Historyczne, geograficzne i fortyfikacyjne uwarunkowania obszaru Cyrenajki. Charakterystyka i rola twierdzy Tobruk 1940–1941

Author(s): Andrzej Aksamitowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2014

The article presents an outline of the history of Cyrenajka, from the ancient times until the seventies of the 20th century. The author focuses on the military development of the region as well as on its geographic determinants important for wartime activities. The fundamental part of the article provides a description of the development of the fortification system of the area of Cyrenajka. The author starts the description from the Lebanese-Egyptian borderline presenting the fortresses of Mersa-Matruh and Sidi-Barani, and then moves on to giving a description of the fortress of Bardia and the fortress of Tobruk, constituting the main area of the defense activities in the region of Cyrenajka. The article includes a detailed characterization of the fortress of Tobruk and its division into three (red, blue and green) defensive lines. The article also presents the defense points of the western part of the area of Cyrenajka – the so called desert position – such as the fortresses of Derna, where the huge airport of Martuba was situated, and the desert fortress of El-Mechili. In the summary, the author assesses the military significance of the fortress of Tobruk and the entire area of , for the course of the military actions undertaken during the Second World War as well as the role of the region after 1945.

W stulecie organów bezpieczeństwa Federacji Rosyjskiej – od WCzK do KGB

Author(s): Kazimierz Kraj / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

In the article, in the shortened way, the history of the Soviet organs of the security was introduced, having conceived from VChK, having finished on Committee of State Security Author in the next parts of the article represents the organizational changes of the organs of the security, showing the most important moments in their history. Basic documents (legal files) regulating the activity of represented institutions were talked over

Rozwój ratownictwa w III RP (służby, organizacje, obszary)

Author(s): Robert Borkowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2018

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the current state of the Polish rescue system in the subjective and objective perspective, as well as, to indicate the developing trends of Polish rescue. The contributing considerations introduce a wide range of themes. In the last two decades legal regulations have changed, standards of rescue operations have developed, and specialized high-class emergency equipment has emerged. The specialization of emergency services is systematically progressing, which means that new types of rescue are distinguished (e.g. altitude rescue, ski rescue, psychological rescue). There is therefore a need to constantly update the description and to assess the state of Polish rescue.

The System of Military Higher Education in the Russian Federation

Author(s): Kazimierz Kraj / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2019

This paper briefly looks at the history of military higher education in Russia from the times of Tsar Peter the Great, through the reforms launched in 19th-century Russia, up to the changes that took place in the aftermath of the October Revolution, and once the Bolshevik party came to power. It sheds light on the creation of a new system of military education that had survived until the beginning of the reform of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in 2008. The overriding goal of the reform was to adapt Russia’s military education to the changes that had taken place in the manners, means and methods of conducting military and non-military operations by the armed forces so as to make it more compatible with the syllabi that civil colleges and academies apply for educational purposes. The reform aims to allow officers who are transferred to a reserve status to move more smoothly into civil life. The paper offers an insight into selected military academies in the Russian Federation. It ends with an overview of the conclusions drawn from the research conducted, as well as the author’s individual remarks that highlight the relevance of delving into this sphere of activity and growth of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Condamnées à s’allier. La Pologne et la France à la fin de la Grande Guerre et dans l’immédiat après-guerre (1917–1921)

Author(s): Małgorzata Gmurczyk-Wrońska / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2022

Roman Dmowski and his camp, including Erazm Piltz, used the evolution of French foreign policy and the existence of the Polish National Committee in Paris to pressure the French government to include Polish independence in the Allies’ war aims. France’s increased interest in Polish affairs in late 1917 resulted partly from the loss of its Russian ally and partly from a strong desire to weaken Germany as much as possible. France then began to modify its policy in Eastern Europe and included in its future plans the possibility of including the new Central European states in its alliance system. Finally, in 1921, France and Poland concluded a two-part alliance: a political agreement and a secret military convention. For France, in the political and military spheres, Poland was nothing more than a “rear ally”, an ally against Germany, as well as an ally that raised many objections in the Quai d’Orsay. It also played a very important role for French investors. For Poland, on the other hand, the alliance with France as a victorious power was a very important factor in its foreign policy, because Poland absolutely needed a partner among the European powers.

La question polonaise au cours de la Grande Guerre et pendant la Conférence de la Paix – perspective française

Author(s): Tomasz Schramm / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2022

The Polish question did not arouse much interest in France after the Congress of Vienna, and its importance decreased after the Franco-Prussian War. Both political camps fighting for independence during the First World War based their strategies on cooperation with Russia, which soon proved futile (Dmowski), or on armed action on the side of Austria-Hungary (Piłsudski). France, on the other hand, saw Polish independence not accepted by Russia as a threat at the beginning of the war, and its autonomy within the Empire as the best solution. Its interest in an independent Poland as a bulwark against Germany began in 1917 with the manifesto of the Polish National Committee. Towards the end of the war, the national interests of France and Poland, for it was these and not feelings that determined policy, began to converge. Support for Poland at the peace conference was linked to the desire to weaken Germany. However, this must be qualified, because a detailed analysis shows that in the matter of the membership of Danzig and Upper Silesia, France supported the cautious and less favorable British position.

Zasłużeni dla Francji, zasłużeni dla Polski. Francuscy oficerowie w polskich uczelniach wojskowych, czyli prowadzenie wojny na sposób francuski

Author(s): Lech Maliszewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2022

The importance of the contribution of the officers of the French Military Mission in Poland to the organisation and development of the Higher War School in Warsaw is not sufficiently recognised due to the decreasing knowledge of French among Polish researchers and the difficulties of accessing military archives in France. From its creation in the autumn of 1919 until 1928, when the last French officers completed their training mission, about fifty Frenchmen worked at the Higher War School in Warsaw. Their attitude towards Polish students was generally correct or good, and in the case of some of them, decidedly pro-Polish. During the ten years of the French instructors’ presence, The Higher School of War, being the most important military academy in renaissance Poland and the true cradle of Polish military thought, trained about half of all Polish staff officers serving in the Polish army.

L’engagement militaire français dans la guerre polono-bolchévique et le moment polonais dans la trajectoire de Charles de Gaulle

Author(s): Frédéric Guelton / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2022

French participation in the Bolshevik war is presented in two ways, either minimizing its significance or making it a foregone conclusion of victory. Initial contacts between Polish and French officers are characterized by mutual polite distrust, an expression of differences in military culture and political interests. The crucial involvement in the establishment of military education in Poland and the subsequent active participation of French soldiers in the battle influenced the breaking of the distance. Polish prowess and French method yielded a joint victory. However, the true scale of French participation remains unexplored is requiring further archival research.

La France, la Pologne et l’«esprit de Locarno» dans le projet de pacte oriental (1933–1934)

Author(s): Frédéric Dessberg / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2022

The weakness of the Franco-Polish military alliance stemmed from conflicting perceptions of security. France prioritized possible threats from Germany, while for Poland these threats came from Soviet Russia. This introduced ambiguity into their military cooperation, especially since France preferred a collective security system while Poland favored bilateral agreements. France secured its borders with the Locarno treaties, while for Central Europe it wanted a collective security agreement involving the USSR. Poland’s conclusion of a nonaggression pact with the USSR was an opportunity for France to limit its alliance commitments, which was to take concrete form in the draft Eastern Pact, rejected by Poland as an “Eastern Locarno”. It revealed the limits of the League of Nations’ collective security system and distanced Poland and France from each other, although it did not formally call into question the existing alliance.

L’alliance franco-polonaise et la montée des périls dans la seconde moitié des années 1930

Author(s): Isabelle Davion / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2022

France considered the Franco-Polish alliance of 1921 to be part of a collective security system that included consultation with Czechoslovakia in the event of German aggression. Its position also changed because of the lack of coordination between the Quai d’Orsay and the General Staff, as it was impossible to reconcile the network of alliances in Central Europe with the preparation of a strictly defensive war. The system of collective security deteriorated in the 1930s, and became increasingly distorted thereafter. The right of peoples to self-determination was instrumentalized in the crisis over the Polish minority in Czechoslovakia, which intensified from 1937. The potential for Franco-Polish cooperation was severely undermined by the Sudetenland crisis. Bonnet sought to blame the Polish side in order to exonerate France and justify his own conciliatory stance towards Munich. In the Quai d’Orsay, on the other hand, there were tendencies aware of the devastation of Franco-Polish relations that sought to assess what could be salvaged from them.

Kwestia upamiętnienia ofiar II wojny światowej na forum Bundestagu (2020–2022)

Author(s): Aleksandra Trzcielińska-Polus / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2023

The article analyzes two projects for commemorating World War II victims in Berlin. The source basis are Bundestag documents, i.e., transcripts of plenary sessions, parliamentary questions and government responses, as well as draft resolutions and the resolutions themselves. This is because it is the responsibility of the Bundestag, among other things, to adopt the relevant resolutions on the basis of which the executive bodies implement plans to erect memorials to Nazi victims. The first project concerns a memorial of the Polish victims of the German occupation from 1939 to 1945 (Polen-Denkmal zum Gedenken an die polnischen Opfer der deutschen Besatzung 1939 bis 1945). The second is to document the German occupation throughout Europe (Dokumentationszentrum “Zweiter Weltkrieg und Besatzungsherrschaft”). The implementation of both projects was supported in the coalition agreement of 7.12.2021. However, comparing the pace of work on both projects, it should be noted that preparations for the Documentation Center project are progressing much faster and are finding more support in the government than the site for the commemoration of Polish victims.

Pucz wojskowy w 1980 roku i powstanie Trzeciej Republiki Turcji

Author(s): Paulina Stępniewska-Szydłowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2023

The proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 initiated the process of building the specific position of the Turkish military in the political system of the state. For decades, the military did not perform a subservient function to the state, as implied by the democratic model of civilian control over the military, but conversely exercised guardianship over the political class. As a result, the generals in Turkey’s modern history have staged four successful military coups, each followed by taking control of the state administration and establishing military regimes. Extremely significant from a historical and political perspective was the military putsch carried out in 1980, the consequences of which are still visible today. The depiction and analysis of this event is the main purpose of the article, and although the time frame could be narrowed to the years 1973–1983, the author also refers to a broader historical perspective to demonstrate the causes and consequences of the events described.

Изложба „Католиците в България XVII-XX в.-документални свидетелства от фондовете на Национланата библиотека „Св. св. Кирил и Методий“

Author(s): Radoslav Spasov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2024

Polityczny i ideologiczny wymiar konfliktu z 1948 r. między Związkiem Sowieckim a Jugosławią w świetle raportów belgijskich dyplomatów

Author(s): Inga Kawka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 30/2021

The article concerns the conflict between Tito and Stalin in 1948. The aim of the article is to define how the Belgian diplomacy perceived the split between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and, above all, how it diagnosed its causes and effects. Moreover, the analysis of Belgian diplomatic documents shows the great importance that Western countries attached to the first major breach in the Eastern bloc.

Odwołania do Konstytucji RP z 17 marca 1921 roku i ewolucja rozwiązań konstytucyjnych w projektach ustawy zasadniczej RP z lat 90. XX wieku. Analiza zagadnienia na wybranych przykładach

Author(s): Paweł Skorut / Language(s): Polish Issue: 30/2021

The Polish constitutional drafts from the 1990s were one of the source texts of the 1997 Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Some of them tried very hard to refer to the solutions of the Polish Constitution of 1921. The article carried out an analysis to what extent the individual constitutional drafts referred to the solutions of the 1921 Constitution. The analysis of constitutional drafts and their similarities to the solutions of the 1921 Constitution were carried out on the basis of comparisons regarding, among others, the parliament, the president of Republic of Poland and legislative initiative.

Dyplomacja czechosłowacka wobec sytuacji w Polsce w 1989 roku

Author(s): Jan Rychlík / Language(s): Polish Issue: 30/2021

In 1989, the diplomacy of communist Czechoslovakia watched the political changes in communist Poland moving towards democratization with care and concern. However, due to the passive attitude of the Gorbachev ruler in Moscow, Prague did not intend to take any practical steps towards creating a political bloc proposed by Romania that could stop systemic changes in Poland. Despite the announcement of support for Polish communists, Prague chose to isolate Czechs and Slovaks from Poland and Poles and limit her own reforms to the economic sphere. It also did not open the border with Poland closed in 1981 for individual movement.

Partie tworzące koalicję Zjednoczonych Patriotów (2016− 2019) wobec mniejszości tureckiej i Republiki Turcji

Author(s): Katarzyna Fijołek-Kwaśniewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 30/2021

The aim of this paper is to identify the individual political elements of the United Patriots’ coalition. The nationalist electoral alliance formed in 2016 by Attack, the IMRO -Bulgarian National Movement and National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria took a part of the third Boyko Borissov government. Starting this new partnership with the populist radical right, the GER B has resigned from promoting EU values, including minorities’ rights, much more than before. This coalition established xenophobia and making racists statements as a standard of Bulgarian parliamentary discussion. Its attitude towards the Turkish minority in Bulgaria and the Republic of Turkey shows hostility and prejudice.

Da li je Grimoald bio kotorski episkop krajem XI ili krajem XIII vijeka?

Author(s): Miljan Gogić / Language(s): Montenegrine Issue: 4/2022

Ever since the time of Flaminius Cornelius, in science and literature, it is considered that Grimoald performed his duty as bishop of Kotor at the end of the 11thcentury (1090). In the copy of the manuscript collection entitled Storia delle Bocche di Cattaro di Francesco de Smecchia, which is kept in the Archives of the HAZU in Zagreb, there is information about this Kotor bishop. In that collection, first of all, there is a section about him in which his activities in Kotor are cautiously linked to the Venetian conquest of Kotor in 1378. In the same copy of the collection, there are data that create the possibility of putting forward the assumption that the time of his activity in Kotor can be placed in another period, at the end of the 13thcentury. In the aforementioned manuscript, there is a list of Kotor bishops (18 in total) who performed their duties from the beginning of the 12thto the middle of the 14thcentury. The order of the mentioned Kotor bishops in it, excluding Grimoald, is identical to the one accepted in science. It states that Grimoald was a bishop in 1290. Grimoald‘s activity in Kotor is linked to his pastoral letter that refers to marriages in Kotor. In it, Grimoald presents the circumstances surrounding marriage that were applied in Kotor, and which were not in accordance with church canons. He states that only relatives of the spouses were present during the marriage ceremony, without representatives of the church. This happened, according to Grimoald, for the reason that the spouses were often in the fourth, illegal degree of consanguinity. These norms, the necessity of the presence of members of the clergy at the time of marriage and the prohibition of marriage in the fourth degree of consanguinity were adopted at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), but they were apparently not respected in Kotor at the end of the 13th century. The conclusion of marriage in an illegal degree of kinship, not only in Kotor, but also in other cities of Zeta and Southern Albania at the turn of the 13th-14th century, is also mentioned in the letter of Pope Benedict XI from November 1303, which confirms the allegation from Grimoald‘s episcopal letter.

СТАТИСТИЧКA АНАЛИЗA КАЖЊЕНИХ „КОМИНФОРМОВАЦА“: НАЦИОНАЛНА ПРИПАДНОСТ, ДУЖИНА КАЗНЕ, УЗРАСТ, ПОЛНА СТРУКТУРА, СРОДНИЦИ, ПОВРАТНИЦИ

Author(s): Aleksej J. Timofejev / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 4/2022

The collective demographic portrait of those convicted for sympathies towards the USSR in communist Yugoslavia after 1948 is determined in the article, based on the “List of convicts under the IB-accusion”. The sketch of statistics that we drew from this list gives us a limited number of possibilities because it was only an “operationally useful” list created by revising and shortening previous versions. Thus on the basis of this document, we can conclude that the arrested were relatively young people (20-30 years old), among whom Serbs and Montenegrins dominated numerically, many of whom participated in the Partisan Movement. These statistics support the already widespread scientific hypothesis that the conflict was not an ideological dispute, but was related to the determination of Yugoslavia’s affiliation to the East or the West. The number of Serbs, Bulgarians, Russians and Montenegrins convicted for sympathizing with the USSR was disproportionately higher than the percentage representation of those peoples in the population of Yugoslavia. At that time, the mountaines of Montenegro hid the most ardent supporters of the Soviet Union.

Stari muslimanski nišani u Tuzima

Author(s): Burhan Čelebić / Language(s): Montenegrine Issue: 4/2022

The gravestones from the old Cemetery and the cemetery next to the Nizam Mosque in Tuzi have a lot to do with Malisor steles, stećci and gravestones from Bosnia and Herzegovina that belong to the second half of the 15th and 16th centuries.As Bešlagić states, the Malisor stelae could belong to the 17th and 18th centuries, so the Muslim gravestones from Tuzi are not decorated like the gravestones from Vuksan Lekić, i.e. like the steles of Malisor.Due to the Islamic faith, the decorative art on the gravestones is poorer than these steles and stećci. On the other hand, the Bosnian- Herzegovinian oldest gravestones, who represented all the ornamentation from the stećci, received a slightly poorer decoration because of the Islamic faith, because Islam was against decorating gravestones. All these stories and explanations could chronologically place the Muslim gravestones from Tuzi in the 17th century, as well as the Malisor stelae, because the gravestones were carved from the same Maidan, and this is confirmed by the stelae and pillars that we see in both cemeteries (Old Cemetery and Malisors Cemetery). The connection with the Bosnian-Herzegovinian gravestones and the Tuzi gravestones is very close, but the Tuzi gravestones have a lot of decorative motifs similar to those on the Malisor stelae. Thus, we can say that these gravestones started to be erected when the Malisor women were also on the stelae, because the Malisorians transferred their culture as much as possible to Islam, and this can be seen on the graveoldstones of both religions.