the new Polish territory and over 1.5 million from what had become the Soviet Union; smaller numbers of settlers arrived from France, Germany and other countries. From February 1946 to the end of 1948, 2.2 million Germans had to leave Poland (Paczkowski). 2.8 million Poles returned to Poland after the war from Germany and other parts of Western Europe (out of the total of 3.0–3.5 million war-displaced who were present there) and many of them settled in the Recovered Territories. (Słabek). c1.Andrzej Leder wrote (2014) of the mass migration from rural areas to urban centers: "The consequence ... of the extermination during the German occupation of Jewish urban people and the destruction by Stalinist communism of the dominant position of state functionary, military and intellectual elites originating from szlachta, was the creation of an enormous and multi-dimensional sphere for advancement. Cities became widely open and were rapidly overtaken by all those who bothered to make the move. Such people, actually their children and grandchildren, today make-up the basic skeleton of social structure. d1.According to Andrzej Leder, Jaruzelski's martial law (supported at the time of its imposition by about 50% of Poles) and its aftermath have had strongly deleterious long-term effects on social and political developments in Poland. The trauma caused by the deprivation of the collective sense of self-determination (acquired during the Solidarity period) atomized society and prevented future politically moderate and socially responsible undertakings and movements, creating a social vacuum, which was eventually filled by individualistic neoliberalism and right-wing nationalism. Citations Further reading Biskupski, M. B. B. (2018). The History of Poland. Westport: Greenwood Publishing. Curry, J., & Fajfer, L. (Eds.). (1996). Poland’s Permanent Revolution: Peoples vs. Elites, 1956–1990. Washington, D.C.: American University Press. Domber, G. F. (2014). Empowering Revolution: America, Poland, and the End of the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press Fidelis, M. (2010). Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fidelis, M. (2022). Imagining the World from Behind the Iron Curtain: Youth and the Global Sixties in Poland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huener, J. (2003). Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979 (Polish and Polish American Studies). Athens: Ohio University Press. Kemp-Welch, A. (2008). Poland under Communism. A Cold War History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kenney, P. (1997). Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kersten, K. (1991). The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland,