Język Polski
English
'An Agent Must be a Human Without Conscience'. Lecture by Captain Czesław Mackiewicz from the Voivodeship Office of Public Security (WUBP) in Poznań on Working with Agents, Delivered During the Briefing of District Commanders of the Citizens’ Militia (MO) in Poznań on 20 November 1947
Marcin Jurek
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1096-575X
Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Oddział w Poznaniu
Bio(b. 1988), PhD, a historian, graduate of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Employed at the Historical Research Office of the Institute of National Remembrance in Poznań. He specialises in the history of the communist movement in Greater Poland (Wielkopolska). Author of a book W polskiej Wandei. Komunistyczna Partia Polski w województwie poznańskim w czasach II Rzeczypospolitej [In the Polish Vendée. The Communist Party of Poland in the Poznań Voivodeship during the Second Polish Republic] (2021)
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 900-918
Publication date: 2023-03-29
https://doi.org/10.48261/ARPRL211924
PDF (Język Polski)
Abstract
The published document is a paper delivered by Captain Czesław Mackiewicz from the Voivodeship Office of Public Security (WUBP) in Poznań during a briefing of district commanders of the Citizens’ Militia, which took place on 19–20 November 1947 in Poznań. The purpose of the speech was to familiarise militia functionaries with the secrets of acquiring and then working with agents. The previous experience showed that MO officers encountered serious difficulties in this field. In the introduction, the model assumptions of the militia’s instructions for handling agents were discussed, and the figure of Czesław Mackiewicz, who had already gained considerable experience in the security apparatus (including the fight against the independence underground), was introduced. The source document is an interesting testimony to the presented methods of recruiting collaborators, using blackmail or setting a model agent as a person devoid of any moral resistance. The clues given by Mackiewicz also show the role that was envisaged for the bodies of the Citizen’s Militia in the first years of the People’s Republic of Poland.
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