Lubusz Voivodeship: Difference between revisions

|parts = 2 cities, 12 land counties *

|p1=[[Gorzów Wielkopolski]]|p2=[[Zielona Góra]]|p3=[[Gorzów County]]|p4=[[Krosno Odrzańskie County]]|p5=[[Międzyrzecz County]]|p6=[[Nowa Sól County]]|p7=[[Słubice County]]|p8=[[Strzelce-Drezdenko County]]|p9=[[Sulęcin County]]|p10=[[Świebodzin County]]|p11=[[Wschowa County]]|p12=[[Żagań County]]|p13=[[Żary County]]|p14=[[Zielona Góra County]]

| area_total_km2 = 13987.93

| total_type=Total

| utc_offset_DST = +2

| demographics_type1 = GDP

| website=[http://lubuskie.pl lubuskie.pl]

| footnotes = * further divided into 83 [[gmina]]s

|blank_emblem_size=120px

}}

 

It was created on January 1, 1999, out of the former [[Gorzów Voivodeship]] and [[Zielona Góra Voivodeship]], pursuant to the [[Polish local government reforms]] adopted in 1998. The province's name recalls the historic [[Lubusz Land]]<ref>It is likely that it was a response to the names of some German military units; they have been named after lands that since at least 1945 belong to Poland and the very city of [[Lebus|Lubusz]] is located just outside the Polish border in Germany.</ref> (''[[Lebus]]'' or ''Lubus''), although parts of the voivodeship belong to the historic regions of [[Lower Silesia]], [[Greater Poland]] and [[Lusatia]].

==History==

[[File:Zary walls.JPG|thumb|left|Medieval town walls of [[Żary]], one of the oldest towns in the province, first mentioned in 1007]]

 

[[File:Castle in Zagan (3).jpg|thumb|left|[[Żagań]] with its castle was a ducal seat for several centuries]]

 

In 1701, the [[Kingdom of Prussia]] was established, which included Brandenburg-held Lubusz Land, and various areas were eventually gradually annexed by Prussia in the following centuries, starting with the south-eastern part of the current voivodeship in 1742, followed by eastern portions (western outskirts of Greater Poland) in [[Second Partition of Poland|1793]] (briefly regained by Poles in 1807–1815 as part of the short-lived [[Duchy of Warsaw]]), and the south-western part in 1815. Within Prussia and Germany the territory was divided between the provinces of [[Neumark]]/[[Province of Brandenburg|Brandenburg]], [[South Prussia]]/[[Province of Posen|Posen]], and [[Province of Silesia|Silesia]]/[[Province of Lower Silesia|Lower Silesia]].

 

 

 

In 1998, [[Cabinet of Jerzy Buzek|the government]] of [[Jerzy Buzek]] decided to introduce an [[Administrative divisions of Poland|administrative reform]], with its principles including the restoration of counties and a steep reduction in the number of voivodeships. A general consensus existed among scholars that the local administration exercised through the [[Voivodeships of Poland (1975–1998)|49 existing voivodeships established in 1975]] was inefficient, anachronistic, impractical, detrimental to maintaining regional identity, and untenable. However, the reform draft accepted by the government surprised the public and caused widespread outcry, as its authors foresaw creation of only 12 large voivodships, thus going much further than the widely expected reconstitution of the 17 voivodeships existing prior to the [[Voivodeships of Poland (1975–1998)|1975 reform]]. As a consequence, the original draft made no provision for a separate Lubusz voivodeship – Gorzów was to become along with [[Kostrzyn, Greater Poland Voivodeship|Kostrzyn]], [[Strzelce Krajeńskie]] and [[Drezdenko]] a part of [[West Pomeranian Voivodeship]], Zielona Góra was to be included along with Krosno, Nowa Sól, Żagań, Gubin and Żary in the [[Lower Silesian Voivodeship]], while a narrow horizontal strip encompassing [[Międzyrzecz]], [[Sulęcin]], [[Świebodzin]], [[Słubice]] and [[Sulechów]] was to be assigned to the [[Greater Poland Voivodeship]] as a bizarre sort-of corridor to the German border. However, mass protests broke out as a result in the cities such as Bydgoszcz, Koszalin, Opole or Kielce. Many of the people opposing the draft reform initially demanded retaining as many as 25 voivodeships (including the 2 ones seated in Gorzów and Zielona Góra), a number nevertheless widely regarded as a demand intentionally excessive to serve as an initial negotiating bargain, actually aiming to restore the 17 voivodeships existing prior to 1975 as an ultimate compromise. As Poland was at the time governed under political cohabitation, the opposition party constituting the political background of the President decided to capitalize on the popular discontent which erupted against the government on an unanticipated scale; the most obvious mean readily available for the opposition was a presidential veto, which in fact ensued. In order to salvage the reform from being killed altogether, the government was, in the face of lacking the supermajority required to overturn the veto at the time, forced to reconsider the original shape of the reform and to reconcile it with the reservations of the President and his political background, with the result of a compromise adjustment increasing the number of voivodeships to 16, with Lubusz Voivodeship included among the four additional ones created according to the agreement.

 

The path leading to such and outcome was far from smooth. The government made an effort to highlight and exploit the decades-long animosity between the approximately same-size two principal cities, spreading scare against its inevitable re-ignition and explosion in any of these two cities after designating the other one as the voivodeship capital, and hoping to use the engineered scare as the main argument in the ongoing discussions against creating the Lubusz voivodeship, The animosity, existing indeed between the cities, has been historically rooted in a widespread perception among Gorzów inhabitants that the 1950 decision to designate Zielona Góra as the voivodeship capital instead of their larger and more populous city, was taken by the anticlerical communist government due to a hidden motivation of punishing Gorzów for becoming the see of the newly established Roman Catholic [[apostolic administration]] governing the majority of the [[Recovered Territories]], with the ensuing discrimination of the city by the voivodeship authorities in the years 1950-1975 in terms of establishing any new public cultural and educational institutions, other public investments or public funds allocations, in vivid contrast to the unjust favoring of their own seat, the city of Zielona Góra; a sentiment reinforced further by the surprise relocation of the see of the [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Gorzów]] to Zielona Góra in 1992, renamed as a result the [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów]], and finally and perhaps most importantly, by the historical, perpetual and almost sacred rivalry between the [[Speedway in Poland|motorcycle speedway]] clubs located in both cities. The objective of the local elites in Zielona Góra was in turn to become a single capital centre, reverting to the situation before 1975, while any prospect of sharing the governing institutions was for a long time treated with their hostility. In spite of that, the looming threat of a "everybody lose" scenario set to materialize in case of a possible implementation of the original reform draft, paved the way for neutralizing this argument through forcing both rival sides into the breakthrough reconciliation accord known as the Paradyż Agreement, brokered by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów and formalized in a document signed during a highly publicized local summit in the [[Gościkowo|Gościkowo-Paradyż Abbey]] on 13 March 1998. This compromise agreement, was negotiated and concluded between the delegations of both rival cities, composed of the respectively aligned most powerful local and national scene politicians and business people, with its most important provision being the unusual arrangement to divide and distribute the governing institutions of the voivodeship more or less equally between the two cities. On the basis of this broadly supported agreement, an effective public pressure endorsed jointly by the two centers was successfully exerted on the central government which ultimately acquiesced to the demand of establishing Lubusz Voivodeship.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.lzg24.pl/artykul/aktualnosci/warto-bylo-oni-tworzyli-nasze-wojewodztwo|title=Warto było? Oni tworzyli nasze województwo &#124; Łącznik Zielonogórski|website=www.lzg24.pl}}</ref>

 

Nevertheless, creating any new type of public institution at voivodeship level in Poland continues to ignite almost automatically a fierce battle in the Lubusz Voivodeship regarding the seat of the institution. There have also been numerous attempts to relocate some of the existing public institutions under various pretexts from one city to another, in some cases successful, as well as of merging a pair of equal institutions of a type existing in both cities, in order to make one of them a branch of the other, with obscure or no justification in most cases for such merger. Nevertheless, a general local majority consensus prevails that the compromise, although unsatisfactory for any of the two cities, spared both of them the fate of a number of cities which lost in 1999 entirely the status of a voivodeship capital and all voivodeship-level institutions, along with the associated attractiveness and prestige of the city as a place to live, crucial for its growth, with the ensuing profoundly detrimental phenomena.

[[File:Deptak Zielona Góra.jpg|thumb|[[Zielona Góra]] is the seat of the provincial assembly]]

[[File:Gorzów Wlkp.estakada kolejowa i bulwary.JPG|thumb|[[Gorzów Wielkopolski]] is the seat of the voivodeship governor]]

[[File:Swiebodzin (9662661400).jpg|thumb|[[Świebodzin]]]]

{{columns-list|colwidth=15em|

'''Cities (governed by a city mayor or ''prezydent miasta''):'''

| align="right"|96,496

|[[Żary]]

| align="center"|10

|-

The [[gross domestic product]] (GDP) of the province was 10.8 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 2.2% of Polish economic output. The GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 17,600 euros or 58% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 67% of the EU average.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/10474907/1-05032020-AP-EN.pdf/81807e19-e4c8-2e53-c98a-933f5bf30f58|title=Regional GDP per capita ranged from 30% to 263% of the EU average in 2018|website=Eurostat}}</ref>

 

==Transport==

The sole airport in the voivodeship is the [[Zielona Góra Airport]]. The [[A2 autostrada (Poland)|A2]], [[A18 autostrada (Poland)|A18]] and [[Expressway S3 (Poland)|S3]] highways pass through the province.

 

==Protected areas==

[[File:Drawienski Park Narodowy - jezioro Ostrowieckie 1.jpg|thumb|[[Drawa National Park]]]]

[[File:Potok Sucha (Zespół Przyrodniczo-Krajobrazowy w Gminie Szprotawa).jpg|thumb|Potok Sucha, a protected nature reserve in the [[Gmina Szprotawa|Szprotawa Commune]]]]

*[[Przemęt Landscape Park]] (partly in Greater Poland Voivodeship)

*[[Pszczew Landscape Park]] (partly in Greater Poland Voivodeship)

 

==Sports==

[[Motorcycle speedway]] enjoys a large following in the province with the [[Stal Gorzów Wielkopolski]] and [[Falubaz Zielona Góra]] clubs being among the most accomplished in the sport in the country. The teams contest the Lubusz Voivodeship Derby, one of the fiercest speedway rivalries.

 

==See also==

| North = {{flag|West Pomeranian Voivodeship}}

| Northeast =

| Centre = {{flag|Lubusz Voivodeship}}

| East = {{flag|Greater Poland Voivodeship}}

| South = {{flag|Lower Silesian Voivodeship}}

| Southeast =