Writing about historical cartoons, one has to keep in mind two perspectives – that of art and that of history. Each of these perspectives specifies different tasks for a cartoon and these tasks are often contradictory to each other. While – for a historian – an ideal in a historical cartoon is compliance of the content and images with source documents, for a cartoon creator, the principal objective is an efficient fulfilment of the storyline. In the article, the author raises the question of a possibility to create a historical cartoon which would satisfy both art critics and historians. This question is in fact a question about the truth of historical facts in art. Searching the answer to the above question, the author points to postmodernist and avant-garde dictate, dominating today in theoretical digressions concerning the role of the art and of the history. The author recognises that the contemporary positions of theoreticians do not make it easier for him to find answers to the questions raised above. Therefore, the author turns in his considerations to classical solutions, paying attention to the attractiveness of the Aristotle principle of mimesis. He also notices that similar problems to these the cartoon creators are facing now while trying to present history in a form of a storyline, were the challenges classical authors of historical novels had to cope with earlier. Since the cartoon can be considered a part of the literary horizon, the author gives some thoughts to a dilemma whether novelists’ experiences will remain useful for cartoon creators. It seems that it is not entirely so, since contemporary fiction (and hence also cartoon) is influenced by phenomena related to a fragmentation of the plot. Therefore, the author is rather inclined to adopt the position that historical cartoon, if it wants to upkeep an element of a storytelling, will – in the future – be forced to use the experiences of filmmakers since the plot still plays an important role in movies. Closing paragraphs of the article are devoted to a poetic value of a historical cartoon and the attempt at defining it. The author tries to prove that chronological descriptions of events also characteristic of a historical source material, in case of a historical cartoon turns into a logical course of events filled with the protagonists’ emotions while, from the point of view of plastic art, it turns into a sequence of drawn images subordinated to the rights of aesthetics of a frame and a chart. The author underlines that despite determination to accurately recreate facts in a storyline, as well as, to recreate the visual impression of the relevant epoch, the creators should also try to accomplish their own goals identical to the objectives a work of art is supposed to accomplish.

The critic of the fundamental foundations of the traditional historiography was/is particularly influential from the point of view proposed by widely understood constructivism. It questioned that reality is something external and independent from cognition, and that the truth or falsity of its results depends on the nature of the world. In light of constructivism knowledge cannot be treated as an effect of the relation between the subject and object, its shape is not defined by the external world and, finally, that the scientific apparatus does not provide an adequate image (description) of the world (independent from culture). In this way from the constructivists’ conceptions of history we cannot say that “the past is real”, at least, “not the past as it is used by historians”. The images of the past are therefore a construction and are intelligible, not because of their own nature, but because of the a priori criteria which establish their intelligibility and which contribute to the knowledge of historians or the society in which they operate. Historians can be perceived as a part of the whole system, and their social credibility depends not only on (historical) sources, but on the fact that their discourse has its roots in cultural, social and linguistic prejudices that shape our perception of reality (or the past). Within the framework of these changes the category of (historical) imagination and its part in possible images of the past formulated by historians arouses special interest. From this point of view we can see (historical) imagination as a tool participating in constructing images of the past. Reflection on historical imagination in this way can lead to showing in new light not only the cultural prejudices of historical cognition (historical studies), but above all the reason for the necessity to reformulate the investigative programs and the forms of representing the past. The problems and questions raised in the article derive perhaps only from necessity a fundamental change of our relation to imagination. So in everyday life, the media, art, literature, and also scientific discourse, imagination – often even in defiance of arguments that some time appear in social and scientific circulation – is identified as “fiction and fantasy”, and leads to it being treated as an alternative for “truth and reality”. Meanwhile, it seems that likewise we do not think about a given culture that is true or false, so we should not also bring discussion on imagination into problems of its falsity or fictionality irrespective of whether we treat imagination as a “child of culture” or inversely, culture as a “child of imagination”. However, we wish to emphasize at this point, that it is not our intention to suggest that (historical) imagination is the (essential or crucial) tool of cognition of past reality, but rather we ask if imagination has such an essential part in historical knowledge, can we perceive it in the investigative practice of historians. Therefore, we do not try to force the thesis that the stories composed by historians are the work of imagination, but rather that representation (re-presence) of the past is possible with, or even thanks to, (historical) imagination.

The text describes crucial changes in the ways the Polish people remember their past after 1989 in reference to cultural processes concerning gradual transformation from the authoritarian to democratic ways of remembering the past. Various ways of understanding the concept of democratic remembrance were discussed in the article. A large part of the article was also devoted to the characteristics of the above mentioned changes in remembering the past and to the issue of their determinants. The basic question the author of the text was concerned with was: to what extent the changes occurring after 1989 resulted from political factors and to what extent they were the result of more profound changes in contemporary culture?

The article is an attempt to respond to the issue of what are the reasons for the changes in the institution of a historical museum in the context of modern cultural transformation. It reveals new perspectives, which are being opened for exhibition creators, and challenges resulting from new interpretation strategies. Museums (and histories created in them) are one of the ways, in which a human being refers to issues and ideas which concern himself and his past. Exhibitions not so much explain the past realities as they rather describe them in the context of their contemporary social and political conditions. The present interest in historical museums (both in Poland and in the world), reflected in numerous publications, conferences and research projects is an effect of museums trying to adapt to new situations and cope with conditions unlike those which accompanied their creation as public institutions. As institutional symbolic tokens of cities and regions, museums have new tasks to improve their image and to attract tourists; they become symbols of cultural revitalisation and representatives of the so called “soft” economy and new urbanisation. It has an impact on exhibition strategies and profiles in which new tendencies towards entertainment, performance and show are highlighted. It seems that we are now witnesses to the emergence of a new generation of historical museums (dubbed “new museums”) which are governed by different rules of representing the past and communicating with the audience than before.

The role of photography in the formative process of the Polish collective memory remains relatively unknown. There are no detailed studies of the issue and the available data do not create a logically constructed set. Hence, one has to rely only on fragmented information. In analysing the role of photography in the collective memory, a particular attention has to be paid to the distinction used by Barbara Szacka between public and common memory. The first one includes references to history present in public messages, and the second one signifies what is really present in people’s minds. In both these spheres, a different kind of photography dominates; the photographs play different roles and are differently perceived. It can be analysed on the example of two, rather opposite, cases: private photographs and photographic icons. Private photographs are the pictures taken to commemorate the events from the lives of individuals and their relatives, documenting events, people, places etc. important for them. For the persons who collect them and for their relatives, they are souvenirs of the past while what is important is their material virtue. These are not only pictures but also objects possessing their own history. Private photographs link family memories with those of a nation. On the one hand, they introduce “a great history” into the family remembrance while on the other hand; they become a component of the collective memory of wider groups of society. The results of the surveys conducted between September and November of 2003 by Tomasz Ferenc and of interviews conducted by Joanna Bartuszek in the period of 1999–2002 in Little Poland and the Podkarpacie Regions show that private photographs constitute an important component of the family’s remembering. Similar conclusions may be drawn from analysis of the data collected during the studies of collective memory conducted in 2003 and 2009. The concept of a place of memory (lieux de mémoire), introduced into modern humanistic science by Pierre Nora is understood in many diversified ways. It can also be applied to photography. The significant examples are the so called photographic icons. These are those icons and not the depicted events which are reference points that the social attention focuses on. They have been selected because of their special features and the role they play in public debate. Even if they were created with an intention of being an objective registration, providing them with a status of icon was an act of giving them their meanings. In the Polish culture, there are only a few pictures with an iconic status. The condition to obtain such a status is a multiple exposition in mass-media and mass-media were regarded untrustworthy within the whole course of the Polish People’s Republic’s history. Different kinds of photography appear in the Polish collective memory and in various spheres of that memory; different is the way of their reading and – what is particularly important – different is a level of their reliability. The photographs lack legitimacy which is acquired by being incorporated into a scientific debate. One can observe rather an opposite process – compromising their documentary value in the public debate. Research on the impact of photography upon the collective memory requires a detailed specification of the subject and the methodology of the analysis. A different approach has to be used to photographs functioning in the common memory and a different one to the photographic icons existing in the public memory. Questions relating to photography have to become a constant element of the research questionnaires used while studying the collective memory of the Poles. .

The author undertakes the attempt to analyse an increasingly popular in Poland phenomenon of historical reconstruction. She refers to such terminological issues as historical reconstruction, historical recreation, staging, mistakenly regarded as homogenous. In order to distinguish between the above mentioned definitions, she additionally specifies the reconstruction levels as represented in a particular environment. The article contains a review of main problems connected with reconstruction and its perception, issues of ethics and morality included. Moreover, she presents an outline of the history of the reconstruction movement both in the world and in Poland. The author tries to reveal, step by step, the mechanism of the formation of historical reconstruction groups and similar associations, beginning with a gathering of the people interested in forming the group through the selection of its name and the vision of its activities, up to collecting the equipment. This process results in the emergence and development of a separate reconstruction environment where those who share the common passion have a chance to exchange experience and knowledge. The text also describes the forms of activities practised by the performers (apart from specific recreations) and their tasks. It is connected with the presentation of objectives, the historical reconstruction tries to achieve and which stand behind the reconstruction performers’ motivations. The article shows merits of the phenomenon, not ignoring, at the same time, its deficiencies and potential threats. The author also tries to answer the question: what the historical education provided by historical reconstruction should be based upon?

After knocking down communism in 1989, Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe were burdened with a task of settling accounts with their totalitarian past both in institutional dimension – through legal compensation for the victims of crimes and persecutions, trying their perpetrators and developing institutional standards preventing functionaries of the former communist secret services and their co-workers from having an impact on public life (lustration) and also enabling the victims to have an insight into the documents collected in the past on them. Since, in the centre of the lustration debate an issue of exploring, developing and settling accounts with one of fundamental pillars of the totalitarian system i.e. former security forces was placed, one of the elements of settling accounts with the communist past was the creation of institutions responsible for taking over the archives of the communist special forces and revealing the network of agents of the political secret service, as well, as conducting research and educational activities in that area. The text analyses the conditions in which that process occurred in Poland and her bordering countries: Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Russia. The concluding paragraphs of the article contain the assessment that the process of creating the institutions responsible for taking over the materials of the state security organs, their development and making them available was a part of a political ritual of transformation from totalitarianism to democracy. That transformation was experienced by all post-communist countries of Central Europe which chose a democratic variant of social development. The institutions established in order to accomplish that goal have similar competences apart from investigative functions possessed only by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. Lesser successes were achieved as far as the attempts to legal persecution of the perpetrators of communist crimes were concerned and it relates to the entire geographical area. The state of law proved to be an inefficient tool in bringing the guilty ones to justice within the course of passing years. Settling accounts with communism was never done in Russia. One may think that Russian leaders came to the conclusion that society is not ready yet for such a move since it would entail huge social and political costs and that its full realisation would be possible only after the natural generation exchange has been accomplished. The author puts forward a thesis that a future researcher of the history of the post-communist era in Europe will be able to clearly distinguish the borderlines of the countries which have settled their accounts with a totalitarian past and of those where this has not been done with all the system, social and moral consequences of that fact.

Radio Free Europe was one of the most effective tools of Cold War in the hands of the western countries. The fact which is relatively unknown is that one of its units was conducting widespread surveys primarily aimed at establishing the level of the Station’s popularity in the countries to which it directed its broadcasts. Somehow additionally, the Station collected the information which today allows us to obtain the picture of the Polish public opinion on various topics, among others, on the issues concerning international affairs. International affairs are very closely linked with the internal situation of the country and are mainly perceived from this perspective. Particularly interesting are the opinions of the Poles on the Arab-Israeli War which got a lot of publicity in Poland, above of all, in the form of an Anti-Semitic witch-hunt symbolised by March 1968. Another interesting aspect is the attitude of the Poles to the problems of racism in the United States. Anti-American opinions, unfavourable to racism, are mixed with xenophobia which many Poles did not conceal. From the perspective of the RFE studies, the Polish People’s Republic emerges as the country of dying hopes, deepening stagnation, and the Poles as the opponents of the system who are hostile towards the USSR yet are not willing to risk a mutiny or a protest. In spite of all, in their majority, they assumed positions of adapting to and conforming with. Simultaneously, the surveys recorded also the opinions of the RFE employees who prepared the reports; these people often did not understand the realities of the studied countries and had a tendency to see the world only in black and white colours.

In spring of 1981, conservative forces within the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) sprang to life, articulating a necessity to strengthen the Party ideologically and to engage into a decisive struggle against “Solidarity” Trade Union. One of the main representatives of the conservative fraction was the Katowice Party Forum (KPF). The founding meeting of the Katowice Party Forum was held on 15 May 1981. The Forum was established at the Katowice Regional Committee of the PUWP under a patronage of its first secretary, Andrzej Żabiński. In the first stage of its activities, the Forum consisted of over 100 people who were mostly activists of the Polish United Workers’ Party from the Katowice Region, functional activists of the industry trade unions and officers of the Citizens’ Militia (MO) and Secret Police (SB). The executive body of the Katowice Party Forum was the Programming Council consisting of highly positioned functionaries of central and regional echelons of the PUWP. The Council was chaired by a member of the Politburo of the PUWP Central Committee, Gerard Gabryś and a Marxist ideologist, Wsiewołod Wołczew. The main objective identified by the Forum activists was a struggle for keeping the socialist system intact and maintaining the ideological line of the communist party. First of all, the KPF members underlined a critical diagnosis of the Party condition, for which they blamed the PUWP Management. As particularly dangerous, the Forum regarded the functioning of linear structures of reformative, grass-roots, internal movement described as revisionist and right-wing. The Forum accused the members of that movement of the will to transform

The author analysed songs performed at the Soldiers’ Song Festival in Kołobrzeg in the period of 1968–1989. Both these songs and the entire Festival with its stage design played an important role in the process of building the socialist society. Forms and methods of using pop music by propaganda of the Polish People’s Republic were changing in the course of social and political transformations. However, no matter, who the leader of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) was, music, and pop music in particular, was an extremely important tool of creating new mentality. Through pop music, and the Soldiers’ Song Festival was a part of the pop music landscape, attempts were made to shape the awareness of the socialist society. Among many lyrics, one can find numerous examples of references to history, primarily to the history of World War II but also many examples of everyday life of the Military. Selections of relevant content allowed the authorities to create their own vision of the past and present. The author of the article identified the most popular content promoted by the Kołobrzeg hits, as well as, the attitudes thus created. She also assessed the importance of the Soldiers’ Song Festival in Kołobrzeg.

The purpose of this paper is to review of various approaches to „Solidarność” in subject-matter literature. The author is going to seek answer to the following interpretative question: whether a given conceptualization grasp „Solidarność” movement in dynamic or in static way. In the second part of the paper interpretations of „Solidarność” in analytical categories of insurrection, civil, postmodern, religious, republican, revolutionary and social movements are presented. Finally, the author tries to identify reasons of dynamic or static approach to „Solidarność”.

Specific situation of Yugoslavia – the communist state not belonging neither to the West nor to the Eastern Block, active and dexterous in its foreign policy-meets interest of Serbian and Croatian historians. The collapse of Yugoslavia in 90s evoked focus mainly on the national issues amongst academics from both states. At the end of 90s, researchers began to survey Yugoslav foreign policy and position of Tito’s state in the Cold War constellation. Nowadays, both in Croatia and Serbia interest of historians is focused on such problems as Yugoslav policy towards the Third World as a leading state of the non-aligned movement, American policy towards Yugoslavia and Tito’s oscillation in his attitude towards both blocks. Except of the few very important monographs, documents’ collections and articles about relations between Yugoslavia and the Eastern Block, especially treating first decade after the World War II, this field still needs to be the object of survey. There is also a few relevant studies about cultural impact of the West and the communist block in Yugoslavia, reflecting political and ideological concerns of the divided world and their influence in Tito’s state. Surveys about Yugoslav position in international relations, mainly carried out in Serbia, have not exceeded years 1945–1970 and there is still need to research Cold War problematic from the Balkan perspective.