Warsaw - geography.

« (after Katowice in the south).

Warsaw, more than anywhere else in the country, has benefited from the boom in construction and commerce that followed the fall ofCommunism in 1989.

Warsaw’s unemployment was negligible in the 1990s (3 percent in 1997 compared with a national average of 11 percent), wages in Warsaw werebetter than average, and the city is the top destination for foreign investment.

For example, an Italian company took over the Warsaw steelworks, a South Korean firmpurchased an automobile factory, and a French electronics firm now runs a television plant in Warsaw.

Western banks, supermarkets, and hotel chains have invested inWarsaw. Warsaw’s economy is now based more on trade, distribution, and services than on manufacturing, which, though still important, is moving to second place.

Onephenomenon of the 1990s was the explosion of so-called bazaar trade as Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians and others flocked to Warsaw to buy and sell.

The market atDziesięciolecia Stadium is Poland's largest and is consistently ranked among the nation’s top five export earners.

Warsaw is also developing as a center for finance, banking,and consulting.

The stock exchange reopened in 1991 after being shuttered for 50 years. Vibrant and expanding cultural activities have also ensured the city’s place as a tourist center.

Warsaw’s most impressive economic feature has been the broad scale of newconstruction, including hotels, offices, low-rise housing, warehouses, supermarkets, and the subway.

The international airport at Ok ęcie in the southern part of the city wasrebuilt in 1992.

Another marked change in Warsaw’s economic and cultural life was the sudden development after 1989 of many new private television and radio stations,newspapers, and magazines. VII GOVERNMENT The city is governed by a city council, which elects a city president.

Local government elections take place every four years. VIII CONTEMPORARY ISSUES As in other large cities, crime is a significant concern in Warsaw.

The city has become a stage on drug-smuggling routes.

Small-scale gang warfare and bombings were asteady feature of the 1990s and even appeared to reach a new level of intensity when a former chief of police was murdered outside his home in early 1998.

The hugeincrease in automobile ownership has also become a source of problems.

Serious congestion, pollution, and injury from accidents (roads are poor and driving is oftenreckless) have all increased. IX HISTORY According to legend, Warsaw received its name from two children, Wars and Sawa.

Syrenka, a mermaid from the Wis ła, predicted the founding of Warsaw to the pair, whothen gave their names to the city.

Warsaw was founded around the turn of the 14th century by Duke Boles ław of Mazovia, then an independent principality.

In 1413 Warsawbecame the regional capital.

At that time its population was about 4,500.

The city lay on major trade routes, benefiting from its location on the Wis ła.

In 1526, when the lastMazovian prince died without an heir, Warsaw was absorbed into the Polish state.

The Sejm , Poland’s parliament, began meeting in Warsaw in the 1550s.

In 1573, four years after Poland united with Lithuania, the nobility began choosing the king in royal elections on Warsaw’s Wola Field. King Zygmunt III transferred the capital of Poland from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596.

The move brought Zygmunt closer to the Baltic Sea, where he had territorial ambitions.By 1611 the court and government had completed the move to Warsaw, which remained the capital for the next 200 years.

In the mid-17th century Sweden invaded thePolish-Lithuanian state and devastated Warsaw.

Russian forces occupied the city several times in the 18th century.

Only with Stanis ław II Augustus, the last king of Poland,did Warsaw undergo major regeneration; from 1764 to 1792 its population nearly quadrupled, rising from 30,000 to 110,000. In 1795, after Poland had been partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and Austria for the third time, Warsaw declined to a provincial town in Prussia.

In 1807 French EmperorNapoleon I established the independent Duchy of Warsaw and made the city the region’s capital.

Warsaw revived as a satellite state and a launching pad for Napoleon’scampaign against Russia in 1812.

After Napolean's defeat, Warsaw became the capital in 1815 of the Congress Kingdom of Poland, a state under Russian rule.

The Polesrebelled against their Russian overlords in 1830.

The Russians crushed the revolt and reduced Warsaw to provincial status once more.

Nonetheless urban developmentcontinued.

A permanent fire service was established in 1834, a railway line was built to Vienna in 1848, and in 1859 the first iron bridge across the Wis ła was constructed.After a second failed insurrection in 1863, the Polish kingdom was completely absorbed into the Russian empire. Despite these periods of political upheaval, industrialization continued in Warsaw, and an influx of workers and expansion of the city caused the population to swell to406,000 by 1885.

But it was not until 1918, after Russia’s emperor was toppled and the Central Powers lost World War I (1914-1918), that Warsaw once again becamecapital of an independent Polish state.

On the eve of World War II (1939-1945), Warsaw’s population had reached more than 1 million. On September 1, 1939, Warsaw was the target of the first German air raids on a major city.

After numerous bombing and artillery attacks, the city fell to Nazi troops onSeptember 27.

Throughout the war Warsaw was the main center of a rump Polish state, although the Germans intended eventually to reduce Warsaw to a resort solely forGerman habitation.

It was also the center of the Polish underground army.

The Germans systematically plundered the city of art treasures, razed national monuments, andterrorized the populace in a calculated plan to annihilate Jewish and Polish identity.

In late 1940 the Germans established a walled ghetto less than 2.6 sq km (1 sq mi) intotal area and herded Jews from the city and the surrounding region into it.

Over the next two and a half years hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced into the ghettoand then sent to concentration camps.

In April 1943 the Jews in the ghetto staged a heroic month-long resistance.

After the Nazis put down the uprising they destroyed theghetto, killing or sending to camps all of the remaining inhabitants.

Some 500,000 Warsaw-area Jews died in all. On August 1, 1944, as Soviet armies neared the city, the Polish resistance rose against the Germans before finally succumbing in October with some 160,000 fatalities.After the uprising, German troops deported the remainder of the population and deliberately destroyed what remained of the city.

Of the city's prewar population only162,000 survived the war.

Soviet and Polish troops entered Warsaw in January 1945.

After the war, the capital was rebuilt.

Where possible, the original plans were followedin the reconstruction of historic buildings and districts. After 1945, as the key administrative structures were reestablished for the centralized Communist government in Warsaw, the city was rapidly repopulated.

By 1956 thecity’s population again topped 1 million.

From the 1950s to the early 1970s Warsaw was the center of political power in Poland, a satellite country of the Union of SovietSocialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union).

Warsaw served as the symbolic base for the Soviet-led military alliance known as the Warsaw Pact.

As the country hit economiccrisis towards the end of the 1970s Warsaw's urban structure began to deteriorate, mirroring the decline in the credibility of the Communist party and the system itrepresented.

After the Communist government collapsed in 1989 and Poland adopted a market economy, Warsaw’s economy revived. Contributed By:George BlazycaJohn BatesMicrosoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation.

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