How imperial borders still shape election results in Poland today
Even after more than 110 years, you can see the imperial borders by looking at this year’s parliamentary election.
The stubborn persistence of these ancient borders reflects the legacy of different 19th-century development trajectories. The west formed part of a rapidly industrializing empire, and today has a dense railway network to show for it. Meanwhile, most of the east belonged to tsarist Russia, where serfdom remained legal until 1861. By 1900 incomes in what is now western Poland were five times higher than in the east. This gap remains today.