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Editorial
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 5-7
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Articles and studies: Military apparatus of repression 
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Operations of the Internal Troops in the Rzeszów Region (February – April 1945)
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 15-55
In late November and early December 1944, the Internal Troops (WW), which were subordinate to the Department of Public Security, were created. The formation was intended mainly to fight against the Polish independence underground. At the end of January 1945, the 4th company of the 1st Operational Battalion WW arrived in Rzeszów and was assigned to the disposal of the head of the Voivodeship Office of Public Security, Lieutenant Longin Kołarz. In March 1945, based on the 4th company, the 2nd Independent Operational Battalion WW was created.On 26 March 1945, the Internal Troops were reorganised into the Internal
Security Corps (KBW). The WW/KBW operations, which were conducted from February to April 1945 on the territory of the Lubaczów district, were aimed mainly at the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Many soldiers did not accept the communist authorities and the role of the formation, to which they were conscripted. In the second half of April 1945, there were mass desertions from the KBW units stationed in the Rzeszów region. In total, 896 soldiers left the barracks at Lubaczów and Górno. Most deserters joined the units of the independence underground. -
Participation of the 9th Infantry Regiment in Combating the Polish Independence Underground in the Chełm District in 1945
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 56-87
An important and insufficiently researched matter regarding the recent Polish history is the question of involvement of the People’s Polish Army in fighting the Polish independence underground. Shortly after the end of World War II in Europe, the Polish communist authorities threw regular army units into the fight against the independence underground. On 24 May 1945, the Supreme Command of the Polish Army ordered three infantry divisions (1st, 3rd and 9th) to engage against the independence underground. They were sent to the voivodeships of Białystok, Lublin, Rzeszów, Warsaw and Cracow. The presence of the Army was to strengthen the communist power in these areas, and the individual units were to help the security apparatus in its fight against the underground. The 3rd Infantry Division included the 9th Infantry Regiment, which was to combat the structures of the anti-communist underground in the Chełm district. Partisan units subordinated to the Armed Forces Delegation for Poland and the National Armed Forces operated there. The regiment began its operations in the middle of June 1945 and finished them in August of the same year. Soldiers of the regiment participated in raids, arrests and executions of members of the underground. Thus, they largely contributed to the consolidation of the communists’ power in Poland.
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Organisation and System of Securing the Borders by the Units of Reconnaissance and Border Traffic Control of WOP – a Memo of Officers of the Division II of the Border Protection Troops Command in 1960
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 88-131
The process of reform of the security apparatus departments carried out in Poland in 1954–1956 and the introduction of the Decree of the Council of State on 7 December 1954 on the chief organs of state administration dealing with the matters of internal affairs and public security, led to an institutional change in the subordination of the Border Guard with its field units. The establishment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the placement of the Border Protection Troops in its structures resulted in this Ministry taking over responsibility for the protection of border crossings and counterintelligence protection of the borderland. In 1956–1965, the operative units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MSW) continued their cooperation with the 7th Reconnaissance Division of Border Protection Troops (WOP) (and after subsequent reorganisations in WOP: the 2nd Reconnaissance Division, the 2nd Division of the WOP Reconnaissance and the Division of the WOP Reconnaissance). Mutual exchange of information was conducted on both the central and field levels. The source edition attached to this article aims at presenting information on changes that took place in 1956–1963 in the organisation and scope of operative activities carried out by the WOP reconnaissance unit. A characteristic feature of this period is a clear evolution of the working methods used in contacts with the agent network. Moreover, the paper discusses the issue of incorporating the Border Traffic Control MSW department into the Second Division of the WOP Reconnaissance
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Chiefs of Reconnaissance of the Border Protection Troops. A Sketch of a Collective Portrait
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 132-212
The article presents ten chiefs of reconnaissance unit of the Border Protection Troops that, during their existence (1945–1991), held one of the highest positions of this formation. Seven of them (Mikołaj Sajko, Stefan Sobczak, Józef Waluk, Jan Romańczuk, Edward Tarała, Edmund Warda and Józef Rudawski) were nominated to the post of deputy commander (chief) of WOP responsible for reconnaissance (special) tasks, while three of them (Włodzimierz Karpiński, Jakub Leibler and Hipolit Sławiński) performed these duties only in a specific period, as if in substitution. Włodzimierz Karpiński appeared on the list rather ‘accidentally’. Due to his previous official activity in the Second Republic and during the German occupation, he was different from the others. Karpiński’s life and career path was opposite to that for which the others had striven and ‘fought’. One could say that Karpiński was the last in this group of soldiers of independent, free and democratic Poland. His removal from WOP marked the beginning of 45 years of building – by his successors – a totalitarian state, ruled by the communist party. The author’s intention was, through the analysis of the lives of the chiefs of the WOP reconnaissance, to bring at least some knowledge about this institution and its officers, who influenced the fate of many Poles.
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Heads of the Board of the Military Internal Service of the Navy
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 213-241
The Military Internal Service of the Navy functioned within the Headquarters of the Military Internal Service from 1957 to 1990. It was a military special service tasked with counterintelligence and policing activity. Between 1957 and 1990, the unit was headed in sequence by five commanding officers. These were: Cmdr Mikołajczyk, Cmdr Lieutenant Kiszczak, Cmdr Krupa, Cmdr Miernicki, Cmdr Prokaziuk. After the political transformation in Poland in 1990, the Military Internal Service was disbanded throughout the country.
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Scientific and Technical Intelligence of the Polish People’s Republic and Military Technologies – Selected Issues
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 242-274
The aim of this article is to reconnoitre a new field of historical research. It may be defined as: the effects of the work of the scientific and technical intelligence of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) in the field of technologies of military use. Research on civilian technologies is relatively advanced, while the transfer of (mainly Western) solutions from the field of armaments industry has so far constituted only a margin of various historical works on the history of intelligence of the People’s Republic of Poland, including military intelligence, as well as the history of science and technology. The author focuses on a few selected aspects. The first is the widely understood arms market in the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL), including Poland’s obligations as a member of the Warsaw Pact, as well as its political and economic dependence on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The second part discusses the approach of NATO countries trying to slow down the technological progress of the Eastern Bloc, mainly by controlling and hindering the purchase of modern products of so-called dual (i.e. civilian and military) use by countries such as the PRL. In the next chapter, the author discusses perhaps the most spectacular example of the successful infiltration by the intelligence community of the Warsaw Pact countries into the Pentagon’s armament programmes. He points out, however, that Poland achieved marginal gains from this operation, mainly based on its agent assets. The last section of the article is devoted to the prospective theatre of armed conflict between the superpowers, which, since the 1980s at the latest, was space. The orbital weapons race began as the communist states, especially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the People’s Republic of Poland, fell into irreversible economic crisis. Despite this, the intelligence services of these states at least tried to get an idea of the progress of the USA in the field of militarisation of space. The author conducted his research mainly based on sources held in the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). However, documents obtained from the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs are an important supplement.
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A Year in the Boots – Documents Concerning Józef Maria Ruszar’s Military Service
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 275-321
The publication in 2017 of Józef Maria Ruszar’s work Czerwone pająki. Dziennik żołnierza LWP has become an important contribution to for the further research concerning the use of the military draft for political repression. Until now, historians have been primarily interested in organised forms of oppression: mining battalions, clerical companies, field companies and special military camps. Repressions of a more focused nature have been analysed in a perfunctory manner, often without understanding their essence, which was facilitated by the difficult access to documentation held in military archives until 2016. Hence, it was only the publication of Ruszar’s account that opened a new field of research, demonstrating the way in which the military was able to make situational use of existing regulations in dealing with potentially problematic individuals. The story of Ruszar’s appointment to service at the Reserve Officers School at the Nalazek Family Land Forces Training Centre in Elbląg, and the subsequent suspicion of his refusal to take the oath and expulsion to perform basic military service, was reconstructed quite accurately in the diary. At that time, it was much more difficult to confirm Ruszar’s conviction that he had been deliberately conscripted to serve in the Armed Forces, and to reconstruct the course of the oppositionist’s surveillance by the bodies of the Army’s Main Political Board and the Military Internal Service. The presented collection is a supplement to the described edition, which is the result of over 2.5 years of searches in the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance, the Military Archive in Oleśnica, the Military Archive in Toruń, and the Central Military Archives of the Military Historical Bureau.
Articles and comparative studies: Apparatuses of Repression in Other Communist and Totalitarian Countries
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Contemporary Ukrainian Historiography of the History of Communist State Security Organs in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 325-376
The article characterises the study of the history of communist state security organs (ChEKA/VChk-GPU/OGPU-NKVD-NKGB-MGB) in Ukrainian historiography after 1991. It names the main factors that have influenced the development of historiography. The first one is the significant scientific and public interest in the history of political repression in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the organs that carried them out and the perpetrators of state terror; second one is the interest in the archives of the former Committee for State Security (KGB) of the USSR as an important resource for studying many problems of history, and the related question of opening and expanding access to archival documents. Two main stages in the development of historiography are characterised: 1991–2009 and 2010–2021. The main works of Ukrainian historians are named and analysed with emphasis on those that were innovative in nature, based on previously unknown archival documents and opened promising directions in the study of the history of state security organs. A significant number and great importance for the further development of historiography of documentary publications was noted, especially within the framework of large scientific and publishing projects.
Articles and studies: Varia
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The Structures and Staffing of the Divisions Combating the Polish Independence Underground of the Voivodeships‘ and Cities‘ Departments of Security, the Provincial Office of Public Security and the Voivodeship Department of Security in Lublin in the Years 1944–1956
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 379-497
The article discusses changes in the structures and staffing of the units assigned to combat the Polish independence underground in the Voivodeships’ and Cities’ Departments of Security and in the Voivodeship Department of Security in Lublin in 1944–1956.
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'Year One'. The Structure and Commanding Staff of the Investigative Department of the Central Department of Public Security/Ministry of Public Security (August 1944 – September 1945)
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 498-524
The study aims to introduce the reader to the history of the structure of one of the most important units of the communist repressive apparatus in Poland, i.e. the Investigative Department, during the first period of its existence, i.e. from August 1944 to September 1945. At that time, the Department was initially a tiny section responsible for conducting preliminary investigations. In the following months of its existence, however, it was gradually expanded by the management of the Ministry of Public Security. The article shows how the structural changes were carried out, what they resulted from and what effect they had. Moreover, in the second part, the article presents the profiles of all heads of the investigative unit of the central security apparatus. It so happened that five officers headed the investigative unit over the short initial timespan of its existence. The last of them, i.e. Józef Różański, took over the leadership of this unit in the summer of 1945 and held this position for almost a decade, nearly to the end of the existence of the Investigation Department of the Security Ministry Headquarters. In the initial part of the study, individual biographies of these functionaries officers are outlined, and then their collective portrait is presented.
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Commanding Offices of the Department of Security in Legnica in 1945–1956
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 525-551
The District Department of Security in Legnica was formed in May 1945. The structures of the unit were created as part of the so-called Operational Groups for the Lower Silesia region. For eleven years, from May 1945 to 1956, the Department of Security in Legnica was headed by nine functionaries. Their personal files show that they did not possess adequate competences to run affairs or manage people. They were poorly educated people. They often committed various misdemeanours or crimes. However, this did not bother their superiors and despite these shortcomings they decided to promote them to higher and more responsible positions in security service.
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The Red Army in the Szubin District (in the Pomeranian Voivodeship) in 1945
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 552-579
The article describes the activity of the Red Army in the district of Szubin (Pomeranian Voivodeship) in 1945, and social moods and attitudes of its inhabitants towards Soviet soldiers. The entry of the Red Army into the district in January 1945 marked the end of the cruel German occupation, so it was welcomed by the local population. From the very beginning, the Soviet Army was the dominant force in the political, social and economic life of the region. It took part in the appointment of local authorities, obstructed reconstruction work, started systematic looting of private and state property and deportations to labour camps in the USSR. Red Army soldiers committed mass crimes, from theft and devastation, through rape and beatings, to murder. Their activities caused the general public dislike and fear of the Soviet Army, the Red Army was believed to have occupied Poland and was expected to leave the country.
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Organising Citizens’ Militia in the Cracow Voivodeship in the Light of Reports from 1945
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 580-616
The organisation of the Citizens’ Militia in Poland is a topic that has already been discussed on a national scale. However, on the local ground there is still the lack of more detailed analyses for individual voivodeships and this is the case of the Cracow Voivodeship. Towards the end of 1944, when the appropriate legal ordinances fixing future servicemen in the apparatus of power had already been issued, groups composed mostly of former People’s Army [AL] partisans began to be organised in Rzeszów to fill subsequent voivodeships with future militiamen in the wake of the front heading west. The establishment of the Cracow Voivodeship Headquarters of the Militia took place immediately after the January offensive of the Red Army, and convoys with officers reached Cracow, occupied by the Soviet army, soon after the cessation of hostilities in the city. Soon, commanders arrived in all districts of the voivodeship to establish local Citizens’ Militia (MO) structures. In this way, district headquarters, police stations and local posts were efficiently organised, and founding reports describing local conditions faced by the officers began to arrive at the voivodeship headquarters. In mid-1945, the whole voivodeship was inspected by a special group sent from Cracow, and the conclusions of its reports were sent to the voivodeship headquarters for analysis. It is assumed that by the end of 1945 the first stage of organising MO structures in the voivodeship was successfully completed.
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From Krasnosielc to Sopot. Around the Criminal Activity of the Ministry of Public Security (UB) Officer Henryk Wyszomirski
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 617-641
This text is devoted to the fate of Henryk Wyszomirski (1921–2014), who came from Krasnosielec, a volunteer in the September 1939 campaign, then a soldier of the Home Army and finally, after the entry of the Red Army in January 1945, the functionary of the Department of Security in 1945–1947. He actively fought against his former colleagues from the anti-German underground, who in the new political reality opposed the Soviet domination over Poland and took up arms against the communists. By coincidence, Wyszomirski and the two victims of his spying activities lived in Sopot from the end of the 1950s. The article presents the scale of crimes committed by the security apparatus after 1945 in the Maków District, as well as attempts to cover them up. Additionally, it indicates where the bodies of local UB victims may be found. Wyszomirski was never held fully accountable for the crimes committed during his service in the communist security apparatus, except for his sentencing to 5 years’ imprisonment in 1947, for raping a detainee and appropriating cash. He died in Sopot in 2014 and was interred in the municipal cemetery there, as does the body of one of his victims. Henryk Wyszomirski was presented in the film Historia Roja, directed by Jerzy Zalewski, which deals with Mieczysław Dziemieszkiewicz’s ‘Roj’ (1925–1951) fight against the communists in northern Mazovia.
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Professionals to Be Used, Then Traitors to Be Exposed. On the Discrediting of Former Police Officers in People’s Poland
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 642-661
During the Nazi occupation, former Polish State Police officers were coerced to serve in German security structures. The German-organised and commanded Polnische Polizei in Generalgouvernement provided certain support for the occupier. In this respect, its activity was contrary to the Polish raison d’état. However, one must not forget about the cooperation of the Polnische Polizei with the resistance movement. It is difficult to unequivocally assess its role in the dark period of the occupation. When World War II ended, former policemen who had not collaborated with the Germans hoped to be able to live and work peacefully in a free Poland. Their hopes turned out to be vain. They were discredited for political reasons. They were dismissed from the Citizens’ Militia, they were taken under surveillance as ‘enemies of the peoples’, and many of them were repressed. The activities of the Polnische Polizei in the occupational structures and its place in the post-war reality are part of the tragic history of Poland in the 20th century.
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Bochnia District Authorities towards School and Out-of-School Religious Education of Children and Youth in 1956–1975
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 662-707
The year 1956 brought major changes to political, economic and social life in Poland. The "thaw" interrupted the advancing secularisation of education and created for a short time favourable conditions for the return of religion classes to schools. In the Bochnia district, where in the Stalinist period religion was removed from schools with great difficulty, catechisation was reintroduced for the youth in all primary, secondary, and vocational schools at the end of 1956 and early 1957. The party authorities in the district, aware of the inhibition of the process of secularisation, debated on ways to stop the visible influence of the Church on young people, and SB, using operative work, collected detailed information on the subject. The turning point, which forced the authorities to change their policy towards the Church, was the letter from the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (KC PZPR) to local party structures (July 1958). It threatened with a ‘clergy offensive’ and mobilised people to effectively counteract its influence on many areas of life, including the education of children and young people. In the Bochnia district there was a tightening of cooperation between the party, the local administration and the security service, which together began to gradually ‘free’ schools from the influence of the Catholic religion. By the time the secular character of schooling was guaranteed by law, the district authorities had succeeded in removing religious education from thirty primary schools (out of 106) and eight secondary and vocational schools. A new stage in the policy towards catechisation began in the school year 1961/1962, when, following the enactment of the law on the development of the education system on 15 July 1961, priests were forced to organise catechisation in churches, chapels and private homes. At first, the authorities tried to force the organisation of catechetical points in sacral and church buildings, but without success. At the end of 1961, despite the organisation of more than ninety catechetical points in the district, no parish priest had concluded a contract with the Department of Education and Culture for the teaching of religion. When, in 1962, the school authorities received only a few reports on the activities of catechetical centres, the following year the District Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party (KP PZPR) decided to apply administrative repressions against selected parish priests, which in several cases ended with bailiffs’ execution. SB officers and Presidium of the District National Council officials were involved in the repressive actions. The tightening of the policy did not bring the expected results, so at the beginning of 1965, the administration withdrew from the enforcement of the imposed fines. In the following years, the situation in this section did not change. After Edward Gierek came to power, the policy of the party authorities and educational administration focused on changes in the educational system and increased ideological influence on children and young people. That was supposed to be a way to stop the influence of the Church. Also, in the Bochnia district, attempts were made to implement such a policy. Lectures on ideological issues were organised for parents and attempts were made to attract children to extracurricular and out-of-school activities. Only after the 1975 administrative reform there was a certain liberalisation in the field of supervision of catechetical points, including reporting of their activities.
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The Licence to Kill. Analysis of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Intelligence Concerning the Legal Conditions of Carrying Out Death Sentences Outside the Country against the Background of the Unit’s ‘Special Operations’
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 708-751
Assassinations, kidnappings and sabotage operations are among the most sensational topics related to the activity of the intelligence services of the People’s Republic of Poland. The article presents examples of ‘special operations’ of this kind carried out and planned by Department I of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Although there were not many of them, they give a general picture of how they were organised and how they went or were supposed to go. In the appendix, there is published a document entitled Stosunek polskiego prawa karnego wobec osób, które dokonały likwidacji zdrajcy Ojczyzny [The Attitude of the Polish Criminal Law Towards People Who Liquidated Traitors of the Homeland], prepared in the mid-1960s in the Department I of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
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Zacharski – A True Story? Marian Zacharski’s Intelligence Activities in the Light of the Materials of Department I of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Polish People’s Republic
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 752-786
The article presents the intelligence activity of Marian Zacharski, who was probably the best-known spy of the People’s Republic of Poland. The analysis is based on archival records declassified a few years ago and kept in the Institute of National Remembrance. They make it possible to verify the self-portrait drawn by Zacharski (and by some journalists) and reveal a somewhat less heroic image of the main character, who was portrayed as an experienced intelligence officer from the very beginning. However, one cannot be overwhelmingly impressed by documents produced by the communist Security Service and claim that they present a full-scale profile of Zacharski. However, they constitute one more element necessary to create such an image.
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Mossad in Magdalenka. The Backstage of a May 1990 Polish and Israeli Secret Services Representatives Meeting (in Gromosław Czempiński’s Memo)
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 787-803
The article presents a document: a note by Lt Col Gromosław Czempiński on a secret meeting between representatives of the Israeli Mossad and the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs, which took place in early May 1990 in Magdalenka, near Warsaw. The meeting was connected to an earlier declaration by Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who, during a visit to the USA, at a meeting with representatives of the Jewish community, promised that Poland would help in the transit of at least several dozen thousand Jews living in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) who wished to emigrate to Israel. The delicate mission required very discreet preparations, and the presented note allows us to learn their backstage, if only in a fragmentary way.
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'What is in Those Cellars...' Division of the Archival and Evidential Resources of the Communist Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1989–1992. Identification of the Issue (Part II)
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 804-835
This article is the second part of a study on the division of the archival resource, registries and finding aids of the communist Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1989–1992. While focusing on events between April and September 1990, the paper addresses the functioning of the Commission for Archival Collections of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (April–June 1990). Moreover, the transformation of the archival and registry units structures of the organs of state security and public order, which took place from May to the second half of 1990, has been widely discussed. During this transformation the functions previously performed by the communist ‘C’ Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were taken over by the Bureau of Registry and Archives of the State Protection Office, the IT Office of the Police Headquarters, the Central Archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the PESEL Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The staffing of the new archival and registry structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has also been described.
Articles and studies: Biographies
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Career of a Dąbrowski’s Soldier. Michał Rossner and His Service in the Security Apparatus. The Outline of the Problem
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 839-852
Michał Rossner held managerial positions in the security apparatus for more than a dozen years. He was an experienced communist party activist, trained in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), but at the same time, he also fought in the Civil War in Spain, which sometimes put him under scrutiny. The text presents not only Rossner’s service in the security apparatus. It also shows his career path to positions and the mechanisms that helped him stay in the service for several years.
Materials and documents
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'It Was Only Necessary to Respond with Red Terror to White Terror'. Memoirs of Colonel Teodor Duda Concerning Events in the Lublin and Rzeszów Voivodeships in 1944–1947
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 855-899
The presented memoirs (accounts) of Colonel Teodor Duda concern his activity in the voivodeships of Lublin and Rzeszów in 1944–1947. The first part relates to his activity in the Tomaszów district, where from August 1944, as a plenipotentiary of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN), in cooperation with Adam Humer and the siblings Olga and Aleksander Żebruna, he organised the structures of the ‘people’s’ government. His arrival in Tomaszów Lubelski was not accidental. Born in Cześniki in the Zamość district, he knew the area and the mentality of the local community. The second part of the memoirs (account) concerns the events that took place in the Rzeszów Voivodeship in 1946–1947; Teodor Duda participated in them as the delegate in the Rzeszów Voivodeship, as the head (commander) of an 18-strong group of the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) officers who were to help the Voivodeship Security Department (WUBP) in Rzeszów with ‘preparations’ for the referendum. In his account, Duda described the background of the People’s Referendum and the elections to the Legislative Sejm in the Rzeszów Voivodeship, and the methods used to fight the political opposition affiliated with the Polish People’s Party (PSL). Although Duda’s memoirs contain many inaccuracies and are written in an ideologised language, they are an important addition to the hitherto knowledge about the organisation of the communist power in post-war Poland.
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'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
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 900-918
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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Maksymilian Jarosz, Memoirs of the Poznań Uprising – June 1956
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 919-939
The memoirs of Maksymilian Jarosz constitute a rare source of knowledge on the course of the pacification action during the Poznań June 1956 Uprising. We observe the events from the perspective of a tank driver-mechanic that was forced to participate in actions against the insurgents. From the memoirs of Maksymilian Jarosz emerges a picture of the chaos that arose in Poznań and the lack of organisation and coordination of the communists’ actions, clearly surprised by the strength and development of the social revolt. An important aspect of the memoirs is the possibility to learn about the state of morale of the Polish Army soldiers and their attitude towards the protesting and striking inhabitants of Poznań. These memoirs may be of use to the researchers of the Poznań June 1956 as the source supplementing the information contained in documents and other accounts.
Research and review articles
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In Search of a Comparative Synthesis of the Apparatus of Repression in Central and Eastern Europe in 1944–1954. Comments on Molly Pucci’s Work, 'Security Empire. The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe' (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020), pp. 378
Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944-1989, No. 19 (2021), pages: 943-975
The text is a review article of Molly Pucci’s work, Security Empire. The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe published in 2020 by Yale University Press. The reviewer critically discusses the main theses of the analysed work. He states that the author’s main research objective was a comparative description of the role of the coercive apparatus in the seizure of power by communists in Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany (i.e. in the north-western part of the Soviet sphere of influence in Europe established as a result of World War II), and an ans wer to the question to what extent the course of these parallel processes, as well as the manner of reproducing the imposed Soviet model, was in fact similar in individual countries, until the emergence of the ‘common international security space’, composed of ‘almost identical police states’. Thus, as the reviewer states, the book is an attempt to synthesise the first phase of the security apparatuses in the three countries. The reviewer emphasises with appreciation that the author discusses the processes mentioned in a systemic manner, as an important, if not the key part of the forced, top-down construction of a communist-type state. That objective required a powerful coercive apparatus in all the countries mentioned, although not to the same extent. He also considers it rational to focus on those units of the respective national repressive apparatuses which played a key role first in the seizure and "consolidation" of power by the pro-Moscow communists, and then became their pillar of powers both in organisational and operative terms; not forgetting the cells involved in searching for the imaginary enemy within their own ranks, that is, the quintessence of a proper "security service". Above all, however – according to the reviewer – the work offers a whole range of important, though sometimes debatable, interpretative ideas and research questions strongly anchored in the researched, diverse literature on the subject and in Polish, Czech and German archives. Consequently, it will become an important point of reference not only for Polish researchers of the security apparatus, also for critical approaches or those undermining the findings and interpretations proposed by the author. In conclusion, the reviewer states that the discussed book by Molly Pucci, although imperfect in several minor details, undoubtedly fully meets the academic criteria, which make it possible to consider this book as one of the first serious comparative syntheses of the security (repression) apparatus in relation to the periods of the system’s implementation and mature Stalinism. Thus, the book can also be given the title of a pioneering work (next to Nikita Petrov’s texts). The reviewer also suggests that this work should be published in Polish by the IPN.
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70 Ministry of Education and Science evaluation points:
40 (2024)
Research areas: humanities
Disciplines: history, security studies, political science and public administration
Editor-in-chief: Dr. habil. Filip Musiał
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