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The century that has passed since the European outbreak of the first world-wide conflictalso witnessed the most radical changes in the nature of power, its manifestations and itseffects. Power was aligned in accordance with the political and legal order developed bythe United States, as manifested in the Charter of the United Nations. Power evolved alsoin terms of form together with the emergence of a new European model and as a resultof the ‘digital revolution’, which enabled groups or even individuals to challenge the statein areas which had previously seemed restricted to the government. However, the fundamentalforces that drive power still shape the world order.
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The purpose of the article is the presentation of the most important facts concerning the situation in Vietnam in 1940–1945 with particular focus on the independence efforts of the population of that country ended in a partial success in the form of proclamation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September 1945. The text includes, among others, the geopolitical importance of the French Indochina in the context of the War on the Pacific, the policies of the colonial administration, Japan’ s activities aimed at taking the control over Vietnam, the activity of the local communist movement and the role of the United States in setting in motion the process of decolonisation of the Indochinese Peninsula.
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The purpose of this text is to attempt a synthetic portrayal of the issue of memory of the Second World War as a source of inspiration in Polish contemporary art since 1989. The year 1989, which marked the beginning of systemic transformation in Poland, was also the beginning of the process of transformation of the paradigm of collective memory of World War II. The appearance of issues omitted in the institutionalized discourse of the period of the Polish People’ s Republic contributed to an increase in artists’ interest in the mechanisms of constructing the collective image of the past. The particular ‘memory boom,’ which involved a sharp increase in the number of publications on so-called ‘white spots’ in the history of Poland, also manifested itself in the visual arts, among others, in the works of Mirosław Bałka, Zbigniew Libera, Wilhelm Sasnal, Piotr Uklański and Artur Żmijewski. Most of the works created in the 1990s and in the first decade of the 21st century concerned the memory of the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations during the German occupation. In many cases, the means of artistic expression employed by their creators evoked controversy and objections by those who found them inappropriate. The basic objections raised against artists referring to ‘war issues’ were: the instrumental references to the issue of the Holocaust, dictated by trends, and the lack of deep reflection on the attitudes ofperpetrators, victims and witnesses of the events at that time. The fact that artists drew from collective images brought with it other effects also. Many works created in this period served the following functions: c a t h a r t i c – involving the purification through art of the recipient’ s feelings and emotions, h e u r i s t i c – resulting from treating creation and its outcomes as a research process whose important elements include the posing of hypotheses and their verification, m n e m o t e c h n i c a l – being an exercise in memory through the medium of art and, finally – c o m m e m o r at i v e, embedded – following Pierre Nora – in the era of commemoration and the call to remembrance. The manners of portraying themes of memory of the war in Polish contemporary art since 1989 seem to have confirmed the social aspect of artistic creation, involving – in the case being discussed – the exposing of, but also the formation of collective images of the past.
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The policy of the communist authorities towards writers and artists in the 1945 to 1989 period can be divided into several stages. The first lasted from the end of 1944 to November 1947. The second stage lasted from November 1947 until the end of 1949, when socialist realism was forcibly introduced into all areas of cultural life. The third stage ended at the beginning of 1955, when one could observe a weakening of the authorities (accused of violations of the socialist rule of law). The whole year 1955 and the turn of 1956/1957 is referred to as the “thaw” period. During Władysław Gomułka’s era (October 1956 – December 1970), the attitude adopted by the authorities towards artists remained mostly unchanged. It manifested itself as an ideological offensive and repression of any emerging signs of resistance in that community. When Edward Gierek was in power as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (1970–1980), the policy towards writers and artists evolved in two stages. The first (1971–1976) was characterized by liberalism and pragmatism, as part of a regime’s legitimization strategy. During the second stage, lasting from February 1976 to August 1980, preventive and repressive elements began to prevail in the position taken towards artists, who increasingly voiced opposition towards the authorities. Opposition was to be quashed by more stringent censorship, numerous searches, interrogationof artists and harassment. In 1980 and 1981, the authorities concentrated on ensuring that the managing bodies of the artist/writer associations had the right political credentials, although with no effect. They supported artists with communist party affiliations and unsuccessfully tried to attract the neutral centre and to exploit it. During the martial law period, the authorities adopted a repressive policy towards artists, but they failed to put an end to their boycott of public institutions. The attempt to use artists to legitimize the activities of the authorities in the perestroika period was only partially successful. Finally, the cultural policy of the authorities was put aside altogether after the political changes of 1989.
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The article describes diplomatic operations carried out by Poland’s MP and executiveminister in Sofia Adam Tarnowski, one of the leading representatives of Polish diplomacyin the Second Republic of Poland. He was the longest serving Polish diplomat in the Kingdom of Bulgaria (1930–1941). Later he emigrated to London to hold prominent functions: a general secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an MP in the Czechoslovakiangovernment in exile, Minister of Foreign Affairs during and after the war in the governments of Tomasz Arciszewski and Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski. Chronological dividinglines of the study are: the fall of Poland in September 1939 and Bulgaria breaking off itsdiplomatic relations with Poland in March 1941. At that time, the Polish diplomatic post in Sofia was one of the very few legations which dealt with diplomatic issues despite the German seizure of Poland. When the war had broken out, Tarnowski began conductinga serious diplomatic campaign towards establishing contacts with his occupied motherland,helping people threatened by Nazi repressions, and informing foreign governments of crimes and destruction taking place in Poland. Tarnowski was supported by a group of Bulgarian diplomats sympathising with Poland. They stayed in Berlin and occupied Warsaw and provided priceless services to our country by carrying money, letters, and information about the Nazi crimes in the occupied Poland in their diplomatic bags. Our MP in Sofia would give shelter to Polish refugees, protect valuable objects belonging to the national heritage, and organize redeployment of Polish troops from Bulgaria into Turkey. The most spectacular operation managed by Tarnowski was the evacuation of a group of several dozen Polish airmen (in September 1940) by sea from the Black Sea coast to Turkey. A very important element of Tarnowski’s operations was the intervention with the Bulgarian government to help Polish scientists from the Jagiellonian University and the AGH University of Science and Technology arrested by Germans in November 1939. Tarnowski talked to Professor Bogdan Fiłow, President of the Bulgarian Academy of Science, a world famous archaeologist, who was about to become Prime Minister of Bulgaria. The sources of the article include: unknown historical documents from AAN, published diplomatic and intelligence documents, journals and recollections. Bulgarian sources and analyses, including video footage, were also used.
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The August Agreement of 1980 and the creation of free trade unions in Poland caused anxiety among leaders of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). The development in the neighbouring People’s Republic of Poland had significant impact on the geopolitical environment of the communist German Democratic Republic. The leader of the SED and the GDR head of state, Erich Honecker, strongly supported the idea of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Poland. However, other East European communist rulers were not willing to go that far, at least in the short term. Under these circumstances, East German authorities tried to influence the leaders of the Polish United Worker’s Party (PZPR), Poland’s ruling communist party, and urged them to impose countrywide martial law. They pinned their hopes on general Wojciech Jaruzelski, who was designated prime minister in February 1981. However, Honecker soon became disappointed and came to the conclusion that new leadership in Poland was necessary. At that time, SED apparatchiks and East German diplomats held many talks with their PZPR colleagues, including local leaders, members of the Central Committee and even the Political Bureau. Following on from this, those among the Polish communists unhappy with the hesitant policy of their leader Stanisław Kania were encouraged to seek for a new leadership. Honecker hoped that, at its eleventh plenary session in June 1981, the PZPR Central Committee would overthrow Kania and bring about political change in Poland. This calculation failed and in July, Kania was even re-elected party leader at the ninth PZPR congress. No change in the politics of Poland seemed possible without Jaruzelski, the head of the army and still a popular figure. In the early Autumn of 1981, GDR authorities received hints that Jaruzelski no longer supported Kania and had become more willing to impose martial law. Kania’s opponents among the Central Committee, strongly supported by the SED and the Soviets, finally managed to oust him from power in October 1981. The Committee appointed Jaruzelski its new First Secretary. Less than two months later, martial law was imposed in Poland. From Honecker’s perspective, his minimum goal was reached.
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Illegal emigrations of football players from the People’s Republic of Poland were quitefrequent, but in most cases they were not treated as high profile in the mass media. The only exception was the 1988 escape of Andrzej Rudy, a player in Poland’s national football team. The examples of emigrating athletes discussed in the text have been divided into two categories: defectors per se (those who left their teams’ foreign training camps), and peoplewho refused to go back to Poland after legally obtaining a consent to travel to a Western country (or Yugoslavia). The first case of an athlete illegally leaving Poland took place inthe 1950s, while the last one in the last months of the break-through year of 1989. It wasusually footballers playing for Silesian clubs who opted for illegal emigration to West Germany. Family reasons were often quoted as a basis for making such a decision – numerousdefectors were able to prove their German roots. The 1980s saw a particular intensificationof escapes, which was related both to deteriorating economic conditions in Poland and more liberal passport policies at the end of the decade. It is worth noting that the communistauthorities changed their attitude towards the phenomenon. While in the 1960s the secret police would keep the defectors and their families under surveillance, 20 years later the government would simply register anyone “refusing to return to Poland”.
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After knocking down communism in 1989, Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe were burdened with a task of settling accounts with their totalitarian past both in institutional dimension – through legal compensation for the victims of crimes and persecutions, trying their perpetrators and developing institutional standards preventing functionaries of the former communist secret services and their co-workers from having an impact on public life (lustration) and also enabling the victims to have an insight into the documents collected in the past on them. Since, in the centre of the lustration debate an issue of exploring, developing and settling accounts with one of fundamental pillars of the totalitarian system i.e. former security forces was placed, one of the elements of settling accounts with the communist past was the creation of institutions responsible for taking over the archives of the communist special forces and revealing the network of agents of thepolitical secret service, as well, as conducting research and educational activities in that area. The text analyses the conditions in which that process occurred in Poland and her bordering countries: Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Russia.The concluding paragraphs of the article contain the assessment that the process of creating the institutions responsible for taking over the materials of the state security organs, their development and making them available was a part of a political ritual of transformation from totalitarianism to democracy. That transformation was experienced by all post-communist countries of Central Europe which chose a democratic variant of social development. The institutions established in order to accomplish that goal have similar competences apart from investigative functions possessed only by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. Lesser successes were achieved as far as the attempts to legal persecution of the perpetrators of communist crimes were concerned and it relates to the entire geographical area. The state of law proved to be an inefficient tool in bringing the guilty ones to justice within the course of passing years. Settling accounts with communism was never done in Russia. One may think that Russian leaders came to the conclusion that society is not ready yet for such a move since it would entail huge social and political costs and that its full realisation would be possible only after the natural generation exchange has been accomplished. The author puts forward a thesis that a future researcher of the historyof the post-communist era in Europe will be able to clearly distinguish the borderlines of the countries which have settled their accounts with a totalitarian past and of those where this has not been done with all the system, social and moral consequences of that fact.
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Radio Free Europe was one of the most effective tools of Cold War in the hands of the western countries. The fact which is relatively unknown is that one of its units was conducting widespread surveys primarily aimed at establishing the level of the Station’s popularity in the countries to which it directed its broadcasts. Somehow additionally, the Station collected the information which today allows us to obtain the picture of the Polish public opinion on various topics, among others, on the issues concerning international affairs. International affairs are very closely linked with the internal situation of the country and are mainly perceived from this perspective. Particularly interesting are the opinions of the Poles on the Arab-Israeli War which got a lot of publicity in Poland, above of all, in the form of an Anti-Semitic witch-hunt symbolised by March 1968. Another interesting aspectis the attitude of the Poles to the problems of racism in the United States. Anti-American opinions, unfavourable to racism, are mixed with xenophobia which many Poles did not conceal. From the perspective of the RFE studies, the Polish People’s Republic emerges as the country of dying hopes, deepening stagnation, and the Poles as the opponents of the system who are hostile towards the USSR yet are not willing to risk a mutiny or a protest. In spite of all, in their majority, they assumed positions of adapting to and conforming with. Simultaneously, the surveys recorded also the opinions of the RFE employees who prepared the reports; these people often did not understand the realities of the studied countries and had a tendency to see the world only in black and white colours.
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In spring of 1981, conservative forces within the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) sprang to life, articulating a necessity to strengthen the Party ideologically and to engage into a decisive struggle against “Solidarity” Trade Union. One of the main representatives of the conservative fraction was the Katowice Party Forum (KPF). The founding meeting of the Katowice Party Forum was held on 15 May 1981. The Forum was established at the Katowice Regional Committee of the PUWP under a patronage of its first secretary, Andrzej Żabiński. In the first stage of its activities, the Forum consisted of over 100 people who were mostlyactivists of the Polish United Workers’ Party from the Katowice Region, functional activists of the industry trade unions and officers of the Citizens’ Militia (MO) and Secret Police (SB). The executive body of the Katowice Party Forum was the Programming Council consisting of highly positioned functionaries of central and regional echelons of the PUWP. The Council was chaired by a member of the Politburo of the PUWP Central Committee, Gerard Gabryś and a Marxist ideologist, Wsiewołod Wołczew. The main objective identified by the Forum activists was a struggle for keeping the socialist system intact and maintaining the ideologicalline of the communist party. First of all, the KPF members underlined a critical diagnosis of the Party condition, for which they blamed the PUWP Management. As particularly dangerous, the Forum regarded the functioning of linear structures of reformative, grass-roots, internal movement described as revisionist and right-wing. The Forum accused the members of that movement of the will to transform the PUWP into a liberal and social democratic party. The Forum activists were equally critical of the “Solidarity” movement, accusing trade union leaders of exploiting workers and creating counterrevolutionary structures striving for the change of the system. The Katowice Party Forum became soon a subject of a massive criticism by the PUWP activists and was fiercely opposed by the leaders of the Silesian “Solidarity”. Party leaders accused the Forum activists of creating an illegal fraction within the Party and attempts at hindering the process of democratization in the country. Unfavourable attitude of the Party Management led to the Forum losing support of a part of the PUWP activists who, so far, were well disposed towards it, and its initial activity came to a halt. In July 1981, also the delegates to the 9th PUWP Congress negatively assessed the functioning of the KFP. The Katowice Party Forum ceased to exist in September 1981 and then it was transformed into the Katowice Marxist-Leninist Seminar.
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Specific situation of Yugoslavia – the communist state not belonging neither to the West nor to the Eastern Block, active and dexterous in its foreign policy-meets interest of Serbian and Croatian historians. The collapse of Yugoslavia in 90s evoked focus mainly on the national issues amongst academics from both states. At the end of 90s, researchers began to survey Yugoslav foreign policy and position of Tito’s state in the Cold War constellation. Nowadays, both in Croatia and Serbia interest of historians is focused on such problems as Yugoslav policy towards the Third World as a leading state of the non-aligned movement, American policy towards Yugoslavia and Tito’s oscillation in his attitude towards both blocks. Exceptof the few very important monographs, documents’ collections and articles about relations between Yugoslavia and the Eastern Block, especially treating first decade after the World War II, this field still needs to be the object of survey. There is also a few relevant studies about cultural impact of the West and the communist bloc in Yugoslavia, reflecting political and ideological concerns of the divided world and their influence in Tito’s state. Surveys about Yugoslav position in international relations, mainly carried out in Serbia, have not exceeded years 1945–1970 and there is still need to research Cold War problematic from the Balkan perspective.
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In Christianity, the goals of the spiritual life, namely sanctity and perfection, can also be considered from a male and female perspective. The female perspective would mean, most of all, the reality of belonging to God, a close relationship in which we welcome the gratuitous gift leading to divinization. The male perspective is more mission-oriented and moral in its character; it focuses on an obligation, a concrete response to the gift of love. We can say that the perspective based on a relationship is more feminine, and the one which evokes moral ability rather masculine. The spiritual life, as such, should include a specific balance between these two factors.
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The present book review describes the monumental germen Edition of all Works of St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), published by Herder in two volumes (2015) and edited by U. Dobhan and E. Peeters. Each from the seventeens Works of St Teresa proceds a hight quality introduction. The glossary, maps and some facsimiles of St Teresa's Handwriting makes the Reading easier and pleasant. The first time in the history in one Edition are published both Versions of the Way of Perfection.
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Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania each claim the Catholic nun as their own daughter, based on her multiethnic origins.
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In the 16th and 17th centuries the history of Jewish printing in the Republic of Poland boils down to the history of printing shops operating in the royal cities of Kraków and Lublin. Despite the efforts launched by the Jews to start new shops in Poznań and Zamość, nothing came out of it. The situation changed toward the end of the 17th century, when printing houses in Lublin and Kraków stopped printing Hebrew and Yiddish books. Then King John III Sobieski gave his consent to the establishment of a new Jewish printing shop in Żółkiew, his private town. This is when the famous Amsterdam printer Uri Fayvush Halevi came to Poland, who already earlier produced books destined for the polish market, similarly as other Jewish printers active in Amsterdam. Between 1692 and 1705 it published some 20 titles in Poland. The Council of Four Lands looked at the situation that emerged after the new publishing house was established in 1696 and 1699, issuing a relevant ordinance on either occasion. Some years later Fayvush returned to Amsterdam and the Żółkiew printing establishment was taken over by his grandsons. It became the largest Hebrew printing house in Poland and for close to 70 years it was the only Jewish printing shop to operate in the country.
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The aim of the article is to shed some light on the output of Rozalia Saulson, who lived in the 19th century. Her works should be seen in the broad context of Jewish, German and Polish culture and literature. She wrote in Polish, producing works in diverse forms and on diverse subjects: works of a religious, lay, didactic or patriotic nature, from a guide to the Sudetes to translations and original prayers as well as belles lettres. The potential audience could be both Christians and Jews (Poles professing the Mosaic faith), adults and children alike. It is worth emphasizing that the ideas of acculturation and progress, so characteristic of the latter half of the 19th century, remain valid to this day. It is also possible to identify the strong impression they made on Rozalia Saulson, who was associated with progressive Warsaw circles, on her views and works..
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The history of the martyrdom of the Polish Roman Catholic clergy is still being researched. The present article refers to the content of one of the sources presenting the life in KL Dachau, where the largest number of clergy were imprisoned during the whole World War II. The source is a personal notebook authored by a member of the Society of St Francis de Sales, a seminarist Wiktor Jacewicz. He managed to survive a period of five years in Dachau. In his notes, we can find a description of different elements from the daily life of the concentration camp in Dachau such as prayer, sacraments, work, study, correspondence and sports. The source is a valuable contribution to our knowledge about the reality of life in KL Dachau.
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The end of the Second World War did not bring an end to partisan activities in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. Resistance began to grow as a result of the Soviet presence in many of these countries, built mostly upon the structures created to fight the Nazis during the German occupation.
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