History of Warsaw

The 18th century

The development of manufacturing, banks, and other enterprises during the early 18th century provided a firm economic base for a number of early exercises in urban planning. During the reign (1764–95) of King Stanisław II August Poniatowski, Warsaw became the center of the Polish Enlightenment. The first lay school (Szkoła Rycerska) was opened in 1765, and in 1773 the Committee on National Education began its activity in the city. The Polish theater and numerous printing establishments also flourished. Warsaw played an important role in the striving for Polish political rebirth (following the first partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia, and Russia in 1772) when a parliamentary constitution was proclaimed in the city on May 3, 1791. The national insurrection of 1794, led by Tadeusz Kościuszko against the Russo-Prussian second partition, was brutally crushed; the ensuing third partition of Poland among Russia, Prussia, and Austria left Warsaw a provincial town of South Prussia. (See Partitions of Poland.)

The 19th and early 20th centuries

The occupation of Warsaw by the French Army in 1806 was followed a year later by Napoleon I’s creation of the duchy of Warsaw, a measure that reinstated the city as a capital. The French emperor’s downfall, however, led to occupation by Russia.

Under the Congress Kingdom of Poland (1815–30), formed by the Congress of Vienna and ruled by the Russian tsar, real national independence remained an elusive goal, and Warsaw figured prominently in struggles to throw off foreign domination. The November Insurrection that sparked the Russo-Polish War of 1831, in which the Poles held the initial advantage, ended with the storming of Warsaw’s defenses and the initiation of 30 years of military rule. Economic growth, however, continued, and by the mid-19th century textile, metal, and tannery industries were well established and the city had become the center of a continent-wide rail network. A fresh cycle of insurrection, which broke out in January 1863, led to the brief existence of an underground National Government in Warsaw. The suppression of the revolt led in 1864 to the abolition of the Congress Kingdom. Warsaw became a provincial city of the Russian Empire’s “Vistula Land.” A period of Russification was launched, and Varsovians abandoned national politics for a period of “positivism,” which aimed to preserve Polish culture at all costs. Population soared, reaching 756,000 by 1903, and urban services underwent extensive modification. Despite revolutionary activity between 1905 and 1907, censorship was alleviated, Polish schools and other cultural institutions were established, and Warsaw experienced a cultural renaissance. After World War I the city regained its status as the national capital.

World War II and contemporary Warsaw

The population of Warsaw passed the 1,000,000 mark in 1925. The period between the world wars was marked by further advances despite a period of inflation, depressions and slumps in trade, and political instability. Automobile and aircraft manufacture were introduced; city services underwent further expansion; and Warsaw’s emergence as a European cultural center was symbolized by the beginning of such international competitions as the International Chopin Competition for Pianists (1927) and the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition (1935).

During the Nazi siege of Warsaw in 1939, more than 10,000 citizens perished and more than 50,000 were wounded before the lack of supplies forced a surrender. The subsequent Nazi occupation was aimed at reducing Warsaw to a provincial city; its cultural treasures were systematically plundered and its inhabitants carried away to German labor camps or to concentration camps.

Warsaw’s Jewish community was devastated. At the turn of the 20th century the city had contained the largest urban concentration of Jews in the world. Warsaw’s Jews were heavily represented in the city’s bourgeoisie and intelligentsia, especially in the commercial classes and the professions. In addition to full religious and political freedom, Warsaw’s Jewry enjoyed its own press, its own Yiddish theater, and its own Jewish schools. Conflict with the rest of Warsaw society existed, but it was not alarming until immediately before the war.

Following German entry into Warsaw, a Jewish ghetto was established, surrounded by a high wall. Disease, starvation, and overcrowding caused thousands to perish before deportations to the Nazi death camps, especially to Treblinka, began in late 1941. Some 312,000 Jews were sent to the gas chambers in 1942 alone. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943 signaled a last, heroic act of defiance in the face of impending annihilation. The demolition by the Nazis of the Great Synagogue (now restored) symbolized the end of six centuries of Jewish Warsaw.

Near the war’s end Warsaw became the national resistance center. With the Soviet forces nearing the city, the Warsaw Home Army rose up against the weakened German garrison and was near victory when German reinforcements arrived and wiped out the Polish resistance. From 150,000 to 180,000 of the city’s people died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. In all, some 600,000 to 800,000 Varsovians are estimated to have died between 1939 and 1944, and the Soviet armies in 1945 found the city in a state of almost total devastation. On Feb. 1, 1945, the Polish government made Warsaw its capital, and an office for urban reconstruction was set up. In the decades that followed the city was rebuilt; the scars of war almost entirely healed over, and the city expanded beyond its prewar size in both area and population.

With the demise of the communist government in Poland in 1989, Warsaw underwent a rapid transition from command to market economy. Closed since World War II, the Warsaw Stock Exchange reopened and became an important market in central Europe. An economic and construction boom, which dramatically reduced unemployment and transformed the city’s skyline with new office towers and hotels, continued into the early 21st century.

The standard of living in Warsaw lagged behind that of other European capitals, but low wages had the advantage of drawing investment to the city. In the early 2000s, Warsaw’s conservative mayor (later Polish president) Lech Kaczynski helped create an atmosphere of social intolerance by banning gay pride parades and speaking disparagingly about Warsaw’s ethnic German minority. His successor, Warsaw’s first female mayor, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (elected 2006), took a very different tack, acting as an advocate for social diversity, gay rights, and environmental responsibility.