Poland

Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe stretching from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Russia. Its statehood is traditionally dated to 966, when a pagan ruler of the Polans converted to Christianity, and the Kingdom of Poland was formally established by 1025. The union of Poland and Lithuania formed in 1569 grew into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the great powers of Europe, before the country was partitioned out of existence by its neighbors at the end of the eighteenth century. Poland regained independence in 1918 as the Second Polish Republic, was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1939 in the opening act of the Second World War, and lived under Soviet-aligned rule as the Polish People's Republic until the fall of the Iron Curtain restored it as a liberal democracy in 1989. It operates today as a unitary parliamentary republic with a bicameral legislature, the Sejm and Senate, and with more than 38 million people is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union.