It turns out it's not that hard to grow an economy once countries all around you stop trying to kill your culture, exterminate your population and steal your lands.
That only explains some sort of “noob gainz”, not moving into the top 20.
Don’t know why this is downvoted. The history of Poland for the last 300 years is pretty much exactly what you wrote.
I remember when Poland colonised half the world.
We did that in the US and became the #1 economy. Leadership just changed.
Why are polish people like this.
Hundreds of billions in subsidies and Polish workers displacing West European workers inside and outside of their country have nothing to do with the success of course.
The EU is based on greedy West European corporations maximizing shareholder value at the expense of their own populations.
The EU is too big and should be reduced to the Western core countries. I wonder how Poland would fare then.
Surely there are more than 20 countries that have been in a position where their neighbors aren’t all trying to exterminate them for at least as long as Poland.