During the Cold War the four Nordic countries – Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark – formed an interesting geopolitical area in the European north, characterized by both differences and similarities. Recent studies on the East German foreign intelligence have shown, that the Nordic countries were an important, yet not central operational area, undoubtedly enjoying a different status for the East German foreign intelligence. In this article, East German intelligence activities toward the Nordic countries are used as a case study in order to exemplify how historical network analysis could be used to uncloak new historical knowledge. Despite its close connection to many of the methodological questions and problems related to uncloaking hidden structures or analyzing network dynamics tackled by network analysts in terrorist or criminal studies, researchers on Cold War intelligence has shown only a limited interest in network analysis. This article draws from this disinterest among scholars on Cold war intelligence studies in network analysis and tries to bring upon methodological incentives hopefully encouraging historians to familiarize themselves with the promises and basics of network analysis in order to imagine how network analysis could help them to obtain qualitatively new knowledge. The material used in the empirical analysis consists of database records on Nordic affairs stored in the central information system of the East German foreign intelligence service. The article introduces and exemplifies some powerful network visualization and analysis techniques suitable for uncloaking network-related knowledge from intelligence materials and for critical assessment of the results.

The author has attempted to assess the effectiveness of activity of Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HV A), i.e the intelligence unit of the GDR Ministry for State Security (MfS/ Stasi). The circumstances of the unification of Germany and the liquidation of the GDR would indicate that the primary task of HV A, that is defence of state interests, was not accomplished. Detailed analysis presented by the author shows that the final assessment of the effectiveness of HV A is more complicated. The author suggested an evaluation model which in his opinion is useful to review the work of intelligence services, assuming that the degree of accomplishment of the intelligence objectives was the main indicator of the effectiveness and success of the HV A activities. Effectiveness of work of the intelligence should also have translated into long-term existence and activity of the service. The third indicator was defined by the author as the customer and employee satisfaction. In this case, it concerned, among other things, the loyalty and sense of identification of the HV A employees and agents. The author’s conclusions also concern the possibility of comparing the activity of HV A against the work of other intelligence services.

The object of this study is an extensive dossier produced between the years 1962 and 1965 by the Hungarian intelligence services on the German-born journalist of Gottfried Kusen, employed at the Vatican Radio since 1947 and resident in Italy since the early 1920s. Kusen, which was assigned by the officers operating in the residentura of Rome the codename of “Mozart”, is a person of extreme interest for those studying the early Vatican Ostpolitik, because he had spent his whole life in the “gray zone” where networks of intelligence and diplomatic contacts interact. A past qualified of the Italian fascist political police int he the second half of the 1930s, Kusen became the Abwehr from 1943 to 1945, then was linked to the British Intelligence Service in the early post-war years, and finally was finally employed by the Vatican Radio in close contact with the West German embassy in Rome. In the early 1960s, after the convening of the Second Vatican Council, Hun- gary, together with Poland was given by the Warsaw Pact the task of enhancing the disclosure of information on the Italian territory. People like Kusen – well introduced in Vatican circles and Italian politics – became necessary to enable the regime of János Kádár, looking for that compromise with the Holy See which was signed on September 15, 1964 to weaken the internal resistance of the Catholic world. The relationship with “Mozart”, which never became an agent and was in fact “abandoned” in 1965, ended in a defeat for the Hungarian espionage as the senior journalist, an expert on the psychological mechanisms and techniques of espionage, distributed to a large number of officers of espionage in the countries of the Warsaw Pact news and views representing the official view of the Vatican State Secretary. Presenting himself as a “socialist”, close to the ideological positions of the Soviet bloc countries, Kusen could intercept during the early stages of Ostpolitik themes and accents for a possible dialogue. The article traces the transactions which occurred between “Mozart” and the Hungarian intelligence directorate between 1962 and 1965. This relationshop was of particular importance since information coming from “Mozart” revealed in many cases really insightful, and helped the Hungarian communist regime to better understand the changing Eastern policy of the Vatican.

Operation Synonym: Czechoslovak State Security, Soviet-Bloc Active Measures and the Helsinki Process, 1976–1983

In the early sixties, the civilian intelligence of Polish People’s Republic was shocked by the so-called courier scandal. In January 1962, while trying to expose the community of foreign currency dealers in Łódź, officers from the Citizens’ Militia headquarters in this city found that one of the persons involved in illegal practices was a former courier of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former intelligence officer. In the course of the investigation carried out by the Bureau of Investigation and the First Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it turned out that almost all couriers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, some of whom were undercover intelligence officers, were engaged in smuggling. Until mid-February, 43 people were arrested and several others were released pending trial. The practices revealed consisted in packaging courier mail in double envelopes between which dollar bills were transported outside the country. After crossing the border, couriers tore off the outer envelopes and took out dollars. They usually used the money to buy gold twenty-dollar coins and smuggled them into the country in double bags for diplomatic mail. Then, they sold the coins with a large profit on the black market. This way, during the period from 1959 to January 1962, suspects illegally transferred about 225,000 dollars abroad. At the same time, they brought back into the country about 4,500 gold twenty-dollar coins, which is about 210 kg of gold. They also transferred other scarce goods into the country in the same way. The investigation showed that the malpractice in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the intelligence service went beyond the operations described. It was revealed that employees of diplomatic posts, including ambassadors, imported many valuable and scarce goods into the country without any control and without paying customs duties. Among others, almost all employees of the Polish People’s Republic’s Delegation in Tel Aviv were involved in the shady trade practices, including the local minister plenipotentiary. The scale of malpractices revealed turned out to be very large and threatened many high-ranking people. However, these cases were not investigated any further. The authorities limited themselves to punishing the couriers and their accomplices. In some cases, the punishments were purely symbolic.

The declassification of the archives of the Polish Military Intelligence services (Zarząd II Sztabu Generalnego Wojska Polskiego) proved that this institution had maintained secret relations with some Middle Eastern terrorist organizations during the Cold War period. In my paper, I describe the ties between the Polish Military Intelligence, Abu Nidal’s Organization (ANO), and Monzer Al-Kassar’s group. Their mutual contacts were based on different agendas, among whose those linked to international politics and arms trade were of utmost importance. The members of ANO received scholarships to Polish universities, and could conduct business there. Their company – „S.A.S. Investments Trading Company” was located in Warsaw and was used by the Polish government as arms dealers. Thanks to good relations between ANO and chronologically: the regimes in Iraq, Syria and Libya, those dictatorships were interested in signing contracts to purchase Polish military equipment. ANO got commissions from executed contracts and it was one of their major profits, which later was spent on various terrorist purposes. The chief of ANO network in Poland – Samir Najmeddin – had very good relations with the Polish staff from the Central Engineering Board (Cenzin) – a state company responsible for export of Polish weapons and military advisors. This institution was secretly controlled by the Military Intelligence and Counterin- telligence services. ANO was also used as a provider of embargo goods for Polish secret services. That is why the members of Abu Nidal group were “untouchable” in Poland. Despite the fact that civilian services tried to put them under surveillance, the military services supported and protected terrorists. The relations with Monzer Al-Kassar’s group were based on economic grounds. During the 80s, he was one of the biggest arms dealers in the world. Together with Samir Najmeddin from ANO, they were the most important individual brokers for Cenzin. Kassar’s influence and connections with many Middle Eastern governments was so significant for the Polish government, that Cenzin established

Since 1944, after coming to power in Poland, the Communist Party interfered in all spheres of political, social and cultural life. Party units operating in institutions and workplaces constituted one of the tools of that interference, subordinated to the communist ideology. The paradox was that similar units of “ideological surveillance” were also formed in the civilian intelligence structures of the Ministry of Public Security. It was one of the ideological surveillance mechanisms used to exert pressure which affected the nature of information collected and transferred to the authorities. It often had more to do with propaganda than with reliable, objectified knowledge. Materials of the Seventh Department, i.e. the MBP civilian intelligence, contain minutes of meetings of these party units which shed much new light on the functioning of the intelligence, as well as its relations with the central structures of the party. Intelligence became part of the repressive apparatus, and it was repression that became a priority, not the informational activities. Right political attitude became more important than the credibility of intelligence information. Intelligence, like the entire state apparatus, was to search for and eliminate the “enemies of the people,” provide information in accordance with the doctrine, and what is more, it was also supposed to take care of the ideological purity of its own staff. Contrary to democratic states, control mechanisms were subordinated to the ideology. Insufficient ideological control and wrong personnel policy was one of the reasons for the reorganisation of the intelligence structures carried out in the early 50s.

In 1938, the total of 10,747 inhabitants of Sieradz included 2,555 Jews, namely 1,170 men and 1,385 women. After 1 September 1939, like the Polish population, vast majority of them left the town due to the announced defence of the line of the Warta River. Some of them did not return to their homes after that. Later on, the number of Jews in Sieradz changed also due to deportations to the General Government and to labour camps in the area of the Warta Country, as well as due to the influx of Jews from the surrounding towns. From the beginning of the occupation, Jews from Sieradz experienced the Nazi terror, including executions. The first ones were shot already on 15 September 1939. At the beginning of 1940, a ghetto was created in Sieradz. Although it was not a closed ghetto, it did contribute to a serious deterioration of the situation of the Jewish population. Numerous penalties imposed by the Schupo officers prove that in order to survive in the ghetto, one had to manage to get additional food outside its boundaries. The Judenrat established in Sieradz, led by Kalman Rosenblu, had limited possibilities of improving the situation of local Jews. It even failed to create joint craft workshops to solve the problem of excess of manpower. Support from the Polish population was not significant, as it did not have an organised nature. From 24 August 1942, liquidation of the ghetto in Sieradz commenced. All the Jews were placed in a local post-Dominican monastery, and from there they were transported for extermination. On the first day, 184 people were transported to the ghetto in Łódź. Until Friday, 28 August, about 1,400 Jews from Sieradz were deported to the extermination camp in Chełmno on the Ner River.

The article lays down the analysis of the scope and methods of operation of the Soviet state security bodies in 1939–1941. It describes the technology of political search as the main profile of Stalin’s special services. On the basis of documents of NKVD of the USSR the categories of the so-called “anti-Soviet element” are described. Some features of the secret service work, field surveillance, mail cover check, the use of provocative methods in the struggle with “enemies of the people” are revealed. The arrests procedure, investigations organization and the system of imprisonment functioning, the use of offence methods and in-ward agents by interrogation officers are investigated. Considerable attention is paid to the activity of the Special conference at NKVD of the USSR, which was the key organ of extra-judicial punishment of the political prisoners. The article is written based on the original actual material, first of all based on the documents of the National Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine, Branch National Archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, the Russian State Archives of Social and Political History, the Russian State Archives of the Contemporary History, the State Archives of Russian Federation.

The article is an attempt at presenting the role of doctors working in the reality of prisons in the years 1944–1956. Medical care was supposed to be limited to a minimum, and doctors had to serve a specific role in supervising the prisoners. On the one hand, they were part of the oppressive system, while on the other hand, they often stepped outside their assigned roles, helping the prisoners and mitigating the regime. As in other aspects of Stalinism, here the reality also luckily turned out to be more human than the official assumptions. People who worked in prisons were civilian doctors and nurses employed on contract by the Prison System Department, as well as military doctors assigned to this work as part of their service. Due to constant lack of medical staff willing to work in prison hospitals and infirmaries, doctors serving sentences and medical students were employed, as well. Of course, their situation was much worse than of the “freedom” doctors. Both groups, however, were subject to control by prison officers, in particular of the Special Department which oversaw the work of prison intelligence and tracked all attempts to make informal contact with the prisoners. Prison healthcare was part of the system and its political objectives and ideological vision of the enemy, but it was also a derivative of the economic situation in the war-ravaged country. In the years 1944–1956, medical care in Polish prisons evolved. In the first years after the war, the health of prisoners was affected by terrible sanitary conditions, lack of doctors and basic medical supplies. Although over the years the equipment of some hospitals and drug supplies improved, poor health of prisoners was primarily affected by the long-term repressive regime which began to weaken only in the middle of 1953. The article is based on documents of the MBP Prison System Department, testimonies of prison doctors before the court and prosecutors, published memoirs of prisoners, as well as the author’s own interviews with doctors who were prisoners.

The article deals with the description of activity of the Association of Fighting Youth (ZWM) in three aspects. Firstly, on the basis of reports sent in from the region and profiles of individual district chairmen of the association, it seeks to portray youth activists and examine references concerning criminal activity of the ZWM members which can be found in the literature on the subject. It turns out that the association members often perpetrated malpractices which affected the subsequent organisational activity. In some areas, negative opinions about youth activists remained even in the 50s of the 20th century. All phenomena related to the so-called “immoral conduct of members” also impinged on the nature of activities undertaken which to a large extent can be considered superficial. The second issue described in the article is the ZWM involvement in campaigns before the June referendum and in the elections of January 1947. The author examined the activity of district structures in this field, and submitted the findings of literature on the subject to his critical review. An important activity in this area was the participation of the ZWM members in the dissolution of the “Wici” Rural Youth Association supporting the Polish People’s Party. The article shows that the members of the Association of Fighting Youth actively supported the so-called Wici Democratisation Committee, using methods having little to do with democracy. The last issue discussed is the cooperation of ZWM with other organisations, such as the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), Voluntary Citizens’ Militia Reserve (ORMO) and Youth Organisation of the Workers’ University Society (OMTUR). The article describes the financial and organisational dependence of ZWM structures on PPR, the participation of youth in the ORMO formations, and relations with the “fraternal” OMTUR organisation. The author mentions the fact that, despite the wishes expressed, the cooperation between PPR and its youth organisation was far from unequivocal sympathy. ZWM was an aggressive structure towards other youth organisations. It was focused on the dissolution of their structures and the “union” of Polish youth.

The Polish-Soviet agreement on option and repatriation concluded in Mos- cow on 6 July 1945 allowed Polish citizens in exile in the Soviet Union to return to their homeland. However, shortly after the signing of the agreement, it turned out that most of those concerned did not meet the conditions imposed by the Soviet authorities and could not exercise their right to repatriation. The unfavourable interpretation of the agreement provisions by the Soviets meant that it was essentially an invalid document. Only the diplomatic intervention of Professor Henryk Raabe, Polish Ambassador in the Soviet Union, made the prospect of repatriation became real again. The repatriation operation was overseen by the Union of Polish Patriots (ZPP). Field units of the organisation were involved in the procedure of changing the nationality of the exiles, carried out an informational campaign, gathered stocks of clothing, food and medicine for the journey, cooperated with railway authorities in clearing transports, etc. The resettlement of over a quarter of a million people from vast areas of Russia, Siberia and Central Asia was an extremely difficult and demanding operation which required proceeding in accordance with a specific plan. The responsible units of ZPP began preparations for the repatriation already in September 1945. The first transports of our compatriots to Poland departed as late as in February next year. The operation ended in June 1946. For the employees and activists of ZPP, as well as the exiles, these ten months meant increased organisational effort. Owing to the efforts of the Union of Polish Patriots, approximately 250,000 Polish citizens – exiles of the years of war and Soviet occupation – safely returned to their homeland in a well-organised operation.

The purpose of this article is to present data concerning readership of independent publications in the period after the introduction of martial law. The author mainly analyses survey-based data collected ex post, including the results of recent studies which have not been published yet. The data collected documents significant differences in the access to underground publications in various sizes of centres, in groups of various educational background and in environments declaring different opposition behaviour. It is a good indicator of the range of influence of the opposition of the time.

An author focuses on the reasons of the creation by the Regional Unit of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Bandera followers) of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Volhynia and Polesie and the anti-Polish ethnic cleansing operation carried out in these territories. The article draws the conclusion that these reasons were determined, first of all, by the war factors, which, in turn, defined the time of carrying out of this operation as well as that of the Armia Krajowa [Home Army] activists’ reaction actions. Describing the milestones of the confrontation of the Ukrainian and Polish clandestine organizations in the territory of pre-war Polish Volhynian Voivodeship in 1943–1944, the author specifies the principle difference, which, according to the author, existed in the nature and ultimate goal of the mutual armed actions carried out by the detachments of the UPA and the AK. The article describes the polemics with some points of view on this problem, widespread in the newest Polish and Ukrainian historiography.

The specifics of Ukrainian Soviet historiography is often reduced to the story of repressions and censorship from above. In this article the authors try to question this common approach and to show the complex dynamics in the history of Soviet Ukrainian historiography in the context of Soviet national politics. Covering the entire Soviet period (from early 1920s till the end of perestroika in the late 1980s) the article seeks to explore the development of the institutions like Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, the History Departments at Soviet universities, the Highest Attestation Commission (VAK), and the individual strategies applied by various historians. The article examines the processes of imposing state control and turning historical science in to an essential part of the state repressive organism as well as logics of self-censorship, stylistic unification and struggle for a limited spheres of non-conformism. In this respect special attention is devoted to Lviv (finally incorporated into the Soviet Union only in 1940s) and its intellectual influence. The Soviet specificity, a principal division between research (ascribed to the Academy of Sciences) and teaching (the Universities), is analyzed on various local examples: Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk. The developments in the perestroika years and Ukrainian historians` response to the liberalization of the Soviet regime are analyzed on both institutional and personal level. Post-Soviet Ukraine inherited a centralized structure of the scientific institutions and decided rather to fill them with a new ideological content than to go through painful and systemic reforms. The new flags over initially the same institutions symbolized for many the change of methodology and getting rid of Soviet heritage. The article stresses a need to rethink a view of Soviet historiography as a collective victim of totalitarianism and tends to conceptualize the paradoxical nature of post-Soviet transformation in history writing.