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The declassification of many archives of the former secret services of the Eastern bloc countries proved how greatly some authorities were engaged in cooperation with international terrorism. Practically all Soviet bloc countries provided material and financial help to the Palestine Liberation Organization and to its various extremist fractions. Communist Poland was also supporting international terrorist organizations, secessionist or revolutionary movements. The world’s famous terrorists such as Carlos “the Jackal”, Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas or Abu Daud found the safe haven behind the iron curtain. They were usingthe Polish People’s Republic as a country where they can rest and prepare for another terrorist attack. The authorities of the Polish United Workers’ Party were well aware of the fact who they were really dealing with. Despite this knowledge, the Polish security apparatus allowed them to freely pass the borders and organize various meetings. International terrorists were using the Cold War bipolarization for their own struggle and, what is very important and significant, the Polish governments allowed them also to earn money in Poland. The Polish relations with some Arabic terrorist organizations date back to theseventies. In exchange for scholarships and free pass, radical activists promised not to attack the targets on the Polish soil. Even so, in August 1981, there was an attempt to murder Mohammed Oudeh, better known as Abu Daud – the mastermind of the ’72 Olympics Attack in Munich. He was shot six times in Warsaw’s Victoria hotel but he managed to survive. The files from the investigation show us that the Polish secret services were probably protecting the shooter, who was connected with the Abu Nidal Organization. In my article I present other spheres of cooperation between the Polish security apparatus and the members of international terrorist organizations. I reveal dates, names, and purposes of their visits to Poland. I also discuss other terrorist activities, which were not controlled by Polish counterintelligence. Finally, I attempt to answer the question why Polish authorities agreed to cooperate with terrorist organizations.
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In my article I analyze the mechanism which led to the staging of “Dziady” by Kazimierz Dejmek on the stage of the National Theater in November 1967 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. I draw particular attention to certain curiosities, starting with the choice of the work by Mickiewicz, through the puzzling behavior of the Ministry of Culture and Art, finishing with the passivity of the censors, particularly visible in the light of the contemporary practices of that institution.The above mentioned peculiarities have led me to a thesis that the anniversaryperformance was a result of an intrigue or provocation prepared by the Minister of Culture and Art, Lucjan Motyka, the General Director of the Ministry of Culture and Art, Stanisław Witold Balicki and the President of the General Office for the Control of the Press, Publications and Performances, Józef Siemek. I also draw attention to the similarity between the meaning of the performance, which accentuated such elements as: progressiveness, patriotism, plebeianism and anti-Russian ideology and the beliefs of the Moczar group, which may, in my opinion, imply that the “guerrilla fighters” wanted to use it as a certaintype of manifest determining their attitude towards culture and revealing elements close to them. Furthermore, it may have been intended to play a role in consolidating the environment and at the same time attracting a bigger group of intelligentsia, which was more and more disheartened with Gomułka. The actions of the “commandos” taken in defense of “Dziady”, may have caused among the supporters of the minister of internal affairs a feeling of appropriating a performance which was close to them, which may have affected the extent of brutality used by structures subordinate to the minister when suppressing the students’ protests in March 1968.
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The aim of the article is to present quantity data collected by the author constituting the basis for the social characteristic of regular activists involved in opposition activities in the 1980s at the local level. It is the result of contemporary sociological studies, in which the author, based on environmental contacts, reached local opposition circles and carried out survey studies. It shows that groups of opposition activists in particular centers were significantly different from the sociological point of view and recruited from different social environments. It seems, however, that in all of the analyzed centers, the activists recruited from persons formerly involved in opposition activities, declaring anti-system attitudes. A characteristic trait common to all former underground activists is their inclination to engage in social activities, which they have retained to this day.
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Alegata, also known as appendices of marital contracts, are rarely used in genealogical studies. This article discusses this kind of sources exemplified by contracts made in the civil registry in Łowicz. In 1808-1815 three such registries operated in the town: two of them connected with the local parishes and one connected with town council. The Napoleonic Code introduced the obligation to prove that marriage could be legally sanctioned. Therefore, the interested parties had to be in possession of: I. Birth certificate; II. Verification of birth certificate; III. Other certificates that verify the fulfillment of legal obligations connected with marriage. The last part of the article is devoted to methods of data archiving in relation with marriage certificates made in hunting civil registries in Łowicz. An analysis of archiving of such documents fosters a better understanding of these phenomena and helps to make use of the sources in genealogical queries.
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The article presents the history of the side, earl’s family line of the Wielopolski margrave in 19th and 20th centuries. Their material situation as land owners is presented, with a reference to their economic difficulties linked with the adaptation to capitalist transformations in Kingdom of Poland and later on in the Second Polish Republic. The article shows various forms of measures taken by the Wielkopolski family to maintain their high social status, e.g. through marriages with wealthy bourgeois families: the Laski and Halpert-Skanderberg family. The example of the Wielkopolski family points to the activation of the landed gentry at the turn of the 19th and 20th century when it comes to their economic activity other than farming. The article also tries to address the issue of the presence of the earl’s family in the political life of Kingdom of Poland (and their significant rile in the local conservative conciliatory environment).
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The article is an edition of specifications of tenements in Lublin (the city inside walls and Krakowskie Przedmieście) complied by the city office in 1738 for tax reasons. The materials presented encompass: the specification of tenements on 3 November 1738, as well as a revitalization of the Old Town on 29 April 1738 and 18 August 1738, and the revitalization of Krakowskie Przedmieście on 20 August 1738. All censuses are kept in a book number 295, which can be found in the State Archive of Lublin. The material presented is the entire list of tenements and other city properties built in Poland in the Saxon period and preserved until today. It is an interesting source of knowledge, crucial for getting to know the Old Polish Lublin, the topography of the city, as well as its social specification. Registries list the owners of particular real estates as well as their residents, show the localization of tenement houses belonging to the clergy (both diocesan and monastic), magnates, nobility, and middle class (patriciate and common people), and the localization of other buildings such as: schools, hospitals, inns, taverns, and business places. This source could be also used in onomastic studies, whether of an anthroponymic or toponymic character, as well as in genealogical studies. The material could be also useful for sociotopographical reconstructions. They are a repository of names and nicknames of the Lublin members of the middle class or real estate owners, the names of streets and squares. Among the owners and residents of tenements one could find very important names (members of the magnates holding the post of a dignitary or senator), representatives of the middle nobility, some influential people in Lublin working in the civil councils, as well as craftsmen, traders, and peddlers. It is also a source of information about the ethnic minorities living in the Lublin of that time, e.g. of a Jewish, German, Armenian, Italian, or French origin.
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At the end of 1788 the Four-Year Sejm passed the law titled “Voluntary donation to burning needs of the homeland”, the motivation for which was the need to collect money for 100,000 army of the republic. Documentation of this money collection burnt down together with the Warsaw archives in 1944. Thanks to AGAD, a modern search query, and its Acquisition Unit I, it was possible to find a copy of the registry of the public collection for the Nur Land in the Masovian Voivodship. The registry provides mostly information about local nobility (names, patronymic, surnames, possessions, posts, payments) and in particular about bourgeois and peasants (collective data on payments) who also participated in the money collection. Therefore, the registry is a valuable source for studies over genealogy of the Nur nobility, and it should be compared with tax rates typical of that region at the end of 18th century. Owing to the voluntary character of the payment, the registry does not cover all the Nur possession owners.
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At the time of partitions, new regulations concerning metrical registration were first introduced in the regions of the Austrian Partition, becoming a pattern for the other partition rulers. The legal regulations in the region of Lublin came into life in 1797. The metrical books were supposed to be columned and homogeneous in size. A detailed instruction in Latin and Polish, informing how to fill in the columns, was attached to the first pages of every volume. The contemporary condition of preservation of the metrical books analysed in the article is presented in Appendix.
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The article examines a change in Polish National Democratic (Nationalist) political discourse accompanying the 1905 Revolution. In particular, I scrutinize the change in the conceptualization of “the masses”. I consider a particular vision of the modernization of the masses as a form of discourse of modernity. Thus, I see it as a reaction to the indeterminacy of the social inadequacy of existing political institutions and discourses and the rapid widening of actual political participation. I argue that specific conjuncture between lineages of political thinking and social processes created a tipping point: a political moment or crisis. A particular answer for this moment – in this case an organic, hierarchic discourse of community and the envisioned whole of disciplined masses under the nationalistic control – defined the forthcoming shape of the National Democratic program. This resulted in long lasting consequences and defined the overall National Democratic project.
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The Copenhagen interpretation was the first general attempt to understand the world of atoms as this is represented by quantum mechanics. As the father of this interpretation is regarded mainly Niels Bohr, but also Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and other physicists made important contributions to the overall understanding of the atomic world. Today the Copenhagen interpretation is mostly regarded as synonymous with indeterminism, Bohr’s correspondence principle, Born’s statistical interpretation of the wave function, and Bohr’s complementarity interpretation of certain atomic phenomena. The presented paper is focus on analysis of base and consequences of this kind of interpretation, namely from the ontological as well as epistemological point of view.
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The paper attempts to examine nature as a theme in the five oldest hagiographical texts onSt. Adalbert: “The First Life of St. Adalbert” (Sancti Adalberti Pragensis episcopi et martyris vitaprior), “The Second Life of St. Adalbert” (Vita et passio s. Adalberti altera), “The Martyrdom of St. Adalbert” (Pasio Sancti Adalperti martiris), the life on the “Tempore illo” incipit (De sanctoAdalberto episcopo), and “The Miracles of St. Adalbert” (Miracula sancti Adalberti). A short introductioninto the topic of the medieval perception of nature is followed by a characteristic ofthe texts. The core of the paper is an analysis of the fragments of the texts where nature is beingdescribed. In approximately 30,000 words, a couple of dozen uses of nature-related motifsare counted. Their metaphorical, symbolic, and rhetorical interpretation is discussed. The conclusionof the paper consists of the observation of the medieval concept of depicting sanctity:from relative realism to idealisation and conventionalisation.
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The paper focuses on the poem “Penelopea or the innocence of the strangely wonderful maidensev’n times tortured. Previously by Jerome the saint, now by Jan Achacy Kmita described”(Penelopea abo niewinność dziwnie cudownej niewiasty siedm razy ciętej. Przedtym przez Hieronimaświętego, a teraz przez Jana Achacego Kmitę opisana) by Jan Achacy Kmita (ca. 1560 –ca. 1628). The 1610 text is a poetic paraphrase of “Letter 1” by St. Jerome of Stridon. This paper presents the methods of Kmita’s translation and situates “Penelopea” in relation to “Susanna” byJan Kochanowski. The translator has particularly accentuated the drama of the plot (characterized by the presence of numerous expressivisms), locating the macabre episodes in a small-townscenery. Both “Susanna” and “Penelopea” can be described as poetic exempla, however Kmita’sepyllion is devoid of topics of providence and divine justice, unlike Kochanowski’s text. Kmitafocuses on the epic hic et nunc, the symptoms of wonder, marvel, and cruelty, and draws from them a parenetic conclusion of persistance in suffering.
More...Przyczynek do postrzegania na Litwie Stefana Batorego i Zygmunta III Wazy
The topic of this paper is the representation of the two kings of Poland – Stephen Báthory and Sigismund III Vasa – emerging from the correspondence of Lew Sapieha addressed to the Radziwiłłsof Birża: Krzysztof ‘the Thunder’ and his son Krzysztof (d. 1640), as well as Mikołaj KrzysztofSierotka of the Nieśwież line of the family. A look at Sapieha’s writings allows to capture the differences in his descriptions of the two monarchs and also enables identifying the rhetorictools aimed at making the king’s policies favourable in the eyes of the addressees. Sapieha’s lettersare testaments of his unusual ability to depict reality colourfully; most of all, however, they enrich the knowledge on the art of epistolography in the past centuries, a topic which remains not fully explored by literary historians.
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In “Chronica Polonorum” by Wincenty Kadłubek (ca. 1150 – ca. 1223) one can find many borrowingsfrom ancient texts. The foci of this paper were the four verses from the works of Persius,a Roman satirist, which the Polish author included in his text. The paper attempts to establishthe aim and context of Kadłubek’s reference to the Roman poet. Additionally, the article toucheson the matter of Kadłubek’s coming to contact with Persius – whether that happened directly orindirectly. In order to try to answer these questions, the author presented a comparative analysisof the function and the context of passuses of the original poem and in Kadłubek’s work.
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This paper presents the oral residuum in the gothic novels “The Koniecpolskis’ castle” (Zamek Koniecpolskich) and “Matylda and Daniło” by Anna Mostowska. The analysis of both texts hasrevealed in the narration features such as asides reminding of the narrator’s presence or interruptions of the plot explained by exhaustion of characters. “The Koniecpolskis’ castle” and “Matylda and Daniło” display the nested story structure while also keeping resemblance to the gawęda Polish epic literary genre. The remain of the oral culture is the parallelism of the plots of both novels. The types of characters present in the texts (‘flat’ characters, usually equipped with one main characteristic, also the wandering characters, whose internal metamorphosis happens during journey) are characteristic for oral stories. The pre-modern approach to the theory of the past assumed that it is Fortune who controls a human’s fate, and Mostowska’s work reflectsthat belief. The protagonists of the two novels usually stay true to the ruling of Fate and those who do not, face punishment. The characters’ lack of the ability to self-analyse (the case ofthe transformation of Bohdan Koniecpolski) and some logical inconsistencies (e.g. in the construction of the character of Władysław) present in the novels may suggest that the author has not yet fully interiorised writing.
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This paper analyses previously unknown poem, published by Agnieszka Niewiadomska in the“Melusina” (2015, no. 1), from a handwritten silva rerum by Aleksander Minor – cupbearer (cześnik)of Chełm and the author of various texts, mostly occasional texts. “The Description of Witów”(Opisanie Witowa) is a panegyric piece, praising the former mansion in Witów (Lesser Poland region). The paper attempts to establish the historical, cultural, and literary (especially in the rhetorical tradition and nobleman poetry topics aspects) contexts of the poem. The juxtapositionof literary conventions with reality known from archives and on-site research allows to post a question concerning the methods and capabilities of recording reality in literature ofthe second half of the 17th century. The discovery of Minor’s poem is also a contribution to reflecton the legitimacy of researching on non-remarkable texts, which value for literary history is based not only on the quality of literary features.
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The sacral architecture of the interwar Volyn was one of the realizations of the national idea and reflected the nation-building processes in the interwar Poland, which were visualized on the levels of both space and objects. The formation of a new architectural layer became a symbol of socio-cultural and civilizational transformations, which took place in the region in 1920-30s. The integration of stylistically new objects into the existing urban environment meant transferring new social ideologemes and spiritual values and, as a result, creating a new symbolic system. At the same time, preserving old temples (as well as defensive buildings) in this environment made use of the past for the purpose of the present. Political changes in the second half of the 20th century concluded into a dual attitude to the sacral heritage of the interwar period in Volyn, which reflected the ideo-logical motivation of the “memory-oblivion” paradigm formation. On the one hand, the existence of this monument group was denied (they didn’t match the socialistic cultural model). On the other hand, the artistic value and esthetic potential criteria dominated in evaluation of certain buildings. The problem of the temple construction and heritage preservation in Volyn arises because of the essentiality of this process not only to regional history, but to the history of Poland, Ukraine and Europe in general.
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The paper contains six parts, whith examine various concrete cultural, historical and linguistic problems about Proto-Bulgarian. These six Protobulgarica Varia demonstrate the complexity of the connection between ethnic and linguistic identity. The authors of the paper do not accept the firm relation of the Proto-Bulgarian language and culture only towards Turkic or Indo-Iranian languages. Five groups of arguments on problem reactualization about ethnic and linguistic belonging are discussed.
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