Belorussian-Lithuanian Political and Economic Relations (1990–2015)

Author(s): Eugeniusz Mironowicz / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

During the first years of their independence a pivotal role in mutual relations of Lithuania and Belarus was played by historic symbols related to their many centuries-old belonging to one state – the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. For many years there was a problem of un-demarcated border between the two countries. But leaders of the two countries were flexible and compromise, so all the thorny issues were resolved without special incidents. The accession of Lithuania to NATO and the European Union as well as association agreements between Belarus and the Russian Federation were factors hindering the bilateral relations. The EU’s sanctions against Minsk obliged Vilnius to restrict its contacts and cooperation with Belarus. Lithuanian’s leaders sought to preserve some margin of independence and maintained the development of economic relations with Belarus. For Minsk, Lithuania was very important due to the port of Klaipėda through which a majority of its goods exported and imported by the sea were transported. The fact that Lithuania and Belarus belong to different military political camps and economic alliances hampers neither their economic cooperation nor fairly good bilateral relations. Due to its economic and political interests, Lithuania was forced several times to distance itself from the policy of the EU towards Belarus. From the perspective of Minsk, Lithuanian foreign policy was more predictable than of other neighbouring countries belonging to NATO and EU.

Emanuel Halicz – More than Scientist’s Profile

Author(s): Michał Kozłowski / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Emanuel Halicz (1921–2015) was a historian of the 19th century. In 1939 he began his studies at the Ukrainian university in Lviv. In June of 1941 he was evacuated to the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. From 1943 a political officer in the Polish people’s Army. A member of the Polish Workers’ Party/Polish United Workers’ Party. In 1950 he earned a Ph.D. degree at the Jagiellonian University, Cracow, and was delegated from the army to the Institute for Training Scientific Cadres, where he was employed in 1952. From 1957 he was a lecturer at Feliks Dzerzhinsky Military Political Academy. In 1960 he became associate professor. A member of the committee of the Polish and Soviet Academies of Sciences created to edit and publish historical sources to the period of the January 1863 Uprising. He lost his job in the aftermath of March ’68. In 1971 he emigrated to Denmark, and was demoted to the rank of private. In 1972–1982 he was professor at Odense University, in 1982–1990 at the University of Copenhagen. He collaborated with the Polish émigré periodical Zeszyty Historyczne.

Walka z „babkami” o zdrowie kobiet: medykalizacja przerywania ciąży w Polsce w latach pięćdziesiątych i sześćdziesiątych XX wieku

Author(s): Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2017

In 1956 the communist state authorities liberalized the anti-abortion law that the Polish People’s Republic inherited from the interwar period. Using the rhetoric of women’s health and framing their decision as a safety measure, the legislators intended to curb the high number of clandestine abortion procedures performed outside the realm of socialist medicine. As I argue in my paper, in the official political and medical discourse abortion legislation passed in Poland in the 1950s constituted an element of the war against traditional medicine which was waged by the authorities of socialist Poland. One of the targets of this fight were “granny midwives”: traditional folk female healers who were helping peasant women in many aspects of their reproductive lives and who were customarily accused of performing high numbers of criminal abortions. Thus it was against these “granny midwives” that the socialist state had to fight over the life and health of Polish women. Presenting abortion as an intricate medical procedure whose success depended on the skills of a highly qualified and experienced personnel, socialist doctors and authorities did not only medicalise abortion, but also pathologised it, depicting the termination of a pregnancy as a disease requiring the care of a professional medical practitioner. What was also at stake at the fight against “granny midwives” was the shift from pre-modern, traditional healing practices to modern, scientific medicine that was regarded as a tenet of state socialism.

Problem, którego miało nie być. Język milicyjnych dokumentów poświęconych prostytucji w latach 1956–1969

Author(s): Anna Dobrowolska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2017

History of prostitution is both a fascinating and a controversial topic. Yet, it still has not been thoroughly researched by historians, especially when it comes to the postwar history of Poland. The purpose of his article is to deepen our understanding of prostitution in the postwar Poland. To achieve that the author has analysed the language used by the Civic Militia (Polish: Milicja Obywatelska) to describe this phenomenon in the 1960s. Both the methods of historical source analysis and historical sociology are used to accomplish that. The sources include written orders, reports and notes produced by the Civic Militia officers and stored in the Police archives. Furthermore, the professional journals such as the Służba MO have been carefully researched to observe the development of a specific expert discourse on prostitution. The language of these texts turns out to be deeply rooted in the traditional vision of female sexuality. On the other hand, the sources show a visible change in the Civic Militia’s attitude towards prostitution and the professionalisation of its operations.

Krótki kurs historii „kobiet”. Kobiety w języku partii komunistycznej w Polsce 1945–1989

Author(s): Natalia Jarska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2017

The purpose of the article is to analyse the discourse formulated by the communist party in postwar Poland (1944–1989) on the category of “woman”. The author attempts to answer the question about what was understood by this category, what traits were attributed to women, in what way their social roles were perceived and what roles were postulated for them. Women in the understanding of the party and its activists made a separate group with its own identity. The way in which this category of “women” was constructed was based on the party’s ideology, but also on quite traditional concepts of gender, which resulted in certain contradictions: on the one hand the fight against stereotypes of women and their roles was proclaimed, while on the other some of them were shaped and strengthened. This was to serve political purposes: to mobilise women to “build socialism” in areas seen as “feminine” (for instance health and social care, household management, etc.). Conclusions drawn from the analysis lead us to a different thesis than the one formulated by Eva Fodor for Hungary; she claims that the “female subject/communist personality” was subordinate to that of male. In Poland the discourse of the communist party sought to incorporate values and roles it saw as female into the construction of a socialist society, without suggesting the inferiority of women.

Generał Zygmunt Duszyński – dowódca polskiego frontu nadmorskiego. Zarys biografii

Author(s): Jarosław Pałka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2017

The following article provides an outline of the biography of Zygmunt Duszyński, the Deputy Minister of National Defence and the chief of the Main Inspectorate of Training in the late ‘50s and the early ‘60s. This prewar reserve officer during the Nazi occupation served in the underground communist guerrilla (People’s Guard/People’s Army), where he was a close co-operator of Marian Spychalski, which paved him the way to the highest positions in the afterwar army. In 1947 Duszyński – as one of the youngest officers of the People’s Polish Army – became a general; right after the war he was leading an infantry division, he also successfully fought the Polish afterwar anti-communist resistance movement. During the Stalinist purges he was “sidelined”. In the 1956, when Władysław Gomułka took the power, Duszyński became the Deputy Chief of General Staff, then the Deputy Minister of National Defence, he was also a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party. He was perceived as a high-class general and a specialist, in the case of World War III he was supposed to lead a Polish Front within the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact against NATO. In the mid-1960s, due to the internal political turmoil within the leadership of both the party and the army (a conflict between the party’s fractions called “puławianie”, “natolińczycy” and “partisans”), he was removed from power.

Zanim został ministrem. O kontaktach Ryszarda Zakrzewskiego z wywiadem PRL

Author(s): Krzysztof Tarka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2017

After the Second World War Ryszard Zakrzewski (1913–1994) was a well-known exile political and social activist in Great Britain. In the late 1940s he became one of the leaders of the Polish Socialist Party in emigration. He was also active in the Polish Ex-Combatants’ Association and the Federation of Poles in Great Britain. In 1956, the intelligence of the Polish People’s Republic got interested in his person. Over the next few years Zakrzewski maintained contacts with intelligence officers, employed as diplomats at the Polish Embassy in London. Despite the fact that he was not formally recruited, he provided information about activities of certain political groups on emigration, especially socialists. And, as evidenced by documents, he was paid money by some of his contacts. And it was also him, who sought to made his talks of political nature. When his contacts were exposed by British counterintelligence, he ended his collaboration. In the following years Zakrzewski continued to participate actively in the political life of the Polish emigration, and in 1989 he became a minister of the last Polish government in exile.

Zdjęcia lotnicze i materiał DNA w procesie identyfikacji skazanych na karę śmierci i rozstrzelanych w Polsce w latach 1944–1956 – zarys problematyki

Author(s): Milena Bykowska-Witkowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2017

An individual approach to the process of identifying fallen victims of armed conflicts in the 20th century enjoys widespread popularity in Western Europe (Germany, Holland), Central and Eastern Europe (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Anglo-Saxon countries (especially USA) and Russia. Each of them is characterized by different identity determination resulting from the circumstances surrounding the death of a murdered person. The development of technology makes it possible for us to use methods that were inaccessible ten years ago: DNA comparative studies that ultimately verify the identity of a victim. The studies have been used for over twenty years to restore the identity people who were murdered and lost in the aftermath of the armed conflict in former Yugoslavia, especially Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Poland, the identification of bone remains was carried out in certain individual cases, such as the skull of Ludwik Szymański, a Polish officer murdered in Katyn. Mass comparative studies of the DNA of the wanted people and their families were first used in Poland against anti-communist soldiers of the independence underground, who were sentenced to death in 1944–1956 by military district courts and shot in the prison in Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw.The article presents the research methods used in Poland, such as the analysis of source materials, geo-radar survey and comparative research of DNA material on the example of the largest works. The aim of the paper is to present sources materials that have contributed to locating and then estimating the size of burial fields. The author also describes other methods of identifying victims, critically presenting each of them.

Spotkanie Adama Michnika z Antonio Rubbi, przedstawicielem Włoskiej Partii Komunistycznej, w listopadzie 1976 roku

Author(s): Bartłomiej Kapica / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2017

War and Piety in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Late Middle Ages

Author(s): Stephen C. Rowell / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

As the prophet of the Gentiles, Job states, the life of Man upon earth is a warfare. During the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries war against the Tatars and later the Turks and increasingly the Muscovites impinged considerably on the Catholic and Orthodox populations of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. War and its consequences made their mark on devotions (to St George, St Casimir, the Ten Thousand Military Martyrs) and church and chantry building; pilgrimage contributions were sidelined for rebuilding churches as well as castles destroyed by the Tatars. The spoils of war were displayed publicly in Vilnius (Wilno) cathedral and thanksgiving for victory and intercession for the fallen took physical form in the building of churches by both Catholic and Orthodox leaders. Personal and patriotic memory of the dead was visualised publicly in religious buildings. Growing traditions of organising public processions around the city of Vilnius placed the Kletsk (Klecko) memorial church of St George clearly on the annual calendar. In the documentary record war was both a literary topos and a harsh everyday reality.

Spadkobiercy wojewody wileńskiego Dowgirda

Author(s): Wojciech Budzisz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

The article presents the fate of the property left by Jan Dowgird (Jonas Daugirdas), Palatine of Vilnius. Only a part of his possessions was inherited by his descendants: son Andruszko Dowgirdowicz and two daughters: Anna (Anuszka), married first to Juszko Gojcewicz, then to Iwan Ilinicz, and Olena (Oluszka), wife of kniaź Pietko Świrski. The fate of the estates given to these daughters and inherited by their children is a perfect example of establishing or depreciation of the importance of the respective families of their husbands.

Duszpasterstwo jezuitów nieświeskich w XVII–XVIII wieku. Między ideałem potrydenckim a lokalnymi uwarunkowaniami

Author(s): Andrea Mariani / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

The paper presents the pastoral activity of Jesuits in Nieśwież (Niasvizh) on the basis of manuscript sources preserved in the Roman Archive of the Society of Jesus. After considering the situation of the Jesuit fathers in this residential city of the Radziwiłł family, the author analyses some of the typical aspects of post-tridentine Catholicism, such as the cult of saints and relics and the activity of pious confraternities.

O czym milczą kroniki klasztorów grodzieńskich (II połowa XVII – XVIII wiek)

Author(s): Hanna Paulouskaya / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

There search is based on eight chronicles written down in five Grodno (Hrodna) monasteries in the second half of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century. The content of the chronicles and the ways of its presentation allow the author to analyse the texts and find out topics and points missed. These omissions indicate chronicles as a literary genre, tell us about the goals of writing them down and about the specifics of the authors, give special value to any information included in the chronicles as an exception.

Tumult wileński 1755 roku i jego reperkusje

Author(s): Tomasz Szwaciński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

At the end of August 1755 at the tribunal in Wilno (Vilna, Vilnius) there was a bloody incident. It was a symptom of intensifying rivalry between the factions in Lithuania. Both sides – the camps around the Radziwiłł and the Czartoryski families – accused each other of lawlessness and sent the relevant ‘diaries’ to the royal court in Dresden, and Michał Czartoryski asked Russia for help before the resumption of the Lithuanian tribunal in 1756.

Uczestnicy sejmików kowieńskich w czasach Augusta III i Stanisława Augusta Poniatowskiego – teoria i praktyka

Author(s): Monika Jusupović / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

The article is an attempt at evaluating the approximate number of participants in sejmiki (dietines), based on narrative sources and signatures in the sejmik records. Furthermore, the question of participation of the different social classes (i.e. nobility, senators, dignitaries, clergy) in sejmiki is raised. Special attention is paid to the presence of officials from Kowno (Kaunas) district, less to those from other districts. Mentioned are also persons leading the sittings and those who had actual impact on the sessions.

Szukając przodków. Poszukiwanie rodowodu przez podkomorzego żmudzkiego Jakuba Ignacego Nagórskiego w II połowie XVIII wieku

Author(s): Janus Drungilas / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

The article gives an analysis of the search for the genesis of a family settled at the end of the sixteenth century in Samogitia, undertaken in the second half of the eighteenth century by the chamberlain (podkomorzy) of Samogitia Jakub Ignacy Nagórski (d. 1799). First, the armorial by Kasper Niesiecki, edited not long before, has been examined. Later, a chronicle of a family of the same name has been found, a family bearing the coat of arms Leszczyc, based in Poland, in the Łęczyca district. This chronicle, written down between the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth century, became an incentive for the Nagórski family from Samogitia, bearing the Pobóg coat of arms, to create a similar chronicle of their own. Finally, it could be established that the Nagórski family came to Samogitia from Poland, from the Łęczyca district; although a real genealogical connection with the Polish counterpart could not be made. The ancestor was to become Jakub, living in the sixteenth century in Poland, father of Marcin, the first family member who arrived in Samogitia. This ‘combined’ lineage was convenient for Jakub Ignacy Nagórski, the initiator of the search, who – thanks to his status and his choice of ancestor – ‘immortalised’ the name of Jakub in the family’s genealogical consciousness.

Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie w historiografii niemieckiej Podstawy, prace, perspektywy

Author(s): Mathias Niendorf / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

The subject matter is German-language studies on the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its authors, as long as they understood themselves as Germans. Most of the works are thesis to gain qualifications. Their time frame extends from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Theyare considered in the context of the German academic system. In conclusion remarks are made on the current state of historical writing on Lithuanian matters in Germany and their perspectives.

Obraz Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego w wielotomowej syntezie Historia Litwy

Author(s): Jūratė Kiaupienė / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

The article is a brief presentation of a project of a History of Lithuania, in numerous volumes, prepared and edited by the Institute of History of Lithuania. Described are the parts on the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, an annex gives information on the content of the consecutive volumes.

Bibliografia prac historyków litewskich dotyczących historii Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego za lata 1990–2015

Author(s): Zigmantas Kiaupa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

Białoruska historiografia Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego po 1991 roku

Author(s): Lubou Kozik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

During Soviet times the existence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was considered an occupation of Belarus. Together with the theory about the origins of the old Russian [sic!] nation it supported the unification of the Belarusian territories with Russia. At the beginning of the 1990s in independent Belarus the so-called “national state” conception of history was developed; its adherents considered the Grand Duchy of Lithuania a Belarusian-Lithuanian state and preferred political history. The next changes occurred in the mid-1990s, when some returned to historical views from Soviet times, others remained on the national historical positions. It is apparent in the evaluations of the founding of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the unions, and the foreign policy (especially towards Moscow). The article points out to the main directions in research and to major editions of sources to the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.