The Historical Dictionary of Polish Modernization is a scholarly reference project documenting people, events, institutions, and processes that shaped Poland’s economic and social modernization from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. Developed by a team led by Professor Paweł Grata as part of the project “On the Road to Modernization: Independent Poland and Free Poles in the 19th–21st Centuries,” it examines change across periods of foreign rule, the interwar republic, the Second World War, communist Poland, and the years after 1989.

Its entries cover industrialization, businesses, finance, technology, agriculture, social policy, education, law, and everyday life. The dictionary also highlights entrepreneurs, inventors, engineers, scientists, reformers, women’s emancipation leaders, workers’ organizations, and Poles whose achievements influenced societies abroad. Topics include state-led development and innovation, wartime contributions by Polish researchers and designers, industrial and scientific advances under communism, urbanization, education, healthcare, social insurance, and the social transformations associated with Solidarity.