Hungary
Hungary is a country in Central Europe. Spanning 93,030 square kilometres in the Carpathian Basin, it borders Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Austria to the northwest, Romania to the east, Serbia to the south, Croatia to the southwest, Slovenia to the west. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a medium-sized member state of the European Union; the official language is Hungarian, the most spoken Uralic language in the world, among the few non-Indo-European languages to be spoken in Europe. Hungary's capital and largest city is Budapest; the territory of modern Hungary was for centuries inhabited by a succession of peoples, including Celts, Germanic tribes, West Slavs and the Avars. The foundations of the Hungarian state were established in the late ninth century CE by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád following the conquest of the Carpathian Basin, his great-grandson Stephen I ascended the throne in 1000, converting his realm to a Christian kingdom. By the 12th century, Hungary became a regional power, reaching its cultural and political height in the 15th century.
Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Hungary was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. It came under Habsburg rule at the turn of the 18th century, joined Austria to form the Austro–Hungarian Empire, a major European power; the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed after World War I, the subsequent Treaty of Trianon established Hungary's current borders, resulting in the loss of 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, 32% of ethnic Hungarians. Following the tumultuous interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a satellite state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a socialist republic spanning four decades; the country gained widespread international attention as a result of its 1956 revolution and the seminal opening of its previously-restricted border with Austria in 1989, which accelerated the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became a democratic parliamentary republic.
Hungary is an OECD high-income economy and has the world's 58th largest economy by PPP. It ranks 45th on the Human Development Index, owing in large part to its social security system, universal health care, tuition-free secondary education. Hungary's rich cultural history includes significant contributions to the arts, literature, sports and technology, it is the 13th most popular tourist destination in Europe, attracting 15.8 million international tourists in 2017, owing to attractions such as the largest thermal water cave system in the world, second largest thermal lake, the largest lake in Central Europe and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. Hungary's cultural and academic prominence classify it as a middle power in global affairs. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and has been part of the Schengen Area since 2007, it is a member of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe, the Visegrád Group.
The "H" in the name of Hungary is most due to early founded historical associations with the Huns, who had settled Hungary prior to the Avars. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Byzantine Greek Oungroi. According to an explanation,the Greek name was borrowed from Old Bulgarian ągrinŭ, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the collective name for the tribes who joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars; the Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of ország. The word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri; the first element magy is from Proto-Ugric *mäńć-'man, person' found in the name of the Mansi people. The second element eri,'man, lineage', survives in Hungarian férj'husband', is cognate with Mari erge'son', Finnish archaic yrkä'young man'; the Roman Empire conquered the territory west of the Danube between 35 and 9 BC. From 9 BC to the end of the 4th century, Pannonia was part of the Roman Empire, located within part of Hungary's territory.
Around AD 41–54, a 500-strong cavalry unit created the settlement of Aquincum and a Roman legion of 6,000 men was stationed here by AD 89. A civil city grew in the neighbourhood of the military settlement and in AD 106 Aquincum became the focal point of the commercial life of this area and the capital city of the province of Pannonia Inferior; this area now corresponds to the Óbuda district of Budapest, with the Roman ruins now forming part of the modern Aquincum museum. Came the Huns, a Central Asian tribe who built a powerful empire. After Hunnish rule, the Germanic Ostrogoths and Gepids, the Avar Khaganate, had a presence in the Carpathian Basin. In the 9th century, East Francia, the First Bulgarian Empire and Great Moravia ruled the territory of the Carpathian Basin; the freshly unified Hungarians led by Árpád, settled in the Carpathian Basin starting in 895. According to linguistic evidence, they originated from an ancient Uralic-speaking population that inhabited the forested area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains.
As a federation of united tribes, Hungary was established in 895, some 50 years after the division of the Carolingian Empire at the Treaty of Verdun in 843, before the unification of the Anglo-Saxon king
Leo I of Galicia
Leo I of Galicia was a Knyaz of Belz, Halych, Grand Prince of Kiev and King of Galicia-Volhynia. He was a son of his first wife, Anna Mstislavna Smolenskaya; as his father, Lev was a member of the senior branch of Vladimir II Monomakh descendants. He was a third cousin of Alexander Nevsky. Lev moved his father's capital from Halych to the newly founded city of Lviv; this city was named after him by Lev's father, King Daniel of Galicia. In 1247 Lev married Constance, daughter of Béla IV of Hungary. Unlike his father, who pursued a Western political course, Lev worked with the Mongols and together with them invaded Poland. However, although his troops plundered territory as far west as Racibórz in Silesia, sending many captives and much booty back to Galicia, Lev did not gain much territory from Poland. Lev cultivated a close alliance with the Tatar Nogai Khan, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to establish his family's rule over Lithuania. Soon after his younger brother Shvarn ascended to the Lithuanian throne in 1267, Lev organized the murder of Grand Duke of Lithuania Vaišvilkas.
Following Shvarn's loss of the throne in 1269, Lev entered into conflict with Lithuania. In 1274–1276 he fought a war with the new Lithuanian ruler Traidenis but was defeated, Lithuania annexed the territory of Black Ruthenia with its city of Navahrudak. In 1279, Lev allied himself with King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia and invaded Poland, although his attempt to capture Kraków in 1280 ended in failure; that same year, Lev defeated the Kingdom of Hungary and temporarily annexed part of Transcarpathia, including the town of Mukachevo. In 1292, he defeated Poland and added Lublin with surrounding areas to the territory of Galicia-Volhynia. At the time of Lev's death in 1301, the state of Galicia-Volhynia was at the height of its power. Lev I married Constance of Hungary, daughter of Béla IV of Hungary and Maria Laskarina, they had three children: Yuri I of Galicia. Svyatoslava Lvovna of Halych, a nun Anastasia Lvovna of Galicia, who married Siemowit of Dobrzyń. List of rulers of Galicia and Volhynia List of Ukrainian rulers Marek, Miroslav.
"Genealogy of Danylo's family". Genealogy. EU. Lev Danylovych at the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3
Shvarn
Shvarn, Shvarno or Svaromir Daniilovich, was the knyaz of western parts of Galicia and Grand Duke of Lithuania. An influential leader, he became involved in internal struggles of power within neighboring Grand Duchy of Lithuania, he held the town of Kholm in his domain. Little is known of Shvarn and his name is not certain; the original documents relating to this ruler mention him under a variety of names. For instance the first edition of Lithuanian Annals mentions him as Shkvarno, but the following editions use the names of Skirmont and Skirmunt a Ruthenisation of Lithuanian name Skirmantas. Contemporary sources mention his Christian name of Ioann, either John or George. In modern times the ruler is known by a variety of names in various historiographies, including Lithuanian Švarnas, Ukrainian Шварно Данилович, Russian and Belarusian Шварн, Polish Szwarno Daniłowicz. All of them are versions of the name of Shvarn, to be a diminutive of the Slavic name of Svaromir. One of the sons of king Daniel I of Galicia of the house of Romanovich, Shvarn inherited the north-western parts of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, his fathers' domain.
This land included the town of Halicz itself, as well as the land across the Bug River, Red Ruthenia with the towns of Bełz, Czerwieńa, Mielnik and also Kholm. His brother Lev I inherited the southern part of the land, with the cities of Lviv and Przemyśl, while Roman became the heir of duchies of Lutsk and Terebovl. During the times of king Daniel's reign, the Galician lords were allied with their Polish neighbours against a common threat, the Lithuanian tribes that raided the neighbouring lands for loot and plunder. However, in 1255 Shvarn married an unnamed daughter of Mindaugas, since 1253 the first king of Lithuania; this allied him to Lithuania and together the two rulers undertook numerous military campaigns against the Kingdom of Poland. In 1255 they raided Lublin, in 1262 a major campaign against Masovia was started. Shvarn and Treniota captured the city of Płock and besieged Shvarn's brother-in-law, Siemowit I of Masovia in Jazdów. In the end Siemowit was killed by Shvarn's troops and his son Konrad II was taken prisoner.
The Polish relief force did not arrive in time and was defeated in a battle at Długosiodło on August 5, 1262. In 1264 king Daniel of Galicia died and Shvarn received nominal overlordship over all of Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia as its duke, he mounted a major campaign against Poland, this time aiming for Lesser Poland. However, although joint armies managed to plunder Skaryszew, Tarczek and Wiślica, this time the campaign was less successful and the allied Ruthenian and Lithuanian armies were repelled; the Yotvingian auxiliaries were defeated by Bolesław V the Chaste at the Battle of Brańsk. The following year Bolesław mounted a counter-offensive against Shvarn and his uncle Vasilko Romanovich, defeated the earlier on June 19, 1266 at Wrota; this weakened Shvarn's position in his own domain. In the meantime in 1263 Mindaugas of Lithuania was murdered. In the chaos that followed Mindaugas' assassination, the lands of the Grand Duchy were in disarray, with both local and foreign rulers struggling for power.
Shvarn gave his support to Vaišvilkas, one of his brother-in-law. Together they managed to expel Dovmont all the way to Pskov. After Vaišvilkas returned to monastic life in 1267, Shvarn became the new Grand Duke. No details are known about Shvarn's rule over Lithuania and he did not gain a strong foothold in that country. However, he was fairly successful in expanding his borders. Following successful military campaigns, in 1267 he defeated his brother Mstislav in the battle of the Yaselda River and captured Turov and Pinsk, he campaigned against the Volga Tatars and defeated khan Balaklay in the battle of Kojdanow, which allowed Shvarn to capture the towns of Mozyr, Chernigov and Starodub. The struggle for power within Lithuania however continued. Before a clear winner could emerge, Shvarm died in Kholm some time between 1269 and 1271, he was buried in an Orthodox Cathedral that once stood on a place now occupied by the Basilica of the Birth of the Virgin Mary. After his death most of his lands reverted to Lithuania and came under the control of Traidenis, a noble from Aukštaitija.
List of rulers of Halych and Volhynia List of Belarusian rulers List of Lithuanian rulers a.^ The capital of the land of Red Ruthenia. Its location remains unknown and disputed.
Voivode
Voivode, Vojvoda or Wojewoda is a Slavic term for a military commander in Central and Southern Europe during the Early Middle Ages, or a governor of a territorial voivodeship. The different permutations of the term all share two roots, voi related to warring and secondly, vod meaning leading in Old Slavic, together denoting a "war-leader" or "warlord". In early Slavic vojevoda meant the bellidux the military leader in battle. During the Byzantine Empire it referred to military commanders of Slavic populations in the Balkans, the Bulgarian Empire being the first permanently established Slavic state in the region; the title voevodas occurs in the work of the 10th-century Byzantine emperor Constantine VII in his De Administrando Imperio in reference to Hungarian military leaders. The title was used in medieval Bohemia, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Poland, Rügen, Russian Empire, Serbia and Wallachia In the Late Middle Ages the voivode, Latin translation is comes palatinus for the principal commander of a military force, deputising for the monarch became the title of territorial Voivodeship governors of senatorial rank in Poland and the Czech lands and in the Balkans.
In the Kingdom of Serbia the highest military rank was Army General. After the Second World War, the newly formed Yugoslav People's Army stopped using the royal ranking system, making the name obsolete; the transition of the voivode from military leader to a high ranking civic role in territorial administration occurred in most Slavic countries and in the Balkans in the Late Middle Ages. They included Bulgaria, the Czech lands, Moldavia and Russia. Moreover in the Czech lands it was an aristocratic title corresponding to Duke or Knyaz. In the 16th-century Commonwealth of Two Nations the Wojewoda was a civic role of senatorial rank and neither heritable nor a title of nobility, his powers and duties depended on his location. The least onerous role was in Ruthenia; the role began in the crown lands as that of an administrative overseer, but his powers were ceremonial. Over time he became a representative in the Sejm, his military functions were reduced to supervising a Mass mobilization and in practice he ended up as little more than overseer of weights and measures.
Appointments to the role were made until 1775 by the King. The exceptions were the voivodes of Polock and Vitebsk who were elected by a local poll of male electors for confirmation by the monarch. In 1791 it was decided to adopt the procedure throughout the country but the Partitions of Poland put a stop to it.. Polish voivodes were subject to the Law of Incompatibility which prevented them from holding ministerial or other civic offices in their area; the role was revived during the Second Polish Republic after Poland regained her independence in 1918. Voivodes continue to have a role in local government in Poland today, as overseers of self-governing local councils, answerable not to the local electorate but as representatives/emissaries of the central government's Council of Ministers, they are appointed by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and among their main tasks are budgetary control and supervision of the administrative code. Bjelajac, Mile. Generali i admirali Kraljevine Jugoslavije 1918—1941.
Belgrade: Institut za novu istoriju Srbije. ISBN 86-7005-039-0. Franz Ritter von Miklosich. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der slavischen Sprachen. W. Braumüller. P. 393. Konstantin Jireček. Staat und gesellschaft im mittelalterlichen Serbien: studien zur kulturgeschichte des 13.-15. Jahrhunderts. In Kommission bei Alfred Hölder
Rurik dynasty
The Rurik dynasty, or Rurikids, was a dynasty founded by the Varangian prince Rurik, who established himself in Novgorod around the year AD 862. The Rurikids were the ruling dynasty of Kievan Rus', as well as the successor principalities of Galicia-Volhynia, Vladimir-Suzdal, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the founders of the Tsardom of Russia, they ruled until the Time of Troubles, following which they were succeeded by the Romanovs. They are one of Europe's oldest royal houses, with numerous existing cadet branches; as a ruling dynasty, the Rurik dynasty held its own in some part of Russia for a total of twenty-one generations in male-line succession, from Rurik to Vasili IV of Russia, a period of more than 700 years. The Rurikid dynasty was founded in 862 by a Varangian prince. Folk history tells of the Finnic and Slavic tribes in the area calling on "'the Varangians, to the Rus' … The Chud, the Slovenes, the Krivichi and the Ves said "Our land is vast and abundant, but there is no order in it.
Come and reign as princes and have authority over us!"' Three brothers came with'their kin' and'all the Rus' in response to this invitation. Rurik set up rule in Novgorod. There is some ambiguity in the Primary Chronicle about the specifics of the story, "hence their paradoxical statement'the people of Novgorod are of Varangian stock, for they were Slovenes.'" However, archaeological evidence such as "Frankish swords, a sword chape and a tortoiseshell brooch" in the area suggest that there was, in fact, a Scandinavian population during the tenth century at the latest. There have been some suggestions that Rurik and his brothers might have been of Finnish or Estonian descent. In Estonian folklore there is a tale of three brothers, namely Rahurikkuja and Truuvaar, who were born as peasants, but through bravery and courageousness all became rulers in foreign countries. Rurik and his brothers founded a state that historians called Kievan Rus′. By the middle of the twelfth century, Kievan Rus′ had dissolved into independent principalities, each ruled by a different branch of the Rurik dynasty.
The dynasty followed the izgoi principle. The Rurik dynasty underwent a major schism after the death of Yaroslav the Wise in 1054, dividing into three branches on the basis of descent from three successive ruling Grand Princes: Izyaslav and Vsevolod. In addition, a line of Polotsk princes assimilated themselves with the princes of Lithuania. In the 10th century the Council of Liubech made some amendments to a succession rule and divided Ruthenia into several autonomous principalities that had equal rights to obtain the Kiev throne. Vsevolod's line became better known as the Monomakhovichi and was the predominant one; the line of Svyatoslav became known as Olegovychi and laid claim to the lands of Chernihiv and Severia. The Izyaslavychi who ruled Turov and Volhynia were replaced by a Monomakhovychi branch. "The Rurikid dynasty… attempted to impose on their diverse polity the integrative concept of russkaia zemlia and the unifying notion of a "Rus′ people". But "Kievan Rus′ was never a unified polity.
It was a loosely bound, ill-defined, heterogeneous conglomeration of lands and cities inhabited by tribes and populous groups whose loyalties were territorial." This caused the Rurik dynasty to dissolve into several sub-dynasties ruling smaller states in the 10th and 11th centuries. These were the Olgoviches of Severia who ruled in Chernigov, Yuryeviches who controlled Vladimir-Suzdal, Romanoviches in Galicia-Volhynia; the Olgoviches descended from Oleg I of Chernigov, a son of Sviatoslav II of Kiev and grandson of Yaroslav the Wise. They continued to rule until the early 14th century when they were torn apart by the emerging Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Grand Duchy of Moscow; the line continued through Oleg's son Vsevolod II of Kiev, grandson Sviatoslav III of Kiev, great-grandson Vsevolod IV of Kiev and great-great grandson Michael of Chernigov, from whose sons the extant lines of the Olegoviches are descended, including the Massalsky, Baryatinsky and Obolensky, including Repnin. Vsevolod I of Kiev was the father of Vladimir II Monomakh, giving rise to the name Monomakh for his progeny.
Two of Vladimir II's sons were Mstislav I of Yuri Dolgorukiy. The Romanoviches were the line of Roman the Great, descended from Mstislav I of Kiev through his son Iziaslav II of Kiev and his grandson Mstislav II of Kiev, father of Roman the Great; the older Monomakhovychi line that ruled Principality of Volhynia, they were crowned kings of Galicia and Volhynia and ruled until 1323. Romanovychi displaced the older line of Izyaslavychi from Turov and Volhynia as well as Rostyslavychi from Galicia; the last were two brothers of Romanovychi and Lev II, who ruled jointly and were slain trying to repel Mongol incursions. The Polish king, Władysław I the Elbow-high, in his letter to the Pope wrote with regret: "The two last Ruthenian kings, firm shields for Poland from the Tatars, left this world and after their death Poland is directly under Tatar threat." Losing their leadership role, however, continued to play a vital role in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Most notably, the Ostrogski fa
Chernihiv
Chernihiv known as Chernigov is a historic city in northern Ukraine, which serves as the administrative center of the Chernihiv Oblast, as well as of the surrounding Chernihiv Raion within the oblast. Administratively, it is incorporated as a city of oblast significance. Population: 294,727 Chernihiv stands on the Desna River 150 km to the north-north-east of Kiev; the area was served by Chernihiv Shestovitsa Airport, during the Cold War it was the site of Chernigov air base. Chernihiv was first mentioned in the Rus'-Byzantine Treaty, but the time of establishment is not known. According to the items uncovered by archaeological excavations of a settlement which included artifacts from the Khazar Khaganate, it seems to have existed at least in the 9th century. Towards the end of the 10th century, the city had its own rulers, it was there that the Black Grave, one of the largest and earliest royal mounds in Eastern Europe, was excavated in the 19th century. In the southern portion of the Kievan Rus' the city was the second by wealth.
From the early 11th century it was the seat of powerful Grand Principality of Chernigov, whose rulers at times vied for power with Kievan Grand Princes, overthrew them and took the primary seat in Kiev for themselves. The grand principality was the largest in Kievan Rus and included not only the Severian towns but such remote regions as Murom and Tmutarakan; the golden age of Chernihiv, when the city population peaked at 25,000, lasted until 1239 when the city was sacked by the hordes of Batu Khan, which started a long period of relative obscurity. The area fell under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1353; the city was burned again by Crimean khan Meñli I Giray in 1482 and 1497 and in the 15th to 17th centuries it changed hands several times between Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where it was granted Magdeburg rights in 1623 and in 1635 became a seat of Chernihiv Voivodeship. The area's importance increased again in the middle of the 17th century during and after the Khmelnytsky Uprising.
In the Hetman State Chernihiv was the city of deployment of Chernihiv Cossack regiment. Under the 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo the legal suzerainty of the area was ceded to Tsardom of Russia, with Chernihiv remaining an important center of the autonomous Cossack Hetmanate. With the abolishment of the Hetmanate, the city became an ordinary administrative center of the Russian Empire and a capital of local administrative units; the area in general was ruled by the Governor-General appointed from Saint Petersburg, the imperial capital, Chernihiv was the capital of local namestnichestvo, Malorosiyskaya or Little Russian and Chernigov Governorate. According to the census of 1897, in the city of Chernihiv there were about 11,000 Jews out of the total population of 27,006, their primary occupations were commercial. Many tobacco plantations and fruit gardens in the neighborhood were owned by Jews. There were 1,321 Jewish artisans in Chernihiv, including 404 tailors and seamstresses, but the demand for artisan labor was limited to the town.
There were 69 Jewish day-laborers exclusively teamsters. But few were engaged in the factories. During World War II, Chernihiv was occupied by the German Army from 9 September 1941 to 21 September 1943. Chernihiv's architectural monuments chronicle two most flourishing periods in the city's history - those of Kievan Rus' and of the Cossack Hetmanate The oldest church in the city and one of the oldest churches in Ukraine is the 5-domed Transfiguration Cathedral, commissioned in the early 1030s by Mstislav the Bold and completed several decades by his brother, Yaroslav the Wise; the Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb, dating from the mid-12th century, was much rebuilt in succeeding periods, before being restored to its original shape in the 20th century. Built in brick, it has a single dome and six pillars; the crowning achievement of Chernihiv masters was the exquisite Pyatnytska Church, constructed at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. This graceful building was damaged in the Second World War.
The earliest residential buildings in the downtown date from the late 17th century, a period when a Cossack regiment was deployed there. Two most representative residences are those of Polkovnyk Polubutok; the former mansion, popularly known as the Mazepa House, used to contain the regiment's chancellery. One of the most profusely decorated Cossack structures is undoubtedly the ecclesiastical collegium, surmounted by a bell-tower; the archbishop's residence was constructed nearby in the 1780s. St Catherine Church, with its 5 gilded pear domes, traditional for Ukrainian architecture, is thought to have been intended as a memorial to the regiment's exploits during the storm of Azov in 1696. All through the most trying periods of its history, Chernihiv retained its ecclesiastical importance as the seat of bishopric or archbishopric. At the outskirts of the modern city lie two ancient cave monasteries used as the bishops' residences; the caves of the Eletsky Monastery are said to predate those of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra.
Its magnificent 6-pillared cathedral was erected at the turn of the 12th centuries.
Poland
Poland the Republic of Poland, is a country located in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, covering an area of 312,696 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With a population of 38.5 million people, Poland is the sixth most populous member state of the European Union. Poland's capital and largest metropolis is Warsaw. Other major cities include Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, Szczecin. Poland is bordered by the Baltic Sea, Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast and Lithuania to the north and Ukraine to the east and Czech Republic, to the south, Germany to the west; the establishment of the Polish state can be traced back to AD 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of the realm coextensive with the territory of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, in 1569 it cemented its longstanding political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin; this union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, with a uniquely liberal political system which adopted Europe's first written national constitution, the Constitution of 3 May 1791.
More than a century after the Partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, Poland regained its independence in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Germany, followed by the Soviet Union invading Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. More than six million Polish citizens, including 90% of the country's Jews, perished in the war. In 1947, the Polish People's Republic was established as a satellite state under Soviet influence. In the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1989, most notably through the emergence of the Solidarity movement, Poland reestablished itself as a presidential democratic republic. Poland is regional power, it has the fifth largest economy by GDP in the European Union and one of the most dynamic economies in the world achieving a high rank on the Human Development Index. Additionally, the Polish Stock Exchange in Warsaw is the largest and most important in Central Europe. Poland is a developed country, which maintains a high-income economy along with high standards of living, life quality, safety and economic freedom.
Having a developed school educational system, the country provides free university education, state-funded social security, a universal health care system for all citizens. Poland has 15 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Poland is a member state of the European Union, the Schengen Area, the United Nations, NATO, the OECD, the Three Seas Initiative, the Visegrád Group; the origin of the name "Poland" derives from the West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta river basin of the historic Greater Poland region starting in the 6th century. The origin of the name "Polanie" itself derives from the early Slavic word "pole". In some languages, such as Hungarian, Lithuanian and Turkish, the exonym for Poland is Lechites, which derives from the name of a semi-legendary ruler of Polans, Lech I. Early Bronze Age in Poland begun around 2400 BC, while the Iron Age commenced in 750 BC. During this time, the Lusatian culture, spanning both the Bronze and Iron Ages, became prominent; the most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, around 700 BC.
Throughout the Antiquity period, many distinct ancient ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland in an era that dates from about 400 BC to 500 AD. These groups are identified as Celtic, Slavic and Germanic tribes. Recent archeological findings in the Kujawy region, confirmed the presence of the Roman Legions on the territory of Poland; these were most expeditionary missions sent out to protect the amber trade. The exact time and routes of the original migration and settlement of Slavic peoples lacks written records and can only be defined as fragmented; the Slavic tribes who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. Up until the creation of Mieszko's state and his subsequent conversion to Christianity in 966 AD, the main religion of Slavic tribes that inhabited the geographical area of present-day Poland was Slavic paganism. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the religious authority of the Roman Church.
However, the transition from paganism was not a smooth and instantaneous process for the rest of the population as evident from the pagan reaction of the 1030s. Poland began to form into a recognizable unitary and territorial entity around the middle of the 10th century under the Piast dynasty. Poland's first documented ruler, Mieszko I, accepted Christianity with the Baptism of Poland in 966, as the new official religion of his subjects; the bulk of the population converted in the course of the next few centuries. In 1000, Boleslaw the Brave, continuing the policy of his father Mieszko, held a Congress of Gniezno and created the metropolis of Gniezno and the dioceses of Kraków, Kołobrzeg, Wrocław. However, the pagan unrest led to the transfer of the capital to Kraków in 1038 by Casimir I the Restorer. In 1109, Prince Bolesław III Wrymouth defeated the King of Germany Henry V at the Battle of Hundsfeld, stopping the Ge
Media related to Daniel of Galicia at Wikimedia Commons
