What is Poland B as opposed to Poland A and the otherway-round.

Oh yes indeedy, I ask of you to enlighten me please, as I have googled and internet-searched for an answer and yes indeedy I have not found an Answer.

What in God's own name is Poland-A , if such a thing exist what is Poland-B ?

It's a creation of szmatławiec Gazeta Wyborcza. They enriched expression 'ściana wschodnia' (lets say poorer part of country) with mentality of people living there.

BTW Rzeszów (so called Polska B) is the best organized and cleanest city in all Poland.

Poland B is the bit of Poland that was neglected by the Ruskies during the



It is supposedly poorer than the rest of the country, the wages are lower and the infrastructure is very bad (for now)
See map here upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/NowaMapaAutostradyStan.svg

The dotted grey lines are just in planning, the red are motorwaysunder construction.

I have driven through it many times, it has some very beautiful unspoiled areas, like Masuria and Augustow but also looks more run down and as I said the roads are very bad.

Poland B is allocated 30% more European funds than the rest of Poland to bring it up to the same level as the rest of the country.


The German and Austrian part of Poland from the partition times.

Well, it's not and SeanBM is right. Poland A / Poland B classification originates in partitions. Actually the problem of merging again economically and culturally different piececes together exists in Polish politics since independence. Someone on this forum posted interesting propaganda piece from pre-war Poland which explains a lot about origins:

After so many years differences are vanishing but nevertheless they still persists. For example it can be observed on railroad maps of Poland:

koleje w Polsce

The problem is that this initial inequality is hard to change, because better infrastructure in so called Poland A makes it more suitable economically for further investitions. So even if there is a special program for poorer regions it cann't of course make a private business to invest more there. Private money are of course greater and more focused than state moneys so difference is getting dipper.

But it is not like the west is richer than east everywhere. For example some parts of west voivodeships are poorer than many eastern regions. Also, for example Podkarpackie and Rzeszow region in recent years had very good economic stats in terms of progress.

Well it is long and deep subject with many factors. We didn't even touched neighbours factor. For example Podlaskie region due to neighbouring with low populated and closed economy of Belarus is not very well suited for investition so even state investition in highways have the lowest priority there... And on and on :-) Buy some book, I'm sure there is some :-)

Hell yes. Lubuskie especially is hideously deprived - if you drive from Poznan to Kostrzyn nad Odra, you can see quite a few random, seemingly ex-PGR places that look economically ruined. They don't even seem to be doing a good job of attracting people into the Kostrzyn-Slubice Special Economic Zone.

I've always thought that the modern day Poland A/B wasn't based on location, but rather education.

Over the years this division become popular expression for better vs worse but it is not main meaning of it. I will post one more map made by user "voy" from skyscrapercity.com forum which shows population changes in Poland between 1995-2000. I think this more truly shows where the Poland A and B is forming right now. Peoples are voting with their feet, red population gain, blue population loss (I think it takes emigration into account):

PS. some main cities like Poznan or Wroclaw are blue, but I think it is more reasonable to assume that this is due to urban sprawl because overall aglomerations are gaining.

I think the term "Polska B" was coined by Bronisław Geremek, and it has been
enthusiastically used by Gazeta Aborcza journalists ever since.

He drew well for a seven-year old, didn't he?

it has no infrastructure yet, when it does it will be much more attractive, as the wages are lower.
I am thinking of doing something over there myself, as I see potential.

The E.U. are pumping 65 billion Euro into Poland between now and 2013, much of this goes to infrastructure.

And Augustow looks like Carrick-on-Shannon, really beautiful.

One thing of interest to some foreigners on here might be, I have noticed that Polish people do not look down at the so called Poland B, it is not a class thing or anything.

People love it as much as any other part of Poland, there's just no work and the problems that come with that.

Well, I've heard he drew a game of chess with his father, Boruch Lewertow, in 1939.
Quite an accomplishment for a seven-year-old!

*or was it against his older brother - Israel Lewertow... I can't remember...*

A and B was definitely a pre-war invention.

Polska A Polsce B
Każe się całować w D. - Jan Sztaudynger
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Sztaudynger

Poland A to Poland B says
feel free to suck my C. [nott]

Looks like I can't blame this one on Geremek. Damn it...

Division between Poland A and Poland B is even more visible than before.

And to be fair, this represents almost perfectly who is voting for who. The election was a clear battle between socialism and capitalism, nothing else.

In some respects, you can hardly blame them - what do mohair berety, uneducated workers and those without much have to gain from Komorowski? Nothing. He's not going to do anything about making Poland a more fair, just country. Kaczynski, if nothing else, gave them some sort of knowledge that they would get to continue as now.

I think people are very, very stupid when they ignore the real socialist tendencies in Poland.

For what it's worth, I'd like to see Poland do a hell of a lot more for village kids who are all but written off from the first moment.

Reads like "Staudinger" :)


It seems you have forgotten about the real existing socialist hellhole people broke free from just a few years back.

What makes you think another try would change the nature of this history?

I haven't forgotten, but there are a significant amount of people out there who want a truly Polish version of it. I get the strong impression that if Poles had been offered true Polish communism along the Yugoslavian model, they would've taken it.

Just listen to Kaczynski speak - he'll never say "socialism" - but he's as socialist as it gets. And his message *is* very popular.

"true communism"???

Dream on....

I'm not dreaming though. Look at Solidarity et al these days - they are demanding more or less communist ideals. They'll never say it, but why do you think Solidarity accepted power-sharing? They didn't want (as a whole) a free market - they just wanted their share of the spoils.

Even Solidarity's 21 demands are hideously socialist in nature.

Come on, listen to Kaczynski talk - the man isn't interested in democracy.

Maybe it's a misunderstanding in naming things....

I've heard people call Germany a socialist country! ;)

Oh, that too. They call PO "Liberals" - but they really aren't liberal at all. Some members are, sure - but as a whole, they're quite the conservative party - similar to Germany's CDU I guess?

About the only clear cut thing in Poland is that the socialists are genuine socialists!

don't do this anymore. Most of them (PO) are ex-members of PZPR (communist party)

some of the cities like £ódź are dark blue... and it's because people move out to Warsaw.

POLENGGGs

I guess other European comparisons could be made between Poland, the UK and Italy. the difference in Italy is between the north and the south-with the north being A and the south B. In the UK the south is A and the north is the B.

although i doubt if the differences in Poland are quite as stark as between the North and South of Italy.

What utter rubbish. Have you forgotten that PO came from Solidarity, just like PiS?

Accusing them of being ex-members of the PZPR is just idiocy.

Well, unfortunately £ódź is a sick man among big cities.

In what way - do you mean economically?

poland A and B :) as a inhabitant of "A" i would love to hear how we are ahead, compared to those form "B" part. and yes - we have more industry, more motorways (at least southern poland), better salaries, etc. but i have family living in city of przemyśl and in the bieszczady region, and i can assure you, that they have better life. they aren't so poor as it seems from pure statistics - i think that there is a large-scale economical "grey zone" - which is invisible to official statistics - e.g. they are going to ukraine for cheap petrol, etc. in mine opinion much more poor than e.g. podkarpackie (south-eastern corner) is warmińsko-mazurskie (middle-north) which is poland "A"

i will give you an example how poland "B" from przemyśl, krosno and surroundings is poor:
eastern-scorpions.pl/index.php?e-s,24

so, division between "A" and "B" part has a strong historical background, but today it's not so simple to say witch part of poland belongs to A or B...

edit -> i almost forgot about possibility to exclude warszawa from mazowieckie, because mazowieckie compared to city of warszawa is just poor. warszawa raises the income statistics of whole region, which makes more difficult to obtain financial support from the union for the mazowickie region. ha. mazowiecke was always counted as "A" :)

Polish-German-French roots.

Yes. Basically £ódź is very young city (not in demographic terms) which grew on one industry.
During communism this monoculture of textile industry was even depened. After 89' all that collapsed and due to growing competition from Asia it never has been rebuilded. On the other hand city seemed to have bad luck regarding local gov. and for a long time it couldn't attract investors to develop new economic model. What is more next to £ódź is the biggest Polish attractor = Warsaw what depened £ódź troubles by getting people out of the city (to what zetigrek was reffering).

So during last two decades £ódź fell from Polish second city to the third position (in terms of population) and still keeps falling.
To be not entirely dire about the place, there is a hope, because due central position on the map all main infrastructural projects has £ódź as a centre. Taking into account that it is close to already expensive Warsaw and also much cheaper than other big cities, maybe £ódź will rebound in coming years.