The military district prosecutor’s offices have not yet received due attention in the available literature. This gap is partially covered by the monograph of the Military District Prosecutor’s Office in Gdańsk, also by this author. This article contains findings collected while preparing the monograph. They mostly cover the structure and daily operation of the Military District Prosecutor’s Office in Gdańsk, office conditions, division of work, organisational structure and changes that were applied during its operation. Controls and inspections of the personnel have been also presented. The article ends with a detailed description of the dismantling process of this institution in 1955.

This article presents the activities of the Security Office unit functioning in the Jedlicze Refinery between 1951–1955, namely the Protection Department. Its structure, profiles of managers, main tasks and directions of operational activities are presented. The article also contains short biographies of Protection Department officers, description of repression activities towards the refinery personnel. These include the list of conducted cases and agent numbers. The publication is supplemented with photographs of officers, the building of the refinery HQ and refinery equipment, as well as the list of officers employed in the Security Office of the Protection Department between 1951–1955.

The establishment of the Directorate for the Protection of Functionaries in December 1984 was related to the rise of the most serious violations of law committed by the officers of the security apparatus. It was a result of the public interest in the activities of the Ministry of the Interior. This article attempts to show the functioning of the Inspectorate for the Protection of Officers in the towns of Białystok, Łomża, Olsztyn and Suwałki. The origin of the new department in the Ministry of the Interior and its field staff are also illustrated in the article. Particular emphasis has been placed on the specific disciplinary and counterintelligence activities of the Inspectorate for the Protection of Officers. The main sources are documents specifying the scope of the Inspectorate’s activities, rules for conducting explanatory proceedings, operational records of the board and cooperation with other departments of the ministry. A significant degree of preserved reporting from 1985–1990 allowed this study to statistically identify the most common types of offences. It also allowed the categorisation of cases and the results of explanatory proceedings conducted among militia and Security Service officers from north-eastern Poland.

This article attempts to characterise the felonies and crimes committed by the MBP formations during anti-partisan operations in the Polesie Lubelskie region. In this region the armed resistance to the communists lasted the longest. This time period starts with the end of the amnesty of 22nd February 1947 and ends with the liquidation of the last armed groups at the beginning of the 1950s. Selected examples show the ruthlessness with which the communist authorities cracked down on members of the underground while at the same time committing a series of crimes against civilians supporting partisans. Pacification of this region was performed by the operational forces of the Security Office, Internal Security Corps, and Citizens’ Militia which committed murders. They also used captured people as human shields and applied physical and mental constraints. Among the repression that fell on the families of the rebels and their collaborators were: arrests, repeated searches, destruction of possessions, confiscation of personal property and resettlement to the so-called recovered territories.

The issue of crime among the senior officers of the Citizens’ Militia of the Lublin Voivodship between 1944–1954 constitutes an important element during the establishment of this formation. By analysing this issue, we can notice that the scope and character of the abuses is similar in the entire Citizens’ Militia personnel. The vast majority of crimes are offences related to the abuse of their power, such as unlawful searches and confiscation of property. There were also unjust arrests, beatings, extortion of testimonies, as well as repeated cases of immoral conduct. In comparison with the officers of the Public Security Office, this group committed a much smaller number of the most serious crimes. However, only small portion of them were subject to explanatory proceedings, and only some of them ended in convictions. The main mitigating factor, in almost all of the disciplinary or court proceedings, was the officer’s political past and his merits.

According to the partially preserved materials at the Voivodship Office of Public Security (Wojewódzki Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, or WUBP) in Poznań it can be estimated that between 1945–1955 this unit ran over 4000 criminal and disciplinary proceedings. In this article two types of crimes committed by the Department of Security (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, or UB) have been analysed. The first crime is concerned with the 1945 murder of four prisoners in the WUBP detention centre in Poznań. The second case concerns the 1952 conviction of four district officers of Public Security (Powiatowy Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, or PUBP) in Kościan. The officers were accused of drinking at work, sexual abuses (also against minors), theft, torture of detainees and causing the death of a prisoner. The punishments imposed on the officers in these cases were inadequate to the committed offences. After a short period of detention, they could still count on the help and leniency from the authorities. Without any problems they continued their careers outside UB.

This article covers the crimes by Security Service officers in Gdańsk voivodship from its establishment in 1957 to 1965, when the Border Traffic Control Division was formed. The circumstances of the Security Service establishment are presented, followed by the problems of Gdańsk security officers with the law and discipline in the described period. The supplement to this article is statistical data gathered by the author while working on this issue. If they occurred, the consequences of crimes committed by the disgraced officers are also presented. The summary contains a general characteristic assessment of the Gdańsk officers’ moral condition between 1957–1965.

In this article information has been arranged on all categories of operational cases held by the 1st department of Ministry of the Interior, the Civilian intelligence of the Polish Peoples Republic during the period of its existence, between 28 November 1956 and 31 July 1990. The information is based on the internal instructions and orders of this unit, and the author’s knowledge of the Institute of National Remembrance Archive resulting from the activity of this institution.

The establishment and activity of the Youth Conspiracy Organization became a pretext for writing an essay which tracks the fate (and analyses the attitudes of) a group of young people from Przemyśl during the Gomułka period. In trying to understand the complex social-political reality they lived in, we need to see that they referred both to new cultural trends coming from the west, and war experiences of their loved ones. In some cases they referred to their own experiences of repatriation. Because of their place of residence and family stories they were influenced by both the trauma of the Soviet occupation and the consequences of the post-Yalta geopolitical system, in which Poland played the role of a USSR satellite. In this reality their rebellion against the adult world and socialist realities of life took on a clear anti-communist message. Evidence of this can be found in the leaflets distributed in Przemyśl and discussions held during meetings of organisation members. It remains a testament to the attachment of young people to the idea of freedom and independence as well as opposition to the attitudes of conformism and adaptation to the contemporary political system, presented both by their peers and the older generation. This history also illustrates working methods of the Security Service while invigilating illegal organisations.

The article presents one of the methods of citizens’ surveillance by the communistic Security Service (SB) in the People’s Republic of Poland. An example is the case of Ryszard Hrywniak, who was a resident in the town of Wałcz. He was convicted for attempting to disclose military information to foreign intelligence. After imprisonment, he was a suspected person and put under surveillance by the communistic Security Service between 1984–1990. The so-called Questionnaire Information (EC) with the code name ‘Ambassador’, in which collected information was recorded during the course of surveillance. The main sources of information were reports of secret collaborators and observations of SB officers. Throughout the surveillance period the evidence of spy activity could not be obtained. The Special Services collected much information about his private life activities and interests. The registration questionnaire of R. Hrywniak was completed due to lack of evidence for its anti-state activities. Collected documentation is currently in the Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance in Poznań.

Since the 1950s the civilian intelligence of the Polish People’s Republic supported Polish scientific and research centres as well as industry, by supplying them with construction and technological documentation. They also supplied them with other materials containing technical know-how, mostly from the OECD countries. The beginning of the Edward Gierek’s decade in power brought structural and personnel changes in the Polish scientific and technical intelligence. Teams of officers were introduced to perform secret jobs in industry departments, including those responsible for heavy industry, machinery and energy. The intelligence broadened the scope of its help to the state economy by supplying long term predictions concerning crucial raw material markets, such as copper or coal, and other sectors like the shipbuilding industry. In addition, by recruiting informants in Western enterprises and state institutions, information was obtained that enabled Poland to negotiate better conditions when entering into multimillion-dollar contracts with partners such as Fiat and Renault. In the 1980s a crucial beneficiary of the intelligence operations was – aside from the machine tool and aviation industries – the Polish defence industry which attempted to modernise Polish army. Costs of illegal transfer of knowledge and purchases made on so called ‘black market’ were usually several times lower than through the official channels.

These documents prepared in the Ministry of the Interior were the first stage in the preparation of action plans by the Security Service and Citizens’ Militia department. The directives were the first formal, written stage of turning the political will into the language of operational activities. They include the basic objectives set for the ministry, often with an outline of the political background that determined their emergence as priorities at a given time.

From the beginning of February 1971, during the period prior to the 8th Plenary session of Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party – the first ‘regular’ meeting of the new party eadership with the First Secretary Edward Gierek – several pieces of critical information, analyses and reports emerged. One of these was information signed by the personnel department director of the Ministry of the Interior concerning discipline in the Ministry in 1970. It gives an insight into the statistical approach to the phenomenon of crimes in the Ministry that covers (contrary to the title of the document) the entire decade of the 1960s. It is not a complete picture however, as it only contains those situations, events or incidents that were classified as crimes by the leaders of the Ministry. It has to be remembered that many obvious violations and crimes were not detected or were not qualified as crimes or violations. In a democratic system such activity would be deemed as surveillance of the society (spying, eavesdropping, censoring correspondence etc.). According to the Ministry of the Interior such actions were totally desired.

Henryk Romanek was the third and the last deputy admiral of the naval Border Guard Troops. He was among selected officers, who after graduating from officer’s navy school were to constitute the foundations of Peoples’ Navy Forces. Thanks to his PPR/PZPR membership, he climbed quickly up the career ladder at BGT and navy, despite the fact that he was not an outstanding officer. He was however, a loyal executor of the tasks given to him. According to his superiors he was competently managing his subordinates – BGT Maritime Service, and then unit 6. Brigade of Frontier Ships (Naval Brigade of Frontier Ships). During his last period, he acted as a military, naval and air attaché to the embassy of the People’s Republic of Poland in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Czesław Kaczmarz spent his almost entire 40-year service in special organisations, initially at the Security Office and then at the reconnaissance of Border Guard Troops. He participated in their activity using the chance of social promotion. He combined his day job with an activity at the Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR), then at the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza or PZPR), and at social organisations. His career was a ‘model’ path to promotion shared with many reconnaissance officers of Border Guard Troops. Adequate social background, early affiliation and involvement in the activities of the Communist Party constituted the basis for admission to this service. Appropriate political shaping such as indisputable devotion to communist ideals, and a lack of independent thinking and reflection were also required. Kaczmarz was one of the tiny cogs in the communist repression system, who helped to build that system and then implement it in the Sudeten Brigade of Border Guard Troops.