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(last updated: 2004-09-20 12:13:32)
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Fourteen to seventeen million Poles are estimated to live abroad, mainly in the USA (6-10 million), Germany (about 1.5 million), Brasil (about 1 million), France (about 1 million), Canada (about 600,000), Belarus (400,000-1 million), Ukraine (300,000-500,000), Lithuania (250,00-300,000), the United Kingdom (about 150,000), Australia (130,000-180,000), Argentina (100,000-170,000), Russia (about 100,000), the Czech Republic (70,000-100,000) and Kazakhstan (60,000-100,000).
This immense number of Polish expatriates and foreigners who declare themselves of Polish descent (17 million is equivalent to about 40% of Poland's current population) is a result of complex historical processes which started in the late 18th century when Poland disappeared from Europe's maps, partitioned by its three powerful neighbours: Russia, Austria and Prussia. Poles, who never accepted the loss of their statehood, staged numerous but unsuccessful uprisings. The last great wave of emigration hit Poland after the Second World War, when the country became ruled by Moscow-backed communists. Despite limited contacts with the free world, deliberately hindered by the authorities through such measures as restrictions in issuing passports, between 1956 and 1980 about 800,000 people moved to the USA and West European countries. Some of them emigrated for political reasons, opposing the communist regime; others simply sought a better life. In the 1980s alone, some 270,000 Poles left the country. |
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