Disintegration and Integration. Polish Provinces Before and After the Recovery of Independence

The independent Polish Republic emerged in 1918 was composed of provinces till then belonging to the three powers that had participated in Poland's partitions of the late eighteenth century. For more than one hundred years these provinces were integrating with the economic structures of Russia, Austria and Germany. This found expression in an appropriate adjustment of the transport infrastructure, the volume and branch structure of the industrial and agricultural production, the outlets, etc. The fundamental question is: how did the emergence of the Polish state and the severing of the existing economic ties influence the condition of the different provinces that had earlier made part of Germany, Russia and Austria? At the beginning of the twentieth century, the markets seemed to be to a large extent complementary (for example, Great Poland was net exporter of food, while the Polish Kingdom and Galicia were its importers; Upper Silesia, with its raw material resources and heavy industry, was able to produce for the needs of the future domestic market of Poland, etc.). However, the early years of Poland's independence showed that this complementarity had been to a large extent illusive. The economic potential of the Polish provinces was adapted to the needs of the internal markets of Germany, Russia and Austria. The latter could not be replaced by the internal market of the Second Polish Republic. The production capacities exceeded the demand of the Polish consumers, the more so because, as a result of the war and the problems of reconstruction, the domestic demand was in many areas lower than in 1913.