The birth of official statistics in Poland

Abstract

The birth of the Polish official statistics, commonly associated with the establishment of Statistics Poland on 13 July 1918, was possible thanks to the ideas and grassroots work of various scholars, including statisticians, who thus demonstrated their faithfulness to the resolutions of the Four-Year Sejm (Parliament) and the Constitution of 3 May 1791. Statisticians from Kraków, who established Poland’s first statistical society (the Polish Statistical Society) and authored a study entitled Statistics of Poland, Kraków (1915), edited by Adam Krzyżanowski and Kazimierz Kumaniecki, deserve a special recognition in this paper. In the two consecutive years, 1916 and 1917, Kraków saw the publication of two important works, namely Geographical and Statistical Atlas of Poland, Kraków (1916), edited by Eugeniusz Romer and Ignacy Weinfeld, and the Yearbook of Poland. Statistical Tables, Kraków (1917). But scientists from other parts of Poland contributed to the process of laying the foundations for the Polish official statistics as well. Statisticians from Warsaw compiled three volumes of Statistical Yearbooks of the Kingdom of Poland edited by Władysław Grabski, and the work entitled Statistical Yearbook of the Kingdom of Poland and other Polish lands. The Year 1915 under the editorship of Edward Strasburger was published in 1916 in Sankt Petersburg. Around the same period, Polish scientists associated with the University of Lviv expanded the scope of their scientific activity. After regaining independence, the process of establishing the system of official statistics in Poland, at that time carried out already within the framework of Statistic Poland, continued developing dynamically thanks to the scientific input of several dozen Polish statisticians.