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mostly ethnic Poles from Germany where they had performed forced labor during the war. These small additions to Poland's population were far outweighed by the cumulative losses, and despite the postwar net loss of about 20% of the country's territory compared with the prewar period, it was only in 1967 that Poland's population reached the approximate total of persons residing in the same area in 1939.
Present trends indicate that despite the initial postwar population boom, Poland's population will not reach the prewar total before 1975. The relatively rapid decline in the initial postwar growth rate was further performed by the results of the official census of 8 December 1970, which showed that since the first postwar "count" in 1946, the country's population had increased by 8,659,000 persons. Most of this growth (4,768,000 or 19.1%), however, occurred during the 1950-60 decade, with only a 2,813,000 or 9.4% increase during the decade that followed.
2. Density and distribution
In January 1973 the population of the country was estimated at 33,146,000, and its territory comprised about 126,000 square miles—approximately the size of New Mexico with a population somewhat larger than that of California and Texas combined. Excluding the U.S.S.R., Poland ranks sixth among European countries in population (after West Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Spain), as well as in area (after France, Spain, Sweden, Finland, and Norway). It is second only to the U.S.S.R. in Eastern Europe.
Poland's overall population density, about 275 inhabitants per square mile at the beginning of 1973, is near the European average; nevertheless, it is considerably lower than such densely populated regions of Western Europe as the Lowlands, and much higher than the Scandinavian average. In Eastern Europe, excluding the U.S.S.R., Poland's population density is exceeded by that of East Germany (406), Czechoslovakia (294), and Hungary (287). Poland's relative standing in this respect compared to selected countries in 1970 is shown in Figure 7.
Heavy postwar internal migration has been the result of the government's vigorous policy of resettling the former German territories, generally with repatriates from the Soviet Union, and by a simultaneous policy of urbanization, which caused a general movement of population from the countryside into existing urban centers or newly created cities. According to official Polish data, the former German territories in the west (excluding former East Prussia) had a prewar population of about 7.2 million Germans
FIGURE 7. Population and population density, Poland and selected countries, 1970 (U/OU) (chart)
and 1.5 million Poles. According to the official claims, nearly 9 million Poles resided in these areas by 1970 including about 5 million persons who were born there. The population density of these territories in 1970, therefore, somewhat exceeded immediate prewar years. The sensitivity of the Polish Government throughout the postwar period to charges of underutilization of the former German lands indicates that the policy of encouraging population growth in these areas will continue.
Although the population density in rural areas exceeds the European average by about one-third, the static nature of the rural population compared with the consistently rising urban increments is widening the gap between urban and rural density patterns. The general population density patterns follow the pattern of urbanization and industrialization and reflect the lingering effects of postwar population shifts from former German territories in the north and west. A belt of low population density thus stretches across the entire northern third of the county, generally comprising less productive agricultural land (Figure 8). The province of Koszalin, for example, has a population density as low as that or Turkey. By contrast, concentrations of population are highest
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
