. However, the Polish Corridor to the sea had the effect of slicing Germany into two pieces, the main part and East Prussia, the area around present-day Kaliningrad that included a considerable slice of what is now Poland. Both the division of Germany and continuing tension over Gdańsk would be a source of constant friction between Berlin and Warsaw, and Nazi Germany used these sorts of tensions as part of its rationale for invading Poland in September 1939. 

Beck attempted to maintain Polish neutrality between, or at least reasonably good relations with both Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, while trying to quietly undermine the latter. Non-aggression pacts were in fact signed with both powers. Another keystone of foreign policy at this time was a military alliance with France, as well as improving relations with Britain. Interestingly enough, the Nazis at one point had floated the idea of an anti-Bolshevik alliance with Poland directed against Moscow, but this idea gained no traction because of Beck's long-maintained neutrality policy. 

Much as I would love to talk about the Second Republic, this could take up a whole book, and indeed it has. I strongly recommend Bitter Glory by Richard Watt for more information about this era, as well as The Kings Depart by the same author, with the former book detailing the history of the Polish Republic and the second one discussing the Versailles Conference that made it possible.

I'm not going to discuss the Second World War extensively, as most people already know how that turned out. I just want to highlight a few things here that you don't hear about in school: 1) at no point during the war did Polish cavalry charge tanks. The footage of them doing so is in fact from a German propaganda film. There was an engagement or two where Poles were surrounded by tanks, and the cavalry had to run past the tanks in order to escape encirclement. 2) The Soviet Union attacked Poland on September 17, 1939. Full stop. While many know about the German invasion, the Soviet one is very seldom discussed. Worse is, after the war, the Soviets got to keep the land they had conquered in this fashion! 3) The Polish Army was hindered in part by the fact that the Germans struck as the Polish army was trying to mobilize. The severe damage done by the Luftwaffe to the Polish railway network meant that a good half of the Polish Army never got to its assigned assembly points. Poland had actually tried to start mobilizing several days earlier than they did, but were dissuaded from doing so by France and Britain. Had mobilization been completed, Poland may have held out a little longer. 4) The Polish Army seriously bloodied the Wehrmacht. Granted, it went a lot worse for the Poles than the Nazis, but there's a reason Germany didn't strike France until May of 1940. The way that the war was taught in school, the Germans attack, lose about five guys, and goosestep through Warsaw. A little bit like Desert Storm, complete with guys named Schwarzkopf. In fact, the Luftwaffe in particular was damaged seriously in the campaign, as the Polish air force was not, in fact, destroyed on the ground, and the Germans took about 45,000 casualties, with several divisions having to rest and refit extensively after the campaign. 

During the occupation, there was an extensive resistance movement, led by the Home Army or Armia Krajowa (AK). These were the folks who brought you the Warsaw Uprising, which led Hitler to order Warsaw completely blown up and burned to the ground after it was put down. Stalin also didn't like the AK, so after the Soviets came into Poland a lot of these guys either got killed, sent to Siberia, or figured out some way to get out of Poland and go put roofs on houses in Chicago or something. 

After the war, two things happened. First, the Soviet Union effectively took over Poland. This happened in part because FDR and Churchill believed Stalin when Stalin said "oh sure, I'll allow democratic elections in Poland" at Yalta. Unfortunately, once Churchill saw that this wasn't going to happen, he was unable to talk sense into FDR. When FDR started to have doubts about this he promptly died, leaving Harry Truman dazed and confused about Poland because nobody ever really told him anything. Churchill got booted out of office for good measure shortly after the war ended, and so at Potsdam Stalin got to do pretty much whatever he wanted in Poland. 

The second thing that happened was equally traumatic. Poland was effectively shifted to the west: the eastern provinces of what had been Poland fell under Soviet control, provinces which today make up Belarus and Ukraine. A bunch of Poles were resettled to other parts of Poland, like the new western provinces of Poland that were once part of Germany. The Germans in those provinces got kicked out and settled forcibly in other parts of a shrunken German state. In this way, Poland was given control of cities such as Szczecin (Stettin) and Wrocław (Breslau), as well as Gdańsk (Danzig) and East Prussia. The shift was extremely traumatic, and I understand that in places like Szczecin the Polish occupants don't really feel a connection to the city as they never really wanted to be there in the first place. 

Communist Poland, or the Polish People's Republic (PRL, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) is a time that I think very few people remember fondly. Again, there are whole histories about the Eastern Bloc, and I don't want to bore you with details about what Władysław Gomułka did or didn't do. Let's fast-forward to everybody's favorite part of Communism: the end of it.

The election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II helped galvanize opposition to communist rule, partly as it cemented the Church as powerful opposition to the State. The state had never managed to smash Catholicism in Poland. Though it did try its ready best to undermine the influence of the Church, moving directly against the Church in an overt matter was ground that the Politburo was not willing to tread. In September 1980, striking shipyard workers in Gdańsk organized Solidarity (Solidarność), a labor union that became a political party that at one time counted a third of the working-age people in Poland as members. By the end of 1981, Solidarity was making so much noise that General Wojciech Jaruzelski, then-premier and commander-in-chief, felt compelled to declare martial law on December 13th, a state which lasted until July of 1983.

The period of martial law (Stan Wojenny, literally "State of War") is perhaps the most-discussed and most controversial period in Polish history. Jaruzelski claimed that he had to declare martial law as things were slipping out of control in Poland. Had he not declared martial law when he did, he maintains that Soviet troops would have invaded Poland and put Solidarity down in an entirely ruthless campaign much like that in Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. Others maintain that there was no Soviet threat, and that Jaruzelski was just trying to maintain his personal power. Some have urged prosecuting Jaruzelski as a criminal and tyrant for his declaration. Others say, he's old and he chose the lesser of two evils. He also didn't get fabulously wealthy as a result of his position, and was just a soldier doing his job. I'm curious to read about this more when the anniversary rolls around again.  

However, martial law was not enough to get rid of Solidarity. The government of the PRL was looking increasingly shaky, as was the Polish economy, wracked by inflation and shortages. In 1989 the government threw in the towel, held free elections that were won by Solidarity, the first Warsaw Pact country to have a non-communist government. This proved a catalyst for the unwinding of communism all over the Eastern Bloc, and in a way that nobody in their right minds would have predicted: a more-or-less peaceful rusting away of the Iron Curtain.

In this way, Poland had come full circle, from an independent country to dominated by foreign powers to a free republic, the Third Republic. I also stop the narrative here because it is very difficult to analyze anything from a historical perspective that is younger than I am. Now that we have an exhaustive and exhausting brief history, it's time to consider what it all means.