This study aims to compare the biographies of three women who made brilliant careers in important institutions of communist Poland. Julia Brystiger worked for over a decade in the repressive apparatus, Maria Wierna for several decades in the communist diplomacy, and Helena Wolińska, in the Stalinist period of the People’s Republic of Poland, functioned in the structures of the Citizen’s Militia, and later the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office. All the women discussed in this article not only performed managerial functions. Above all, they were figures with enormous connections, who had a considerable influence on the activities of the departments in which they worked. The article shows, in a comparative way, the life path of each of them, from their birth,
through education, activities in different periods, until their death.

Students were active in the anti-communist opposition. At the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, their activities focused on the academic ministry and the NZS. Women also play edan important role in this. The article presents the attitudes of female students during the birth of “Solidarność” and during the martial law period. The students took part in anti-communist demonstrations, in the distribution of illegal publications and were accused in the famous “Proces 21” in the Białystok region. More over, they were under the supervision of the communist repression apparatus.

The theme of a woman had been appearing throughout Edward Dwurnik’s artworks since the beginning of his career, in the early 70s, until the end of his life. This image evolved over the years. The artistdrew his inspiration from various visions of femininity, which in turn were often associated with blunt remarks about Polish reality. Dwurnik, a Polish portrait painter, depicted women in diverse symbolic configurations and at the same time referred to history and literature. He was a compulsive reader and enthusiast of them both and mentioned it on many different occasions. In the following article, the author analyses symbolism of Dwurnik’s paintings and highlights themes that might be considered taboo.

The following article presents the current state of research into communist deputies’ activities in the Second Polish Republic. The author has analysed the role of the Communist Party of Poland and its satellite parties in the parliamentary election campaigns
of 1922, 1928 and 1930. Furthermore, the activity of communist deputies in the Polish Seym was reviewed. It is evident that they were dependent on both the central communist authorities and Comintern. They tried to use the parliamentary stand to propagate
the communist programme and criticize the Second Polish Republic’s authorities. They were holding their parliamentary seats until 1935.

The subject of the article is the attitude to the problems of social life in the activities of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) in the Kołobrzeg district just after the end of World War II. Socialist activists operated in extremely difficult conditions, facing many challenges. The article presents the struggles of PPS activists in the face of such problems as: lack of food supplies, relations with the Soviet occupation forces and the Germans remaining in these areas after the war, war damage, crime, demoralization of the Citizens’ Militia, attempts to adapt the newly seized lands to the needs of the settlers

The First World War, territorial disputes, and the Polish-Bolshevik war caused major changes in the demographic, national and religious structure of the Polish lands, including the Lublin region. The south-eastern part of the former governorate was the most depopulated which, among others, resulted from the Russian evacuation in the summer of 1915, war death toll, conscription to the army or recruitment to work. Other significant contributors were increased mortality and a drop in the number of births that were triggered, inter alia, by an epidemic of infectious diseases. Nevertheless, prior to the end of hostilities, the displaced people and refugees began to return to the country. The influx of newcomers from Russia posed a great challenge to Poland, which at that time was struggling with the post-war economic and political crisis, and waging costly border wars. The authorities, extending a warm welcome to compatriots, were generally reluctant to see people of different than Polish ethnicity returning to the country, especially Ukrainians (the dispute over the Chełm region, administratively separated from the Lublin governorate in 1912 as a land “indigenously Ruthenian”, was still very much alive and even fuelled by the Brest Treaty, under which this area was to fall to the Ukrainian People’s Republic) and Jews (perceived as a vanguard of the communist revolution, unwelcome due to the planned nationalization, here “polonization” of trade and industry). The Polish authorities, obliged by national and international law to accept repatriates and refugees, categorized newcomers and multiplied bureaucratic obstacles for people seeking, for instance, citizenship or the right of residence. In practice, offices made their efforts to regulate the volume of migration, and such measures were most often applied towards “foreigners” by nationality, not always following objective legal and economic premises or justified suspicions of subversive and antiPolish activity. The attitude towards people arriving from Russia was an outcome of the
state’s nationalist policy in the first years after regaining independence, which is clearly illustrated by the Lublin Voivodeship, a politically sensitive area with its heterogeneous ethnic and religious structure.

The political biography of Edward Skrzypczak, former First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party in Poznań in 1981–1982, is the biography of a party dignitary whose fidelity to the ideals of socialism was the reason for his dismissal from his position. This is the story of a man who, despite belonging to the PZPR, was able to win over representatives of the democratic opposition around him, earning their trust and respect. The political fate of Edward Skrzypczak is also a story about the need to make the most important choices and make decisions in the face of formal membership in the Party, marked by the distortions of his own ideology, and at the same time the desire to revise the ossified forms of bureaucratic organization and to meet the needs of the society, which for the first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party in Poznań always was the highest value, which was confirmed after the introduction of martial law, when in an exceptionally difficult situation for most Poles, Edward Skrzypczak’s personality traits became an invaluable help for the interned, who could count on the effective help of the 1st secretary. Contrary to all circumstances, he remained forever faithful to socialist ideals, loyal to General Jaruzelski and approving his decision to introduce martial law. After the socio-political changes in 1989, Edward Skrzypczak still maintains the socialist system of values

The following article outlines attempts to prosecute Antoni Skulbaszewski, a chief military prosecutor in 1948–1950, later a long-term deputy head of the Main Information Board of the Polish Army, and in the public opinion a Stalinist felon. Such attempts were made both in the times of the Polish People’s Republic and after the political breakthrough of 1989–1990 to no avail. The author tries to discover why these efforts were futile and concludes that it resulted from political decisions made by Władysław Gomułka and his accomplices, who right after the “breakthrough” of 1956 decided not to prosecute Soviet officers. A further contributor was a peculiar “impossibilism” of the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, which after the collapse of the USSR and gaining independence by Ukraine, did not consent to prosecute Skulbaszewski, who was already a Ukrainian citizen. In addition, the article sheds some light on little-known facts from life of the former chief military prosecutorand raises a question whether they can be viewed from the angle of H. Arendt’s well-known thesis of “banality” in totalitarian systems.