The Maritime League. A study of the dissolution of a social institution
The Maritime League. A study of the dissolution of a social institution

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses the tactics and the strategy communists from the Polish Workers’ Party (and from the end of 1948 – the Polish United Workers’ Party) used to incapacitate and then liquidate social organisations dating back to the pre-war period. These structures had different formal and ideological positions in the political reality of the Second Polish Republic. An important role in promoting the so-called western borderlands, which at that time included Greater Poland, the Polish part of Pomerania and the Polish part of Upper Silesia, was played by the Polish Western Union which was close to nationalist national democracy. Another important interwar institution was the Maritime and Colonial League, which was associated with the then establishment. These institutions, which had been gradually revived since 1944, were formally independent, but under the pressure of communists, who wanted to take over power in Poland, they were being peopled by individuals who were ready to serve the communist Polish Workers’ Party. After the end of the war, PZZ focused on the so-called Recovered Territories. LM (now without the word “Colonial” in its name), on the other hand, concentrated on the issues associated with the 500 km stretch of the Polish sea coast and the problems related to the Polish merchant fleet. The Maritime League, which was reluctant to implement communist ideals and practices, had been, from the moment of its revival, infiltrated from within by representatives of branches of the new political power in Poland. The communists did collaborate with the League (and also with PZZ) in the first post-war years, but the cooperation on their part was short-lived and pragmatic, and so the Maritime League was doomed to dissolution after PZPR took full power over Poland.

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