The article presents the formal principles and practices concerning expropriation of Polish property by the German authorities in the territory annexed to the Third Reich in autumn 1939. The article focuses on the expropriation, confiscation, temporary management and sale of farms, as well as residential housing and building plots. The divisions of competency, between the German civilian central and regional administrative bodies, as well as the SS administration, are defined in an effort to determine responsibility for execution of particular expropriations in the annexed territories in the name of ‘strengthening Germanhood’. Polish territories incorporated into the province of Silesia are used as a case study. The author delineates the stages of expropriating Polish property – from registering and assessing value, to removal of Polish owners (private owners – Polish nationals, Jewish or ethnically Polish, or Polish state property) and management of expropriated farmsteads or home, thru its sale or lease to German citizens (Reichsdeutsch, Volksdeutsch, or resettled Germans) or its nationalization. Three persons, whose roles and responsibilities intertwined, were responsible for the management and redistribution of expropriated Polish (and Jewish) property: Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, as the superior of the Chief Trust Office East (Haupttreuhandstelle Ost), Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler as the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germanhood (Reichskommissar für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums), and the Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture (Reichsminister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft) Richard Walter Darré (until 1942). The lack of clear-cut jurisdictions caused frictions between the offices, both at the ministerial and regional levels, and were not avoided in Upper Silesia. During the war Himmler consistently extended his infl uences over the control and redistribution of seized property, using his authority over issues of colonization of annexed territories.

During the Nazi occupation, the Office of Forensic Medicine in Kraków performed approximately 4,000 autopsies. In this period, the offi ce was run by a German, Dr. Werner Beck, while the pre-war manager, Prof. Jan Olbrycht, spent the better part of the occupation in the Oświęcim (Auschwitz) concentration camp. The office performed autopsies of the remains of persons who died of unknown causes, suicide victims, accidents and murders. Approximately 3,700 protocols of autopsies performed them have been preserved. The protocols, despite the German administration, were surprisingly candid, documenting not only the autopsy results but also the circumstances surrounding the death. Bodies of persons shot in the city streets – during round-ups, resettlement, Jews attempting to escape concentration camps or random passers-by – were sent to the office. Prisons sent the bodies of the executed, on which doctors noted signs of torture – beaten with sticks, hanging by the hands until these broke, strangulation, trampling the body to death. Twice the bodies of victims of public execution landed in the office. The bodies of those killed by order of the Underground State – German bureaucrats, policemen and Gestapo informers – were also examined. In the collection of protocols at least 46 executions ordered by various independence organizations, described in writing elsewhere, were found, but an analysis of the protocols suggests there may have been several times more. The autopsy protocols refl ect the entire history of the occupation, beginning from victims of aerial bombardment in the fi rst days of September 1939, persons deported for work, the tragedy of the Jewish population, victims of street roundups as well as deportees from Warsaw dying in transports, and fi nally preparations for the coming of the front in 1945. The protocols also document the prose of life and death during the occupation – victims of the Typhus epidemic, the struggle for food, or transport accidents. One interesting fi le was found concerning the body of someone who died in a quarry accident, witnessed by Karol Wojtyła. Historians wanted to work on this collection of protocols for many years; however the specificity of this source requires medical knowledge as well as familiarity with forensic medicine to analyze it.

In the 1950s, the Polish communist authorities leading the country’s industrialization, declaimed the principals of evenly distributed industry with the aim of activating poorly industrialized territories. Such principles were particularly attractive to the Białystok Voivodship. The six-year plan foresaw that over 80 large enterprises would arise in the Białystok Voivodship. Industrial development was to be concentrated in the so-called ‘industrial triangle’, demarked by Białystok, Ełk and Łomża. These towns were to become, according to the six-year plan, the main industrial centers of the Voivodship, infl uencing smaller towns linked to them through communication and industry. Corrections to the six-year plan, introduced by the government in 1951 and 1952, caused many investments to be abandoned. The Voivodship that lost the most investments was Białystok (as many as 67 investments were abandoned, in Lublin and Kraków Voivodship only 21 each). Despite limiting investments, during the six-year plan in Białystok the following important key industrial enterprises were built, or partially built: Zakłady Przemysłu Bawełnianego „Fasty” in Białystok, Zambrowskie Zakłady Przemysłu Bawełnianego, Ełckie Zakłady Roszarnicze, Fabryka Przyrządów i Uchwytów in Białystok, Białostockie Zakłady Piwowarsko-Słodownicze, Zakłady Piwowarsko-Słodownicze in Suwałki, Mazurska Wytwórnia Tytoniu Przemysłowego in Augustów, Mielnickie Terenowe Zakłady Kredowe in Mielnik, and the lumber mill in Czarna Białostocka. On the example of the Białystok Voivodship it is clear that the officially declaimed and widely publicized through propaganda goal of the six-year plan (to even out the country’s internal economic disproportions) were not achieved. Investment outlay in an economy socialized at the moment of the six-year plan’s start in the Białystok Voivodship were the lowest of all voivodships. An atmosphere more favorable to production industry geared toward consumer goods allowed the Voivodship to benefi t from the six-year plan. Independent from political, economic and social opinions, the six-year plan should be recognized that it became a breakthrough moment for the Białystok Voivodship (region).

The current work discusses the range and types of smuggling and foreign currency speculation in communist Poland of the 1960s. Special attention was paid to the economic and legal conditions of this form of crime and subjective aspects. The author has paid special attention to the fact that, in the contemporary political and economic reality, customs and foreign currency speculation was (outlandish though it may sound) rather exclusive, due to the continued closure of Poland’s borders. Moreover, regional conditions of this form of crime are mentioned, depicting the social and historical differences of Poland of the time. It should be underlined that apart from the growth of this kind of crime in large cities and port towns, there were special circumstances in Upper Silesia and Pomerania. In the 1960s, some inhabitants of these areas were receiving pensions from the FRG, in contradiction to foreign currency regulations then in force. The description of the aforementioned situation is enriched by an analysis of the ‘Zalew’ affair, treated as a case study, in which offi cers of the Security Service and Citizens’ Militia were involved in smuggling and foreign currency speculation, mainly on the route between Warsaw and West Berlin. This example also presents the way in which mechanisms the authorities employed against economic crimes were degenerating and themselves becoming the source of criminal activities. They were especially favored by uncontrolled, broad operational activities and informal relations between offi cers and their secret agents.

In communist Poland enterprises, along with the entire economy, were subordinates to the state administration, thus their managers to a large decree became civil servants. Yet the economy was also of interest to the party and its apparatus, which in its capacity as state-party supervised the activities of factories and its managers and through the nomenklatura system, had a decisive infl uence over staffing of management posts in enterprises. In this article the author, basing on materials from the archives of the Warsaw Committee of the PUWP, examines the relations between the party apparatus and enterprise managers in the fi rst half of the 1950s. On one hand analyzing the dependence of managers on PZPR functionaries, and on the other examining the level of autonomy managers actually had and whether they exploited the party apparatus to further their own goals. Maciej Tymiński discusses in turn the formal status of enterprise managers and the principles of party supervision of enterprises. Then he addresses the actual relations between party functionaries and enterprise managers – control on the part of the apparatus, functioning of the nomenklatura system, as well as methods employed by managers to manipulate party functionaries and taking advantage of their connections. In the next part, he analyses methods employed by enterprise managers in order to gain greater autonomy within their jobs. The author concludes that while party functionaries had substantial influence on the situation of enterprise managers already in the early 1950s there arose informal mechanisms allowing greater freedoms to managers. After 1956 these became the basis for building trade or local interest groups, which in the 1970s took control of segments the local authorities.

The crisis in the government’s leadership, caused by the worker protests on the Baltic coast, peaked at the Seventh Plenum of the Central Committee of Polish United Workers Party (PZPR), on December 20, 1970, and was immediately followed by efforts to defuse the social situation with promises of higher wages and improved living conditions, as well as concrete decisions intended to lend credence to the declarations of the new First Secretary, Edward Gierek. The new party and government leaders had to contend with social discontent caused by price increases as well as the consequences of earlier actions and promises of the authorities in the areas of economic and social policy. While it is not stated directly in the available archival materials, taking into account the context – in which specific decisions were taken, it can be recognized that to a signifi cant degree they were meant to ensure the social tranquility requisite for the governing of the new authorities and forming the basis for their enduring legitimization in eyes of the public. Economic policy in Gierek’s time was from the outset to be characterized by a turn towards increasing consumption. Moves taken to stabilize the situation within the country can be divided into those enacted under pressure of the situation and affecting the entire country (freezing of food prices, cancelling of price increases while maintaining income related compensations – introduced by Władysław Gomułka’s team), decisions concerning potentially the most dangerous industrial branches and regions, solving temporary problems as well as main issues connected with the development of these branches and regions, as well as those elements of economic policy guaranteeing the continuous improvement of standards of living and stable – support for the governing team (changes to the annual plan, a new fi ve-year plan concept, investment decisions aiming to ensure a proper supply of consumer goods in the future, the abolishment of mandatory delivery quotas in agriculture). The majority of decisions from the fi rst and second groups were taken in the fi rst two months of 1971, those that followed were mainly tied to the implementation of long-term changes to economic policy in the succeeding months. Changes, including the search for sources of fi nancing and technology in western countries, took place with the strong support of the Soviet Union. The combined effect of the actions, designed to improve society’s material situation, was the increase in average nominal personal income of 14% in 1971, and a 5.7% increase in real personal income (the largest annual increase since the end of the 1950s). The success, mainly achieved by the purely discretionary means of economic policy, was also the cause of the neglect of deeper systemic – reforms, directly evidenced by the successive loss of importance of the work of the so-called Szydlak Commission in tandem with the improvement of the country’s economic situation.

The article presents the evolution of the economic concepts of the so-called Gdańsk liberals on the pages of the underground Przegląd Polityczny, in the period from 1983 (the beginning of publication) thru 1989 (fall of the communist regime in Poland and the temporary suspension of publication). Liberalism in the version of the democratic opposition 1976–1980 and the fi rst Solidarity (1980–1981) appeared above all in political refl ections, existing alongside often un-liberal themes (for example, appealing to collective values). Declared economic liberals found themselves in the minority, as a rule appearing individually and not moving beyond generalizations. The situation began to change after 13 December 1981. In the Solidarity underground several circles promoting economic liberalism were formed at the time. The most important turned out to be that from Gdańsk, gathered around Przegląd Polityczny. The paper, published since 1983, initially did yet not present a ‘pure’ liberal-economic orientation (also expressing support for the right-wing self-government), however, from 1985, it opened itself wide to the neo-liberal infl uence (L. von Mises, F. von Hayek, Germans of the Classical liberalism school), and with time also the pro-capitalist. The Gdańsk liberals are credited with the development of the program of universal privatization (end of 1989), as well as the founding of a national political party – the Liberal-Democratic Congress (beginning 1990).

This article is dedicated to the functioning of maternity hospitals in the final period of real socialism. The hospital or maternity ward does not fi t into the general definition of hospital, among other reasons because the women admitted are overwhelmingly healthy. Therefore clinics of this type should fundamentally differ from other health care institutions that care for sick persons requiring medical care and complicated pharmacological or surgical treatment. Depending on the letters of women who were patients in maternity wards in the 1980s the author concludes that these particular health care institutions not only functioned according to the same regulations as other hospitals but even according to similar principles as production enterprises. Simultaneously, she demonstrate that, due to the form of organization and methods of work caused by the contemporary decision-makers of maternity clinics, they were in principle close to the concept of total institutions, formulated by Erving Goffman. In her work the author poses the question whether in the daily functioning of a maternity hospital these principles were refl ected, while the vision of a communist model brought it to the functioning level of the work place in which the woman is the raw material and the child the product. Analyzing in subsequent sections of the article mandatory hospital procedures, referring to the way in which women in labor were admitted, birth or possibility of contacting the outside world (child’s father), the author proves that they sought to fulfill the demands of socialist industry where a person was merely a cog in the machine. The attitude of the personnel, both doctors and midwives, confi rms the belief that the maternity hospital was a de-humanized institution in which the woman was treated like an object serving to produce new citizens. However, not always and not everywhere. Characteristic of the functioning of hospitals was the ‘porosity’ between prescribed procedures toward women and the reigning freedom of behavior of the personnel. In this situation, the author concludes that maternity hospitals in the late 1980s and early 1990s were a specifi c kind of total institution, rather far removed from the principles guiding models in communist Poland reminiscent of an ideal factory.

In August 1945, a new organization of the Information – Intelligence Department of the NW Staff was introduced. In March 1946, in its place, first the Liquidation Commission was created then the Documentation Commission. Poles tried to remain in their own intelligence structures for the following years. With this goal talks were conducted with the British during conferences in Cairo and London. On 20 September 1946, the Polish side submitted memorandum proposing the principles of the functioning of the Polish intelligence services for the following years. The activities of Polish intelligence were to be based on so-called Schema ‘A’ and ‘B’. The fi rst assumed Poles would be working for local representative of British intelligence. In Schema ‘B’, the aims were informational activities for the British concerning Soviet affairs as well as all countries in the Soviet zone. The Information Department of the 2nd Corps Staff was subordinated to the HQ in London. Despite its subordination it in fact enjoyed signifi cant autonomy of action. The scope of reconnaissance work of the Information Department covered a huge geographical territory, including the Near and Middle East, the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Italy and France. The Department was headed by Dip. Col. W. Bąkiewicz, who was replaced in July 1946 by Dip. Lt. Col. T. Rudnicki. The Information Department of the 2nd Corps Staff had its own liaison offi cer in Athens. Two branches were subordinated to the head of the Information Dept. The fi rst branch ‘ESUW’ with its headquarters in Jerusalem was headed by Maj. F. Wierzbicki. Because of its penetration of the Jewish agency it became a source of excellent information from Poland. Independently, it uncovered the communist underground in Palestine and throughout the Near and Middle East. The second branch, code named ‘W’, was initially headed by Maj. J. Pacak, and subsequently by Maj. Z. Starkiewicz. Branch ‘W’ had beneath it five posts scattered from southern Italy to Austria, Bavaria and France. They gathered detailed information about the communist movement in France and Italy as well as deeply penetrating communist Yugoslavia. Before their liquidation, both branches created a series of companies in Western Europe and the Near East, which allowed them to continue and fi nance their intelligence work over the following years.

As a result of the compromise reached between the authorities of communist Poland and that part of opposition forces grouped around Lech Wałęsa, on 4 June 1989 the fi rst partially free parliamentary elections in over forty years were to take place in Poland. The governing camp decided on the term ‘contract elections’, likely assuming that the final results could not lead to any substantive changes on the Polish political scene. A favorable result for the so-called united left parties was certainly to be, above all, guaranteed by the ‘oversight’ of the electoral process entrusted to the Interior Ministry (MSW). The Sieradz Voivodship was not considered a bastion of the opposition; however, this did not mean that the local Security Services decided to ignore the election and the preceding campaign. Preserved in the collections of the Łódź IPN, the ‘Senator’ Case fi le shows the main areas of interest and the operational methods employed by the regional branch of the security service (WUSW), in Sieradz, ahead of the election campaign that was heating up in the region. However, the question whether the structures of the political police of communist Poland could have been prepared to deal with the phenomenon of even partially democratic elections remains open.

This article is the result of several years of research in the state archives. The author tried to show the actual position, fi rst of the Polish Workers’ Party, and then of the Polish United Workers’ Party at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. It was the fi rst state institution of higher learning created by the communist authorities, already in August 1944. The authorities wanted a model univeristy that would be not merely a forge for new academic and party cadres, but also the birthplace of a new intelligentsia, with a prefered worker or peasent background. The realization of these ambitions by the party turned out to be full of obstacles and pitfalls. The school’s party activists, due to the frequent lack of interest on the part of the central authorities, had huge difficulties in giving the school an image worthy of the tradition of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN). One must remember that the univeristy was founded on paper, without any material or didactical base. This child of the PKWN was treated instrumentally, according to their immediate needs, by the communists themselves. The authorities de facto remembered the existence of the UMCS when they were beginning the battle against the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL). The use of the UMCS by propaganda, precisely as avanguard against the Catholic school, determined its ‘red’ image.