The paper presents the years of the 1970s of the era hallmarked by the name of János Kádár. It is based on new researches, however, it incorporates previous knowledge as well. The decade of the seventies is quite controversial in Hungary. On the one hand, Hungary has passed through the bloody retributions of the Revolution of 1956, on the other hand, dictatorship was functioning effectively, making sure that there is no such thing as a soft or hard dictatorship, there is only dictatorship. However, Hungarians enjoy the Hungarian atmosphere of the sixties, the so called “goulash communism” There is full employment – even if work does not always come with it, there is general, free medical care, etc. One can travel to the West, but with large backpacks and tinned food. Moreover, one can obtain a car after years of waiting, but true enough, only from the offer of the “friendly socialist countries”. Construction of block of flats continues as well, exceeding one million. Small summer cottages are being built by the privileged or the more daring along the beeches of the largest lake of Hungary and Central Europe, Lake Balaton. Mass tourism emerges. But it is the seventies when the new wave of the global economic crisis comes. It comes to light that the Hungarian economy can only remain functional through more and more loans. Indebtedness, becoming tragic by this time starts in this period. The paper thoroughly examines, investigates the operation of the Kádár regime, mainly based on material from the archives with a demand for academic character. Thus the reader learns what it meant to live, work and make one’s way in the seventies in Hungary. It also becomes clear that the decade of the seventies is only the “golden age” of the socialist period by appearance. In fact, it is this decade when those problems occur, which lead to the downfall of the regime in the next one. These were essentially problems of an economic nature, then social, political, demographical etc. ones emerged in association with them. However, the obstinate desire of Hungarians for national independence and a democratic political system should not be underestimated. For those who are interested, the author’s monograph titled “The Cursed Decade”, which discusses in detail the years of the seventies of the Kádár era, could be an important reading.

In his paper, the author attempts to tackle the issue of reliability and specificity of documents (among them, the so-called “files”) stored at the Institute of National Remembrance, as well as the truthfulness of the narrative based on them. The paper consists of six parts. In the first chapter, the author critically analyses the objections raised by journalists and historians against the reliability of the archive records stored by the Institute of National Remembrance. In the second chapter, the author considers the reliability of the “files” in the light of Jerzy Topolski’s concept of the historical source. In the two successive chapters (third and fourth), the author characterizes the specificity of the documents produced by the communist repression apparatus by means of the two classifications of sources proposed by Gerard Labuda and Jerzy Topolski. The results of this analysis show that the “files” are not a new type of historical source and their discovery does not necessitate a radical reshaping of the existing sources classification and the introduction of new interpretation methods. However, Labuda’s and Topolski’s interpretations are useful, as they acknowledge the purpose of their creation, as well as the function that they performed in the political system of the communist state. In the fifth chapter, the author argues that the repression apparatus collected, selected, processed and stored information on social life, as it was believed that such data facilitated the exercising of political control over the society. Ignoring this aspect of the archive records led to historians’ methodical and heuristic errors – accepting the vision of social life and processes presented in the sources that are most often used in historical narrative construction. These errors are discussed in the sixth chapter. They do not result from any defects of the sources themselves or the shortcomings of the methodology of history, they stem from institutional and sociological factors – giving in to the social demand for fast presentation of the results of modern history analyses, as well as the axiologisation of historiographical discourse, which leads to the slackening of methodical reliability standards.

Oral history (research method/technique and discipline of the history so-called „ordinary people”, who were so far beyond the interest of historians or who did not produce traditional sources to get to know their past) has made the memory a historical source. However for this to become, the interviews with people (conducted according to specific rules, for example asking open-ended question, what encourage people to say what they would like to say) who participated in or observed past events must be preserved as an aural record or in written form in archives or libraries. The oral history can lead not only to the new facts or new interpretations of the past, but also can be used in research of history of mentalities. Memoires are neither a pure reflection of the events of the past, or distorted version of a particular experience, but his “functional reduction”, the “functional” in this sense that it matched the number of individual factors. People remember by organizing memories in the frame of their experiences, create important for them, the image of past events. As a result, the oral history was accuses of lack of credibility, deforming the facts and dependence on the circumstances of the recall. Alessandro Portelli replied to this accusation, that the biggest advantage of oral history is not discover the new events of the past, but the fact that oral history enters into the field of imagination, symbolism, desires, perceptions and interpretations. As a result of such an approach “memory errors” and “false statements”, which is their due, they have research value. Focusing not only in the facts, as postulated among others Alessandro Portelli, could lead to the realm of mentality, as well as to the social, cultural and material factors that influence it. Analysis transcripts of interview, conducted according to certain rules, can provide to the interesting information about how people understand processes and situations. This can lead to the sphere of values, attitudes and beliefs. For the study of mentalities, interested in reconstruction of the collective concept of reality, myths and imagination, recognized by the group and all of society, or which have an impact on them, oral history is a valuable source.

The relation between a historian and the past can be described in terms of nostalgia and searching, therefore the Sublime in history is connected with the longing for a presence that evokes fascination and fear at the same time. When analysing historical writing, one ought to take into account both the linguistic aspects of the sublime and the related philosophical and aesthetical reflection. As a result, this category, referred to as one of the so-called fundamental myths (after Jerzy Topolski), might lead to using this reflection on the sublime to better understand historiography as a record of experiencing the world. As an analysis category, it allows for showing that historians can experience the same events in various ways, and the differences are visible at the level of creating images of the past. The Sublime category is a form of the initial referencing of humans to the past, but it also one of the most important elements of criticism of traditional history. The ruminations on the sublime are connected with the interest of postmodernists in the style and rhetoric of historical narration that influences emotions. The rhetoric of the sublime is an immanent element of persuasion. It is mainly about convincing and persuading emotions. As a result, it is a significant element of historical narration. Transferring the sublime from the aesthetics dimension (which we perceive trans-historically) to the area of historiography resulted from, among others, noticing the rhetoric dimension of a historical work understood as a construction in which the dimension of human moral experiences is reflected. Rhetoric understood as a method of text construction that is at the same time a method of reality construction, plays an important role in historical writing. It formulates the bases in relation to history, it makes us aware that the historical perspective is not fixed. As a result, the sublime, transferred to the dimension of historiography, becomes an issue of historical optics. The construction of the works of historians can be analysed in terms of the construction of the sublime both in particular scenes and in the entire work. In historiography, especially in programme and scientistic historiography, the sublime usually is not an end in itself, but a means of reaching a goal. It is connected with

The article constitutes part of bibliography of Polish boxer Tadeusz Pietrzykowski. He arrived in Auschwitz on 14 June 1940, with the first transport of Polish political prisoners, and received the number 77. He was arrested at the Hungarian-Yugoslavian border while trying to escape to France, where he intended to join the Polish army. In the first camp year, he worked as a carpenter, haymaker and builder. Then, on one Sunday in March 1941, he engaged in his first fight with a capo and German light-middleweight pre-war champion Walter Dunning. After that, he fought almost every Sunday. Moreover, Tadeusz Pietrzykowski was one of the prominent members of the resistance movement organised by Witold Pilecki. In March 1943, Tadeusz Pietrzykowski was transferred to the camp at Neuengamme, but he had to continue his fights. He won the legendary match with German heavyweight boxer Schally Hottenbach by knock-out. This fight later become the subject of a book and film. Pietrzykowski was liberated on 15 April 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He joined the 1 st Armoured Division of General Maczek. After the Second World War, Pietrzykowski became a boxing coach and physical education teacher.

In the years 1944–1946, as a result of the agreement reached on 9 September 1944 between the Polish National Liberation Committee and the Government of the Ukrainian Social Soviet Republic, the mass repatriations of Ukrainians from Poland to Soviet Ukraine were carried out. This process also encompassed the Lemkos, who had been classed as Ukrainians by the authorities on the basis of the reports from Lemkivshchina (Lemko’s homeland). In March 1945, the repatriation campaign embraced also the Nowy Sącz Poviat, where the poviat office and the Poviat National Council wanted to solve the issue of the Lemkos once and for all, as they considered it politically sensitive and believed it could be a source of ethnic conflicts in the future. On 16 March 1945, the PNC determined that 24,755 people should be repatriated. In Nowy Sącz, offices of the Regional Representative Office of the Republic of Poland and the Representative of the USSR government for Evacuation were opened. Until mid-July, 13,100 persons (59 %) had been repatriated. The initial reaction to the opportunity to travel to Soviet Ukraine was enthusiastic, how- ever, as information about the conditions was received, the Lemkos withdrew the submitted declarations of intent to repatriate. As a result, the poviat authorities ignored the principle of voluntariness, and the Lemkos made desperate attempts to avoid repatriation: 800 persons converted from Greek to Roman Catholicism and justified it by referring to their awareness of Polish ethnicity. The poviat decided to conduct the campaign with the support of armed forces. The speeches of, among others, Władysław Gomułka on leaving the ethnic group in the terri- tory of the Republic of Poland, were to no avail. Due to the determined approach of poviat authorities and the opinion of the Skills Academy on the affiliation of the Lemkos to the Ukrainian nation, the forced repatriation was continued. On 17 May 1946 at 4:00 a.m., the armed forces entered Lemko villages. The commune administrators, PPR members and commune councils stood up for the forcefully repatriated Lemkos, which brought the operation to a deadlock. The armed forces managed to repatriate only 60 out of the planned 2,200 persons. The repatriation campaign was brought to an end on 25 May 1946 to prevent any negative effects on the economic situation and security in the poviat. In total, 17,740 persons (89 %) were repatriated.

The PPR (Polish Workers’ Party) and PPS (Polish Socialist Party) began their activities after the creation of the Gdańsk voivodeship in March 1945. The PPR was based on activists delegated to the Gdańsk Coast region by the Central Committee. The PPS, that had traditions extending back to the pre-war period, largely resorted to cadres composed of local activists. Party functionaries arrived from central areas of the country within Operational Groups. In 1948, implementing the strategy of establishing communist political monopolies in Europe, controlled by Stalin, the process of “unifying” both parties was launched. The purpose was to create the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR). The event was officially promoted as the crucial one of Poland’s history. Activists were presented who were democratically chosen as delegates to the Unification Congress and members of the new party’s leadership. Egalitarianism within the party was the subject of extensive discussion. Actually, “all roles” in the spectacle had been already attributed behind-the-scenes. “Unification deeds”, marches of support for the idea, decoration of cities and villages, or the “spontaneous” singing of revolutionary songs were staged. The leaders of the KW (Voivodeship Committee) of PZPR in Gdańsk had been appointed earlier in Warsaw, and the committee’s composition was well known to the party’s elite many weeks before “its election” by party members. The completion of the “unification” operation required tremendous funds, provided from PZPR’s own resources only in a tiny part. An analysis of PZPR’s finances makes evident that the party would not be able to function without subsidies from the state budget. The process of “unification” ended with the 1 st Reporting and Electoral Conference of the KW in June 1949. During that conference, the leadership of the committee was elected as democratically, as in the previous year. A symbolic act transmitting the “unification” to public space, consisted in naming streets and squares in the voivodeship’s cities to commemorate the inception of PZPR.

The land reform reduced the role of the influential great landowners to the margins of public life, depriving them of political influence, material assets, and evicting them from their family estates. The communists repressed landowners, labelling them “the material base of reaction forces”, holding them responsible for national defeats. Searching for new sources of income, representatives of the group often applied for positions in various state institutions associated with agriculture. This article is dedicated to the personnel policies of State Land Properties (PNZ) in the years 1946-1949. The institution offered many members of gentry the possibility to gain income, and find themselves a place in the new reality. Its general director, managing a huge state asset on behalf of the communist authorities, was Leonard Witold Maringe, a landowner from Great Poland. He managed to convince his patrons that the supreme value in the process of shaping the enterprise’s personnel policy, must be the professional competence of candidates. In Maringe’s opinion, representatives of gentry were the only group of professionals capable of rebuilding agriculture in those specific conditions. He consistently implemented his views by hiring to all positions, both at Central Management and in districts, persons originating from gentry. Obviously, it could not last forever. In mid-1947 the communists took to the counteroffensive, aiming to purify the PNZ of people associated with the “clique of landowners”. For nearly two years Maringe did all in his power to prevent the full execution of the authorities’ plans. However, the enterprise was eventually liquidated, and the attitude of its general director led him and his close collaborators to court, and to the prison cell. In addition to very grave charges of spying and sabotage, he was also accused of conducting a personnel policy detrimental for the enterprise. He and his close collaborators were freed from prison seven years later, and rehabilitated. Many more people were arrested, and apart from the management of PNZ, many other employees of the enterprise were imprisoned or dismissed on false charges. Dismissals and trials in most cases had the aspect of class conflict.

The Klub Wykolejeńców (KW, Rebels’ Club) was one of the numerous groups established by Warsaw students of general and higher secondary schools in the 1950s. These clubs usually bore unusual and provocative names. The secret political police of the PRL was of the opinion that these informal groups “demoralised youth” and strengthened its “negative approach to education and social life”. KW was composed of young people of intelligentsia families that were brought together by the memory of an independent Poland, animosity towards communist and their peers associated with the Union of Polish Youth, as well as a specific cult of the West (especially of the USA). Teenagers would meet at so-called receptions and preferred such so-called patterns of spending their free time. These patterns were notably divergent from the uniform and correct – both in the political and social sense – model of behaviours imposed on youth by dogmatists belonging to the party. Only a few of the more than ten members of KW undertook more radical anti-system activities, such as leaflet distribution. In the opinion of the UB, the Club had a “more radical face” in its time. It was closed due to the arrest of its members. Those who contested the “social justice system” most vehemently were to be sentenced during a showcase trial which was not held in the end. Nevertheless, a few club members were sentenced to imprisonment for a few years. Information that would enable drafting a more precise description of the phenomenon of informal youth groups is still lacking. Such groups, as in the case of KW, were not conspiratorial organisations in the strict sense, but they contested the political and social reality of communist Poland. This interesting issue still awaits in-depth studies.

Economic historian Aleksander Kierek was a member of the group of important figures in the Lublin world of science in mid-20 th century. Memories of this persona might be slightly faded today, probably due to the lapse of time (he died in 1976). Kierek was a soldier of the Polish Peasants’ Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie), and unfortunately he fell victim to the times into which he was born. This article is an attempt to recall his biography, and – first and foremost – to complete it with facts that have remained unknown until recently. When Kierek was held at a Stalinist prison, he decided to take up cooperation with the security authorities. The author strives to elucidate and comprehend the reasons for this decision and present the long-term activity that Kierek pursued to the benefit of UB/SB. Moreover, the author tries to decipher the relations between Kierek and the UB/SB, i.e. attempts to answer the question whether Kierek can be perceived solely as a victim of the system, or rather as a person who engaged in a “symbiotic relationship”. Nevertheless, when reading the reports of informer “Jan Mewa” – the pseudonym adopted by Kierek – one also has to bear in mind that such documents are specific. The world depicted in them is usually schematic, black and white, in many instances exaggerated, sometimes contrived. This work is not an attempt to “defile a sanctity”, i.e. disclose unfavourable facts from Kierek’s past or intrude on his privacy. It is rather about filling in the “blank spots” in the image of Lublin’s intelligentsia that was forced to develop various adaptation mechanisms after 1944.

This article presents an outline of the structures, organisational hierarchy and tasks of the Reconnaissance of the Border Defence Army (Wojsko Ochrony Pogranicza) and the Border Traffic Control (Kontrola Ruchu Granicznego) units that were subordinate to WOP and the Ministry of Interior in the years 1945–1991. The main tasks of the abovementioned bodies that constituted part of the quite vast repression apparatus of the communist state consisted in the operational securing of borders and border traffic, as well as counteracting all activities threatening safety and security, and the political system of the state in the border zone. The organisation was established on 27 September 1945 under the order of the Supreme Commander of the Polish Armed Forces. In the first period of its existence, it was subordinate to the Ministry of National Defence. In 1949, it became part of the Main Inspectorate for Border Protection and, as a result, it was subordinate to the Ministry of Public Security (MBP). Intelligence departments based at the headquarters and their counterparts at the level of brigades and battalions were responsible for operational activities. In 1965, the General Headquarters of WOP, together with their subordinate units, became part of the newly-established Ministry of Interior, and since 1961, Command II (Reconnaissance) of the WOP General Headquarters and its subordinate units, as well as KRG bodies, became subordinate to Department II of the Ministry of Interior in the scope of operational activities. However, already in 1965, the WOP General Headquarters and its subordinate field units were excluded from the Ministry of Interior and, in organisational terms, became subordinate to the Main Inspectorate of Territorial Defence of the Ministry of National Defence. The previous KRG Units remained part of the Ministry of Interior. They were incorporated into the KRG MI Command that functioned as part of the SB division in July 1965. In October 1965, on the basis of the previous WOP General Headquarters, the Head of WOP was established. At the newly-formed body, intelligence activities were the responsibility of the Command of Reconnais- sance of the Head of WOP and its subordinate units. In 1979, the Head of WOP was excluded from the Ministry of National Defence and was made subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior once again in the scope of command. It assumed the name of “WOP Command”. At the time, the Command of Reconnaissance of the Head of WOP was composed of KRG organisational units that were then excluded from the Ministry of Interior. As a result, a uniform system of border protection was restored within the Ministry of Interior. The fact that General Czesław Kiszczak assumed the function of Minister of Interior in July 1981, as well as the further consequences of martial law introduction, resulted in tightening cooperation between WOP and MO and SB bodies, as well as in expanding the scope of the tasks of the Command of Reconnaissance of the Head of WOP. The basic changes included the take-over of some border-related tasks of the SB by the WOP Reconnaissance, especially: protection of border customs offices and their agendas, borderline railway stations and ports, prevention, identification and detection of all hostile criminal activity and illegal and anti-state organisations in the border zone.

Documents drafted by the SB of the Polish People’s Republic (Polska Rzecz- pospolita Ludowa) were submitted to the archive of Office “C”. They were subject to the provisions on the handling of archive files at the Ministry of Interior. Appropriate regulations, instructions and lists of files were issued by the minister in cooperation with the director of Office “C”. They also contained the principles of disposal and destruction of archived documents. In the years 1956–1990, the following regulations concerning this area were issued: no. 00123/57, 0127/57, 0107/68, 08/71, 034/74, 030/79, 049/85. Current top secret operational documentation or secret operational documentation of special significance was destroyed under the regulations, instructions and the list of issues that constituted state secrecy, issued by the minister. In the years 1956–1990, the following regulations concerned that issue: no. 70/60, 0101/60, together with Appendix no. 2, 0078/66, 89/72, Instruction to Regulation no. 08/75, 60/83, 26/87. In the case of some departments (e.g. Office “W”), separate provisions were issued owing to the special nature of the documentation drafted at those units. The main factor determining the period of file archiving was the operational, practical, scientific and historical value of the collected documents. Under the provisions of law, it was necessary to destroy the documents in the presence of a committee. Furthermore, a protocol had to be drafted on the disposal or destruction of the documents. The performance of the procedure had to be kept secret, and the disposal protocol had to be stored at the archive. In the years 1957–1985, during the process of revising the regulations, the file archiving period was notably shortened, which was the result of political changes. In 1989 – in compliance with the Announcement of Minister of Interior Czesław Kiszczak of 17 February 1989 on the list of legal acts that are valid at the Ministry of Interior – the issue of material destruction at the Ministry of Interior was governed by regulations no. 60/83, 02/85, 049/85 Nr 26/87. Apart from those documents, the directors of some departments issued their own regulations on the disposal of the documents drafted at their units. The disposal and destruction of documents at Office “C” was governed by the logic of a Soviet state that was not subordinate to any control. The liquidation of the SB archives was aimed at removing evidence of the criminal activities of the officers of the state apparatus and protecting them from penal liability. The destruction of SB materials enabled securing the interests of special services of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that cooperated with SB. The employees that issued these normative acts were aware of this.

This article summarises the findings concerning the connections between the civil security apparatus and the PRL economy, and presents a more precise definition of the field of research. Until now, research findings allowed historians to, at most, formulate general theses and put forward initial research postulates. Many researchers representing various fields of humanistic and socioeconomic sciences took up the issue of the relations between Polish security services and the economic situation in the PRL. This issue also attracted the attention of journalists. In the case of historians, methodological difficulties are posed mainly by analysis, interpretation and evaluation of the materials created and accumulated by the SB in connection with the facility protection of PRL financial institutions and industrial enterprises. This documentation is brimming with specialist terminology (e.g. in the scope of macroeconomics or trade law), and some terms are still rooted in the previous political system. The first part of the article presents the organisational development of the economy invigilation division of the SB, starting from the 1940s until the Industry Protection Department established at the end of the PRL. The second part focuses on selected areas of activity of SB division III-A/V/OG SB in the 1980s. On the basis of the results of a poll carried out in the Katowice Province and by means of quantitative methods, the hypothetical scale of interference into the state’s economy was estimated. In the third part, on the basis of SB operational materials and ASW (Internal Affairs Academy) training publications, the author attempted to define the actual scope of interest of the operational division in the invigilation of the economy. Four basic areas of SB activities have been discerned: 1. counteracting economic crimes, 2. protection of classified information, 3. analysis, evaluation and forecasting of the state’s economic development, 4. counteracting anti-system activity. The author put forward the hypothesis that in the 1980s, division V of the SB underwent the process of professionalization towards a specific “ central anti-corruption office”, and at the same time shed its political dependencies. The second part deals with the reaction of the SB to the dynamic and radical changes in the economic system of the country in the second half of the 1980s (commercialisation and privatisation of enterprises owned by the Treasury) and the pathologies that accompanied them (emancipation of nomeclature, i.e. the granting of ownership rights to state, communal or cooperative property to officials who held key administrative positions in the country, embezzlement). The materials showing the attitude of the heads of the ministries to the deregu- lation of the socialist economy are completed with SB reports on the Polish society’s approaches during economic changes, not only those initiated by the cabinet of Mieczysław Rakowski, but also those launched by the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz.

The article presents Janusz Molka, one of the most dangerous secret collaborators of the Security Service (SB) in Tri-City, and reveals the full context of his registration by the 2 rd Department of KWMO (Voivodeship Command of Citizens’ Militia, or communist-era police) in Gdańsk. J. Molka was noticed by the SB already as a high school student. He was then active in youth circles associated with academic chaplaincy, painting “hostile” slogans on walls. In that time he met Arkadiusz Rybicki and Aleksander Hall. After August 1980, he actively joined in creating the structures of “Solidarity” trade union in Gdańsk. After the imposition of martial law, he handled the distribution of clandestine publications. In February 1982, the 3 rd Department of KWMO in Gdańsk launched an investigation code-named “Krokus”, due to the suspected use of the Tri-City Highland Club, of which Molka was a member, for illegal activities. SB functionaries began observing Molka. On 13 th May 1983 he was detained and recruited as a secret collaborator of SB, under the pseudonym “Majewski”. Due to secrecy needs he later changed his pseudonym to “C-5”, again to “Romkowski”. He was used to infiltrate opposition structures in Tri-City. Until October 1984 he delivered over 80 written reports. His performance was cited as outstanding exampole of cooperation. As a recognition of his merits, the SB command expressed consent to his formal hiring on a secret position (December 1984). From then on, he used the pseudonym “Nowak”. He maintained contacts with the underground authorities of “Solidarity”, the Independent Students’ Association (NZS) of Gdańsk University, he reached the persons exercising control over the transportation routes of clandestine literature. His work was very much appreciated. In 1989 he was transferred to the 3 rd Department of MSW (Ministry of Internal Affairs) in Warsaw. In May 1990 he left the Security Service, without being subjected to the procedure of verification. Checking out Janusz Molka in IPN’s (Institute of National Remembrance’s) auxiliary files, does not confirm his collaboration with the SB. Molka’s registration card features the number of registration 47075. The registration book at that number states the category OZ (protected person). However, another registration number appears in Janusz Molka’s personal files (officer’s files) – 47080. At that number, the registration book features notes about the TW (secret collaborator) pseudonym “Majewski”. But, that number is written on the registration card of Katarzyna A. An analysis of archives enables to assert that the mistake was committed by a functionary of the 3 rd Department of KWMO in Gdańsk, on filling the registration cards in the beginning of the registration process of Janusz Molka.

The materials created by the Security Service (SB, Służba Bezpieczeństwa) of the Ministry of Interior (MI) and other special services of the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) are valuable, and often even irreplaceable sources that enable conducting research on the most recent history of Poland. However, they ought to be treated in a reasonable manner, with utmost caution, because they were created by the services that conspired their operational activity also within their own ranks. One ought to remember about the different specifics of the operational materials allocated for internal use by SB operational units, as well as other materials, such as for instance investigative files, personal files of internees, reporting materials, inter-department or external correspondence. This concerns especially the documentation concerning the human intelligence sources of the SB. The persons registered as SB human intelligence sources could be interrogated or searched by officers of the SB investigation division who were not fully familiar with the actual role of the individual. The documentation created on such occasions (interrogation or search protocols, etc.) simply could not contain information that the given individual performed the role of an agent. The same concerns court and prosecution files. Drawing unilateral conclusions only on the basis of such materials, without including relevant operational materials and record entries, could result in the erroneous belief that we are dealing solely with a victim of oppression. Incorrect conclusions can also be drawn if SB inter-department correspondence or routine correspondence with the MI is used unilaterally. Moreover, these materials could not contain information uncovering human intelligence sources. The same regards the files of those interned during martial law. Opposite situations might also take place – the contents of the preserved entries that confirm the registration of an individual as an SB human

The daily “Neues Deutschland” of 29 November 2002 quoted the following statement of the Dutch scientist Christiaan Frederik Rüter: “One must accept the fact that the prosecution of National Socialist crimes in Eastern Germany – contrary to Western Germany – resulted not only from political calculations, but also from a real, sincere need”. Rüter was the judge of the National Court in Amsterdam, and until 2003 was active as Professor of procedural and penal law at the Amsterdam university. He conducted the project The Judiciary and National Socialist Crimes. As part of the project, materials from penal processes that took place in both parts of Germany after 1945 were analysed, documented and published. The works on this project were commenced in the 1960s. The quotation reveals a unilateral, uncritical and non-diversifying evaluation of the activi-ty of the GDR in this area. This approach is also palpable in the introduction and comments to the collection of Eastern German court decisions in cases of National Socialist murders (see: DDR-Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Sammlungostdeutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen. Verfahrensregister und Dokumentenband, ed. C.F. Rüter, D. de Mildt, München 2002). Historian Falco Werkentin criticised focusing on court decisions and ignoring the “conditions in which they were produced” under the SED dictatorship. He drew attention to the trials against “Nazi and war criminals” that were pending before the Penal Chamber in Waldheim in spring 1950. These processes resulted in the sentencing of approx. 3,400 persons for allegedly or actually committed crimes, but the judgements were passed in violation of the elementary principles of the rule of law. Werkentin underlined: “In the proceedings held in the 1970s and 1980s, offences were not fabricated any more. In those years, one should adopt a critical approach to those cases that were not brought to accusation. This also con- cerns […] the FRG in this whole period” (See: F. Werkentin, DDR-Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Notwendige Hinweise zu einer Dokumentation [in:] Deutschland Archiv (DA) 3/2005, p. 506−515). Rüter did not comment on these arguments in the article in which he compared the number of convictions between Eastern and Western Germany solely on the basis of the sentences. As a result, he ascribed more convictions to the GDR and its judicial system. He also concluded that cases were conducted faster in the GDR. Rüter also stated that there is no evidence supporting the thesis that the Stasi protected Nazi perpetrators prior to prosecution and used them whenever an opportunity occurred to infringe on the international image of the FRG (See: C.F. Rüter, Das Gleiche. Aber anders. Die Strafverfolgung von NS-Verbrechen im deutsch-deutschen Vergleich [in:] DA 2/2010, p. 213−222). In the book titled Zbrodniarze nazistowscy i Stasi. Tajna polityka wobec przeszłości (Nazi and Stasi Criminals. The Covert Policy on the Past), I made it evident that this was not the case. Somewhat as a confirmation of my arguments, the prosecutor’s office of the central unit in North Rhine-Westphalia that is responsible for prosecuting National Socialist mass crimes commenced proceedings against an SS-man suspected of participating in the massacre in the French locality of Oradour-sur-Glane. The Security Service had held information about that person’s possible participation in the crime since 1980, however, in consultation with the judiciary, it resigned from launching penal proceedings. The above article is a polemic with the theses of R. Rüter.

This article deals with the political myth and cult of the Ukrainian radical right politician Stepan Bandera in the Canadian city of Edmonton. It explores how certain elements within Ukrainian immigrant groups tried to combine the policies of Canadian multiculturalism with the anti-communist rhetoric of the Cold War in order to celebrate the ultranationalist and fascist politician Stepan Bandera as a part of the struggle against the Soviet Union and for an independent Ukraine. Bandera’s myth and cult emerged in Canada and in several other places around the globe after Bandera’s assassination on 15 October 1959 in Munich. People who began commemorating Bandera and celebrating Ukrainian fascism came to Edmonton in the late 1940s and early 1950s from the camps for displaced persons in Germany and Austria. They escaped from Ukraine in 1944 together with the withdrawing German army. This group of people consisted of Nazi collaborators, members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, partisans from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and soldiers of the Waffen-SS Galizien Division. A certain number of them were involved in war criminality and in the aryanization of Jewish property. During the Cold War they stayed in countries such as Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Great Britain and the United States of America, where they cultivated not only the Bandera cult but also myths and cults of other Ukrainian war criminals like Roman Shukhevych and allowed the organization of their political and cultural lives as well as work at academic institutions to be handled by such Nazi collaborators and convinced antisemites as Volodymyr Kubiiovych. The myth and cult of the providnyk Bandera was perhaps the most persistent one but it was certainly not the only one. Investigating the political myth and cult of Stepan Bandera, I firstly provide a short theoretical introduction to the political myth. Secondly, using the method of “thick description” and the critique of ideology, I analyze how some elements of Ukrainian communities celebrated Bandera in Edmonton and several other Canadian cities under the influence of his political myth. Analyzing the myth I concentrate on the process of commemoration which mainly consisted of a requiem mass (panakhyda) and of commemorative gatherings during which Ukrainian radical right individuals declaimed poems for the providnyk, sang OUN or UPA songs for him or performed diverse dances in folklorist costumes or uniforms. Analyzing the Bandera cult in Edmonton I tried to elaborate on how the politics of multiculturalism that were introduced in Canada in 1971 corresponded with the neo-fascist tendencies of the Ukrainian radical right groups. Furthermore I tried to find out why Ukrainian radical right émigrés welcomed the politics of multiculturalism and how they used them for the process of cultivating their radical right and neo-fascist cultural activities.