Throughout the 19th century, what we know today as Poland was not a united, independent country; apart from a brief period during the Napoleonic Wars, Polish land was split between the Austro-Hungarian, Prussian (later German) and Russian empires. During the 1800s, the population of Poland grew steadily, from approximately nine million people in 1800 to almost 25 million in 1900; throughout this time, the Polish people and their culture were oppressed by their respective rulers, and cultural suppression intensified following a number of uprisings in the various territories. Following the outbreak of the First World War, it is estimated that almost 3.4 million men from Poland served in the Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian armies, with a further 300,000 drafted for forced labor by the German authorities. Several hundred thousand were forcibly resettled in the region during the course of the war, as Poland was one of the most active areas of the conflict. For these reasons, among others, it is difficult to assess the extent of Poland's military and civilian fatalities during the war, with most reliable estimates somewhere between 640,000 and 1.1 million deaths. In the context of present-day Poland, it is estimated that the population fell by two million people in the 1910s, although some of this was also due to the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed in the wake of the war.

Poland 1918-1945

After more than a century of foreign rule, an independent Polish state was established by the Allied Powers in 1918, although it's borders were considerably different to today's, and were extended by a number of additional conflicts. The most significant of these border conflicts was the Polish-Soviet War in 1919-1920, which saw well over 100,000 deaths, and victory helped Poland to emerge as the Soviet Union's largest political and military rival in Eastern Europe during the inter-war period. Economically, Poland struggled to compete with Europe's other powers during this time, due to its lack of industrialization and infrastructure, and the global Great Depression of the 1930s exacerbated this further. Political corruption and instability was also rife in these two decades, and Poland's leadership failed to prepare the nation for the Second World War. Poland had prioritized its eastern defenses, and some had assumed that Germany's Nazi regime would see Poland as an ally due to their shared rivalry with the Soviet Union, but this was not the case. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, in the first act of the War, and the Soviet Union launched a counter invasion on September 17; Germany and the Soviet Union had secretly agreed to do this with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August, and had succeeded in taking the country by September's end. When Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 it took complete control of Poland, which continued to be the staging ground for much of the fighting between these nations. It has proven difficult to calculate the total number of Polish fatalities during the war, for a variety of reasons, however most historians have come to believe that the figure is around six million fatalities, which equated to almost one fifth of the entire pre-war population; the total population dropped by four million throughout the 1940s. The majority of these deaths took place during the Holocaust, which saw the Nazi regime commit an ethnic genocide of up to three million Polish Jews, and as many as 2.8 million non-Jewish Poles; these figures do not include the large number of victims from other countries who died after being forcefully relocated to concentration camps in Poland.

Post-war Poland

The immediate aftermath of the war was also extremely unorganized and chaotic, as millions were forcefully relocated from or to the region, in an attempt to create an ethnically homogenized state, and thousands were executed during this process. A communist government was quickly established by the Soviet Union, and socialist social and economic policies were gradually implemented over the next decade, as well as the rebuilding, modernization and education of the country. In the next few decades, particularly in the 1980s, the Catholic Church, student groups and trade unions (as part of the Solidarity movement) gradually began to challenge the government, weakening the communist party's control over the nation (although it did impose martial law and imprison political opponent throughout the early-1980s). Increasing civil unrest and the weakening of Soviet influence saw communism in Poland come to an end in the elections of 1989. Throughout the 1990s, Poland's population growth stagnated at around 38.5 million people, before gradually decreasing since the turn of the millennium, to 37.8 million people in 2020. This decline was mostly due to a negative migration rate, as Polish workers could now travel more freely to Western European countries in search of work, facilitated by Pola...

The majority of immigrants in Poland in 2023 were from Ukraine (40,000), a decrease of 14 percent compared to the previous year. Immigration to Poland for different reasons In 2022, nearly 14,000 people immigrated to Poland for permanent residence, of which most came from Ukraine, the UK, and Germany, respectively. Furthermore, the majority of immigrants for temporary stay in Poland in 2022 were from Ukraine (46,000 immigrants), a decrease of 1.5 percent compared to the previous year. In 2023, most Ukrainian citizens chose Poland as a place for economic emigration. The main reason for that choice was geographical and cultural proximity. Nearly every second respondent valued the low language barrier, and for every third person, the motivation was earnings. Poles attitudes toward Russia’s war with Ukraine In 2022, most Poles had a negative attitude toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Poles’ biggest concerns about the Russia-Ukraine war were the military threats from Russia and the impact of the war on the condition of the Polish economy. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Poles proved their support for Ukrainians. One of the most common forms of support for refugees fleeing the Russia-Ukraine war to Poland was to provide blankets, food, and hygiene items. Four out of 10 Poles donated money to a charity fundraiser and volunteered in organizations.

Judgement on current situation in life and political and economic development of the country in times of economic and social upheaval.

Topics: 1. Common part of the survey for all participating countries: most important problems of the country; intent to emigrate and country of choice; desired occupation for one´s own child; judgement on the job of the president of the country; concerns and desires for the future; assessment of current standard of living and comparison with the situation five years ago and expected future development; judgement on the situation of the country in comparison over time; preference for freedom or social security; attitude to admission of undemocratic parties; attitude to freedom of the press; perceived discrimination against women; attitude to division of labor in raising children; judgement on conduct of the parliamentary representatives and the attitude to democracy in the country (scale); feeling of political effectiveness; internal or external control; achievement orientation; attitude to the national economy; demand for increased environmental protection; desire for foreign support for one´s country; the government as guarantor of equal opportunities and social security; welfare state; necessity of the willingness to compromise in politics; interest in politics at municipal level; diminishing interest in political events; self-assessment as patriot; attitude to securing of peace through military strength; readiness for national defense; necessity of participation of one´s country in world politics; claims to territory in neighboring countries; attitude to restriction on immigration; attitude to use of military for restoration of world order.

Religion and morals: importance of prayer and significance of God in one´s own life; doubt in the existence of God; attitude to prohibition of books critical of society and to sex magazines and films; attitude to freedom of speech even for fascists; assessment of the general trustworthiness of people; AIDS as punishment by God; representation of traditional values in the area of family and marriage; attitude to abortion; clear concepts of Good and Evil; perceived intensification of class differences; assessment of personal things in common with uneducated and persons of another race or ethnic affiliation; satisfaction with one´s own financial situation.

Demography: party membership; union membership; residential status; city size; religiousness.

1. Additional questions in this survey: judgement on political and economic changes of the last few years; particularly positive and negative changes; attitude to introduction of a multi-party system and introduction of the free market economy; judgement on the speed of transition to the free market economy; assessment of the influence of the media and organizations as well as institutions on the country; assumed influence of foreign nations on one´s country; attitude to selected ethnic groups (Ukrainians, Germans, Jews, Lithuanians and Russians); perceived threat to the nation from within and without; judgement on the effects of social changes on the standard of living, moral concepts, public morals, dealing of people with one another and on the relation of ethnic groups with each another; judgement on the influence of the church; most reliable alliance partner for one´s country; countries from which the greatest threat originates; attitude to Gorbachev, Bush, the Pope, the UN and selected personalities of public life; most important fears; preference for forgetting or calling to account those responsible in the old regime; preference for replacement of key managers of the old regime; attitude to privatization of selected areas of the economy and civil service; attitude to free establishing of prices; acceptance of unemployment or preference for government guarantee of full-employment; attitude to a government-specified profit limitation; attitude to borrowing to finance durable economic goods; occupation within one´s own home; work satisfaction; satisfaction with employer; preference for capitalism or democratic (social) market economy; party preference; judgement on current position of women in comparison to their position in the old regime; preference for national defense in an alliance or with individually concluded peace treaties; judgement on the level of defense expenditures; attitude to export of weapons into third world countries; attitude to advertising (scale); acceptance of advertisi...

The Holocaust was the systematic extermination of Europe's Jewish population in the Second World War, during which time, up to six million Jews were murdered as part of Nazi Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". In the context of the Second World War, the term "Holocaust" is traditionally used to reference the genocide of Europe's Jews, although this coincided with the Nazi regime's genocide and ethnic cleansing of an additional eleven million people deemed "undesirable" due to their ethnicity, beliefs, disability or sexuality (among others). During the Holocaust, Poland's Jewish population suffered the largest number of fatalities, with approximately three million deaths. Additionally, at least one million Jews were murdered in the Soviet Union, while Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia also lost the majority of their respective pre-war Jewish populations. The Holocaust in Poland In the interwar period, Europe's Jewish population was concentrated in the east, with roughly one third living in Poland; this can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when thousands of Jews flocked to Eastern Europe to escape persecution. At the outbreak of the Second World War, it is estimated that there were 3.4 million Jews living in Poland, which was approximately ten percent of the total population. Following the German invasion of Poland, Nazi authorities then segregated Jews in ghettos across most large towns and cities, and expanded their network of concentration camps throughout the country. In the ghettos, civilians were deprived of food, and hundreds of thousands died due to disease and starvation; while prison labor was implemented under extreme conditions in concentration camps to fuel the German war effort. In Poland, six extermination camps were also operational between December 1941 and January 1945, which saw the mass extermination of approximately 2.7 million people over the next three years (including many non-Poles, imported from other regions of Europe). While concentration camps housed prisoners of all backgrounds, extermination camps were purpose-built for the elimination of the Jewish race, and over 90% of their victims were Jewish. The majority of the victims in these extermination camps were executed by poison gas, although disease, starvation and overworking were also common causes of death. In addition to the camps and ghettos, SS death squads (Einsatzgruppen) and local collaborators also committed widespread atrocities across Eastern Europe. While the majority of these atrocities took place in the Balkan, Baltic and Soviet regions, they were still prevalent in Poland (particularly during the liquidation of the ghettos), and the Einsatzgruppen alone are estimated to have killed up to 1.3 million Jews throughout the Holocaust. By early 1945, Soviet forces had largely expelled the German armies from Poland and liberated the concentration and extermination camps; by this time, Poland had lost roughly ninety percent of its pre-war Jewish population, and suffered approximately three million further civilian and military deaths. By 1991, Poland's Jewish population was estimated to be just 15 thousand people, while there were fewer than two thousand Jews recorded as living in Poland in 2018.

From 1273 until 1918, Austria was the seat of power of the House of Habsburg; one of Europe's most powerful and influential royal families of the past millennium. During this time and in the subsequent century since the Austro-Hungarian Empire's dissolution, the borders and demography of the Austrian state have changed dramatically, with the population growing from approximately three million people in 1800 to just over nine million in 2020. The area of modern Austria's population rose gradually throughout the nineteenth century, until the early 1900s, where it then dropped and fluctuated during the World Wars, before rising again until recent years.

End of an empire

The assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, caused Austria to declare war on Serbia, which marked the outbreak of the First World War. The war (and subsequent Spanish Flu pandemic) would see the deaths of more than 1.2 million people from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the area of modern Austria's population dropped by almost 400,000 people between 1916 and 1920. In the years preceding the First World War, Slavic nationalism and tensions between various ethnicities in the empire had escalated to a new level; following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, new states such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created for corresponding ethnic groups, while Austrian and Hungarian states were created for ethnic Germans and Magyars respectively (Austria still uses this border today). The Treaty of Versailles had forbidden Austria from joining Germany, however in 1938, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (who was born in Austria) united the two nations as part of the German Third Reich, with overwhelming support by the people of Austria. In the next few years, Austria's population decreased slightly, as a result of the forced relocation of Jews and the outbreak of the Second World War. Due to the Austria-German union, separate records were not kept for Austrian and German deaths during the war, however most estimates put Austria's total at over 350,000 fatalities.

Post-war Austria

Following Germany's defeat, Austria was split into four separately administered sections, and then the Second Austrian Republic was established in 1955, declaring its permanent neutrality in foreign affairs. In the period after this Austria has enjoyed a period of continued prosperity with a high standard of living and reasonable economic growth. Population growth stagnated in the 80's with the legalization of abortion and improved access to contraception, but has grown steadily in the past three decades. Austria is consistently ranked among the top 20 richest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita, and in 2018 it was ranked 20th in the world by the Human Development Index.

In 2020/21 there were approximately 696,000 Polish nationals living in the United Kingdom, the highest non-British population at this time. Indian and Irish were the joint second-largest nationalities at approximately 370,000 people.

At the beginning of 2023, the largest group of foreign citizens living in Norway came from Poland. There were nearly 112,000 Poles living in Norway that year. Lithuanians and Swedes made up the second and third largest groups, with nearly 50,000 and nearly 37,000 inhabitants each. More than 600,000 foreign citizens lived in Norway that year.

In 2022, the largest foreign group of immigrants to the Netherlands came from Ukraine, with 99,700 immigrants. Polish, Dutch, Syrian and Turkish rounded out the top five foreign nationalities for immigrants to the Netherlands in that year.

In 1800, the region of Germany was not a single, unified nation, but a collection of decentralized, independent states, bound together as part of the Holy Roman Empire. This empire was dissolved, however, in 1806, during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras in Europe, and the German Confederation was established in 1815. Napoleonic reforms led to the abolition of serfdom, extension of voting rights to property-owners, and an overall increase in living standards. The population grew throughout the remainder of the century, as improvements in sanitation and medicine (namely, mandatory vaccination policies) saw child mortality rates fall in later decades. As Germany industrialized and the economy grew, so too did the argument for nationhood; calls for pan-Germanism (the unification of all German-speaking lands) grew more popular among the lower classes in the mid-1800s, especially following the revolutions of 1948-49. In contrast, industrialization and poor harvests also saw high unemployment in rural regions, which led to waves of mass migration, particularly to the U.S.. In 1886, the Austro-Prussian War united northern Germany under a new Confederation, while the remaining German states (excluding Austria and Switzerland) joined following the Franco-Prussian War in 1871; this established the German Empire, under the Prussian leadership of Emperor Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. 1871 to 1945 - Unification to the Second World War The first decades of unification saw Germany rise to become one of Europe's strongest and most advanced nations, and challenge other world powers on an international scale, establishing colonies in Africa and the Pacific. These endeavors were cut short, however, when the Austro-Hungarian heir apparent was assassinated in Sarajevo; Germany promised a "blank check" of support for Austria's retaliation, who subsequently declared war on Serbia and set the First World War in motion. Viewed as the strongest of the Central Powers, Germany mobilized over 11 million men throughout the war, and its army fought in all theaters. As the war progressed, both the military and civilian populations grew increasingly weakened due to malnutrition, as Germany's resources became stretched. By the war's end in 1918, Germany suffered over 2 million civilian and military deaths due to conflict, and several hundred thousand more during the accompanying influenza pandemic. Mass displacement and the restructuring of Europe's borders through the Treaty of Versailles saw the population drop by several million more.

Reparations and economic mismanagement also financially crippled Germany and led to bitter indignation among many Germans in the interwar period; something that was exploited by Adolf Hitler on his rise to power. Reckless printing of money caused hyperinflation in 1923, when the currency became so worthless that basic items were priced at trillions of Marks; the introduction of the Rentenmark then stabilized the economy before the Great Depression of 1929 sent it back into dramatic decline. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Nazi government disregarded the Treaty of Versailles' restrictions and Germany rose once more to become an emerging superpower. Hitler's desire for territorial expansion into eastern Europe and the creation of an ethnically-homogenous German empire then led to the invasion of Poland in 1939, which is considered the beginning of the Second World War in Europe. Again, almost every aspect of German life contributed to the war effort, and more than 13 million men were mobilized. After six years of war, and over seven million German deaths, the Axis powers were defeated and Germany was divided into four zones administered by France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the U.S.. Mass displacement, shifting borders, and the relocation of peoples based on ethnicity also greatly affected the population during this time. 1945 to 2020 - Partition and Reunification In the late 1940s, cold war tensions led to two distinct states emerging in Germany; the Soviet-controlled east became the communist German Democratic Republic (DDR), and the three western zones merged to form the democratic Federal Republic of Germany. Additionally, Berlin was split in a similar fashion, although its location deep inside DDR territory created series of problems and opportunities for the those on either side. Life quickly changed depending on which side of the border one lived. Within a decade, rapid economic recovery saw West Germany become western Europe's strongest economy and a key international player. In the east, living standards were much lower, although unemployment was almost non-existent; internationally, East Germany was the strongest economy in the Eastern Bloc (after the USSR), though it eventually fell behind the West by the 1970s. The restriction of movement between the two states also led to labor shortages in the West, and an influx of migrants from...

As of January 1, 2022, the number of people younger than 18 years in Ukraine was approximately 7.3 million. The adult population aged 18 years and older amounted to 33.6 million, representing around 82 percent of total inhabitants. Over 10 million people, or 24 percent of all residents, were aged 60 years and older.

What is the population of Ukraine?

Ukraine is the eighth most populated country in Europe, ranking between Poland and Romania by the number of inhabitants. In 2023, an estimated 32 million people resided in Ukraine, down approximately nine million from two years prior. The population size has decreased significantly during the Russian invasion, as millions of refugees fled to other countries.

Demographics of Ukraine

The number of women in Ukraine exceeded that of men by approximately three million as of January 1, 2022. At that point, the country’s male population stood at approximately 19 million. Over the past two decades, it decreased by over three million. The majority, or seven out of ten Ukrainian residents, lived in cities. Both the urban and rural population saw a decline in the past 20 years.