Poland Leaves Its East Behind

Poland has been enjoying an economic miracle, with growth of 3.8% in 2010 and 4% in 2011. Yet the rural eastern provinces are lagging behind the rest of the country. “We are a long way from Warsaw,” said Andrzej Czapski, mayor of Biała Podlaska, capital of the province of Podlaskie. “There is no work here. The big companies we used to have went under during the transition years.” Just down the road is the Białowiez.a nature reserve, one of the last remaining parts of a primeval forest, home to several hundred wild bison. This is the European Union’s frontier, its “Far East”: northeast lies Belarus, southeast the foothills of the Carpathians and the Ukrainian plain. East of Warsaw, there are few big cities other than Białystok and Lublin, fewer railway lines, and the motorways give way to trunk roads crowded with lorries crawling towards Lithuania, Belarus or the Ukraine.