Poland was divided among two nations the Nazi Reich and the communist Soviet Union in 1939. The situation in occupied territories (General Gouvernement) differed from the situation in the territories annexed by the USSR and the Third Reich; in those territories slightly different laws were in force. However, to simplify the text the authors shall use the term “occupation” for those two forms. There was a one-party regime there; the almighty security apparatus (in Germany – the RSHA, and fi rst of all Gestapo, and in the USSR – the NKVD) with a network of agents (which in the USSR was perfectly developed) imposed obedience towards the authorities. The national socialist policy interfered in all spheres of public life. Stalin in a regular manner liquidated real and imaginary enemies. Such a blind terror directed at one’s own nation – with the exclusion of the so-called enemies of the Reich that is to say political enemies, Jews, Poles – was not present in Germany. As late as February 1945 the summery police courts were established for German civilians which was connected with the attempts aimed at stopping defeatism. Apart from that the courts dealt with the desertion-related trials. Casualties connected with direct and indirect extermination are formally set at the level much higher in the case of the activities of German authorities (over 5 million people) than in the case of Soviet activities (from 500 000 up to 1 million), but in the case of the losses incurred by the Polish landed gentry the situation is much different as the proportions are the following: 50.75 per cent were killed by Soviets and 40.57 per cent killed by Germans. However, these data are only partially trustworthy and reliable. No detailed research has been carried out into the losses incurred under the Soviet occupation so far due to the lack of access to the sources. 250 000 Poles conscripted to the Red Army by force were not taken into account, similarly as about half a million refugees from the western territories of the Second Republic of Poland or rank and fi le soldiers of the Polish Army taken captive in September 1939. Both Nazism (including fascism) and Soviet communism glorifi ed violence, authority, force of will and war as methods of dealing with all sorts of problems. According to historians (however, not all) both regimes are comparable. Yet, there is a question whether the Holocaust (similarly as the extermination of Gypsies or Polish intelligentsia) were the exceptional phenomena in the history of a humankind. Can this term be used in reference to the communist regime? The greatest accumulation of Nazi and communist crimes took place in 1930s and 1940s that is to say the period of occupation of Polish territories. People believe that Stalinist crimes were the tool of terror aiming at achieving political and social goals, whereas the extermination done by Nazi was the goal itself, but the phenomenon of genocide was nothing new in the history. The article touches upon the problem of collaboration of Poles with occupiers as well. Although under the German occupation the problem was rather marginal or the cooperation was ineffective, under the Soviet occupation it was much more widespread and resulted in taking over the power by the Polish ‘Quisling’ that is it led to the rule of Bolesław Bierut.

The article deals with the genesis of the co-operation of the Third Reich with the Soviet Union in 1939. This issue has been analyzed on numerous occasions by historians but it is still controversial and disputable. This is connected with several problems: 1. What were the short-term and long-term intentions of Adolf Hitler towards Poland in 1938–1939? 2. Who was the initiator of the pact: Hitler or Stalin personally, the German Auswärtiges Amt or the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the USSR? 3. What were the aim and the function of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in the political and war strategy of the Third Reich? What goals was the pact supposed to achieve as far as the political ideas of Hitler are concerned, and what was the real role of the pact in the reality of 1939? The close German-Soviet relations were the process of several stages. The first stage started with the Polish government rejecting the German demands and with the British guarantees issued for Poland in March 1939. The second stage lasted from May till July 1939, that is: simultaneous steps taken by the governments of western powers and Germany diplomacy to gain the support of the USSR. The third and fi nal stage is August 1939 when Adolf Hitler personally took over the initiative which resulted in organizing decisive talks on strategic interests of the Third Reich and the USSR. Actually, Stalin was always ready to negotiate with Germans as he perceived Germany ‘one of the countries of bourgeoisie’ that is neither better nor worse than the western powers. Hitler made a fi nal decision to sign the agreement with the Soviet Russia not earlier than in June 1939. However, it is probable that he started considering such a step in the spring. In the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs people still followed the Bismarck way of thinking that is the desire to establish the German-Russian condominium over Central and Eastern Europe. The Polish issues played a fundamental role in the genesis of the German-Soviet relations. Hitler thought that the political normalization of relations with Poland in 1934 and diplomatic co-operation of Berlin and Warsaw on many issues in 1934–1938 seemed promising. That is why he thought that one day the future Poland would become the ally of the Great Germany in. That was probably the main condition imposed on Poland by Hitler. The demands concerning the return of the Free City of Danzig to Germany and exterritorial motorway via Polish Pomerania presented for the fi rst time in October 1938 by the German minister of foreign affairs were to lead to the formation of stronger bonds between Poland and Germany. Poland was to play a role of a vassal-type neighbour. Polish government rejected such a perspective. Hitler condemned that decision. He decided to reach a tactical agreement with the USSR, and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was to lead to a complete annihilation of Poland.

The fi rst source of the USSR policy guidelines referring to the inhabitants of eastern territories of the Second Republic of Poland known to historians are included in the confi dential directives for the Red Army which invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. The details concerning the organization of the Soviet-occupied territories were prepared by the the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (bolsheviks) on 1 October 1939. Those guidelines constituted the basis for immediate and resolute activities undertaken by new authorities. The aim of the occupier’s policy was to unify newly annexed territories with the USSR and Sovietization of the inhabitants as quickly as possible. It meant the necessity to transform radically and on a large scale all spheres of political, social, cultural and economic life in compliance with patterns realized until that moment in the state which dealt with ‘building socialism’. The article deals with the following: changes in the administrative division (adjusting to the standards of the USSR); regulations concerning the citizenship of inhabitants of the occupied territories; personnel policy (radical changes in Polish staff – replacing them with confi dents from the East); ownership transformations and transforming the economy (nationalization of enterprises and factories, forfeiting landed gentry’s estates, division of land between smallholders and peasants without any land, creating collective farms, replacing Polish zloty with ruble, top-down planning); fi ght against religion (anti-religious upbringing and propagation of atheism among society); informative policy (monopolization of mass media, supervision of the party over mass media, censorship); restructuring of educational system and higher schools (structural, staff and curriculum-related changes, popularization of education, indoctrination by school system and teachings); nationalization of and ideologizing cultural institutions; changes in labor, social insurance, tax and health care laws. The fundamental role in the facilitation and speeding up the process of Sovietization of the mental sphere, social and economic relations, and depolonization of annexed territories was played by different reprisal forms (arrests of members of leading social and professional groups, deportations, and genocide). Soviet occupation policy was a function of relations between the USSR and the Third Reich and it was subject to evolution depending on the changes in those relations.

The territories of eastern Poland annexed in 1939–1940 by the Soviet Union, in the summer of 1941 were under the German occupation and they were incorporated into the new Reichskommissariat Ukraine and Reichskommissariat Ostland, the General Gouvernement or – as in the case of two eastern poviats of Białystok Province and a small part of Polesie Province – incorporated into Białystok District, subordinated to the Reichsverteidigungskommissar for East Prussia. The basic principles of the occupation policy of the Third Reich were formulated before the outbreak of the Soviet-German war. It seems that what affected their implementation, especially resorting to terror, were the attitudes of local communities including their willingness to co-operate, the exhibited level of adaptation and resistance as well as the course of events at the fronts and the evolution of general principles of the occupation policy inspired by those trends. To some extent, the character of the policy also depended on the personal features of the top offi cials of German administration who implemented it. That is why the reprisal measures directed against different ethnic groups in particular territories differed – the regime was relatively mild as far as Lithuanians in the General Reichskommissariat Lithuania or Ukrainians in Galicia district were concerned and more severe in the case of Ukrainians in Volhynia and Belorussians in the General Reichskommissariat Belorussia. The most ruthless terror was directed against Jews. The extermination of Jews started as early as the summer of 1941 when German operational groups (Einsatzgruppen) entered into the Polish eastern territories. The most intense genocide operations were carried out in 1942. The losses of other nations were lower, and the occupier’s reprisals intensifi ed at the turn of 1942 and 1943 and in 1943–1944, when the North-Eastern Borderlands of the Second Republic of Poland, Polesie and Volhynia became the theater of the great anti-partisan operations and pacification actions organized by the German security forces. The demographic losses seem to be much higher among Poles, Ukrainians and Belorussians caused by the forced deportations to slave labour into the interior of the Third Reich. The inhabitants of the eastern Borderlands of the Second Republic of Poland incurred heavy losses during the German occupation in 1941–1944, amounting to 1.6–1.7 million casualties that is nearly 15 per cent of the total number of inhabitants. The heaviest losses were infl icted to Jews: 1 100 000 – 1 150 000 persons; nearly all Jewish Borderland inhabitants were murdered. According to the estimates which are still treated as not fi nal and requiring further research and careful verifi cation about 95 000 persons (including 75 000 Jews) lost their lives in the Vilnius County, 500 000 (including 300 000 – 350 000 Jews) in the territories incorporated into the Belorussian Soviet Republic, about 300 000 (including 224 000 Jews) in Volhynia, and not more than 700 000 – 800 000 persons (including 495 000 Jews) in Eastern Galicia were murdered.

The article examines the fate of the Jews in Poland in the Soviet and German occupation zones. Nazi and Soviet policies affected all Jews, both as Jews and as part of the general population. But particularly under the Nazis, the Jews suffered a special fate, as refl ected in the different, if connected, timetables of World War II and the Holocaust. By the end of 1942 most Polish Jews were already dead; by the time the Allies arrived or the Poles were ready for their national uprising, almost no Jews remained. The salient features of Soviet treatment of the Jews were suspicion and dissolution – suspicion of all political and religious activity; suspicion and dissolution of all private enterprise; dissolution of Jewish educational and communal frameworks. Still, most Polish Jews generally preferred the Soviets – the lesser of two evils – to the Nazis. The salient features of Nazi treatment of the Jews were totality and relentlessness, from the early wanton violence, forced labor, mass expulsions, death marches, and mass murder, to the later more systematic policies. The Jews became increasingly isolated and faced their persecutors alone. Between October 1939 and spring 1941, tens of thousands of Jews were expelled from western Poland to the Generalgouvernement. The Nazi sought not only to Germanize these territories, but also to drive all the Jews out of German territory. The Jews were outside Nazi population policies, meant in the long run to disappear. Economically, Jews were completely impoverished, which in turn affected their health profi le. Starvation and disease became rampant in the large ghettos, resulting in mass death well before the “Final Solution” began. When the Nazis embarked on the murder of the Jews, devoting the full force and resources of a powerful, ideologically motivated, modern state to this national project, this was a seek-and-destroy mission that meant to leave no Jew alive. Here, too, the Jews were largely alone. The salient features in the Jews’ responses to the Nazis were helplessness and a sense of living in a hostile environment. They struggled to understand Nazi racial antisemitism. Seeing that following Nazi rules could spell death, the Jews needed to learn to become outlaws in order to hope to survive. Jews generally did not understand the Nazi intentions for them, and even if some did, this realization came only after most of the Jews in a community were already dead. Being a Jew in Poland during the Holocaust meant being constantly hunted, harassed, isolated, and threatened with death, not only from the Germans, but also from neighbors or others from among the local population, even if some local people were willing to lend them a helping hand.

Were Polish Jews rightful citizens of the Republic of Poland also during the WWII? Different communities of Jewish conspirers, Bundists, assimilationists, Zionists answered the question positively. Different fractions of the Polish underground including the Polish Underground State perceived that issue in a much different way. In the official enunciations it was stated that the problems of ethnic minorities would be regulated ‘on the basis of traditional freedom and the equality of rights and duties’. However, in the press of political parties and the main titles of the Home Army (AK) and Government Delegate’s Office at Home (Delegatura Rządu RP na Kraj) different solutions to the ‘Jewish question’ were suggested. Jews were not perceived rightful citizens in those considerations which were not free from anti-Semitic disrelishes. The conviction about their strangeness together with the conviction about their small military value resulted in the fact that Polish Jews in fact were not engaged in the AK. It happened in the face of the extermination of Jews, which was especially intense in 1942. From the second half of that year the feeling of loneliness and bitterness resulting from the attitude of Poles was building up among Jewish communities. Jewish historians, Israel Gutman and Szmul Krakowski assess very critically the next aspect of Polish-Jewish relations in 1942, that is to say the reaction of the commanders of the AK and the Delegation to the Holocaust. According to them ‘no initiative of help to Polish Jews was undertaken at least until late autumn of 1942.’ The situation was more complicated, in fact. The Polish Underground State in the first half of 1942 thought, similarly as the Jewish communities, that informing the world about extermination of Jews itself would decrease the scale of murders. The Government’s Delegate was also convinced, as the Allies, that only the quick ending of the war may stop the terror directed against both Poles and Jews. At the same time, the Polish circles reacted differently to the persecution of Poles by sending suggestions of organizing different retaliation operations. The reactions to the extermination of Jews were restricted solely to passing the information. The scale of the sent dispatches and reports was defi nitely smaller than in the case of ones concerning Poles.

The article analyzes the phenomena of collaboration and collaborationism in all territories incorporated into the Third Reich. Nowhere, apart from a specific situation in Luxembourg, one may find in those territories national collaboration, that is to say the creation of state institutions collaborating with the Germans. The reason was the lack of initiative on the part of Germans. All territories incorporated into the Reich were treated offi cially or unoffi cially as parts of the Third Reich, and that is why the possibility to create there state semi-sovereign institutions was not planned. The support of collaboration in the annexed territories looked different. Simultaneously when integrating with the Reich the attempts were made to develop collaborative attitudes by Nazifi cation. The process of Nazifi cation was very unequal and was taking place differently in every analyzed territory. In the Polish incorporated territories the process of establishing the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers Party) and transmitting organizations were nearly instantly being initiated. They acquired members nearly solely from the circle of the representatives of the pre-war German minority members who were politically active before 1939. The membership in the Nazi Party was elitist in the east and amounted to 2–3 per cent. In the west the intermediary solution was adopted, that is to say – the national socialist movements were being created which constituted the step in the path to the membership in the Nazi Party. The membership in those organizations in Luxembourg, Alsace and Lorraine was a mass scale phenomenon, and was not restricted by ‘racial’ limitations. After the end of the war, there were no precise criteria how to differentiate between the collaboration attitudes in the incorporated territories from those which are described as adjustment and passive and active resistance. It resulted in accusing a large part of the native population of collaboration without differentiation between that group and the German minority which in fact participated in that process on a mass scale. The indicator factor of collaboration in the eastern territories was rather the membership in Nazi organizations, than the active engagement in the activities of the German state apparatus, party structures and terror apparatus.

Collaboration is a topic arousing many debates and controversies and therefore rather avoided by historians. The assessment of the collaboration in Eastern and Central Europe is hampered by the fact that the inhabitants of those territories lived in between two totalitarian regimes and on numerous occasions they had to chose the lesser evil. That is why many communities deciding to co-operate with the Third Reich fi rst did it because of patriotic motives and only then possibly ideological ones. Poles for the whole period of the WWII considered Germans their main enemy and that is why the Polish underground always opted against any military co-operation with the Third Reich, even local one in the face of the threat posed by Soviets. In turn, the national Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belorussian communities perceived the USSR as their main enemy, and treated Germans as a potential ally and even a guarantor of gaining – or regaining – their independence. That is why when the Germany attacked the USSR in Lithuania and the socalled Western Ukraine the anti-Soviet insurrections broke out. Both the Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalists created their own governments but they were not recognized by the Germans. The most vivid example of the collaboration in the eastern Borderlands was the service in the German police formations and SS. Among others the Waffen SS ‘Galizien’ division created in 1943 was composed of Ukrainians. Although such formations were perceived by many people as a substitute for national army, they were a very important element of the German military system. They relieved the Nazi of many duties connected with the participation in anti-partisan or pacification operations. The Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Belorussian auxiliary police also participated in the extermination of Jews organized by Germans. In turn, Polish units of the police in Volhynia participated in different operations against Ukrainians, but also protected Polish citizens against UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army). However, the decision whether someone was or was not a collaborator cannot be based solely on the membership in one formation or the other but in what way he or she fulfi lled the orders issued by the German authorities. Murdering civilians cannot be justifi ed in any way. That is why whether a given formation committed such murders or not is a decisive factor of its assessment. That is why, among others, the disputes concerning the participation of Ukrainians in suppressing the Warsaw Uprising or pacifi cation of the village of Huta Pieniacka take on so emotional overtones.

The main hero of the article is Bogusław Hrynkiewicz, a would-be lawyer actively operating in the communist movement in Poland from 1929. In the middle of 1940, escaping from German army, he arrived to Białystok. The NKVD officer contacted him there. Hrynkiewicz started co-operation with the Soviet intelligence – he collected information on Polish underground organizations. In the summer of 1942 he became a member of one of them – a right wing organization ‘Sword and Plough’ (“Miecz i Pług”). Within a couple of months he became a member of its managing organs. He acquired the access to the intelligence materials of the organization on the German army and power apparatus. At the same time he operated to liquidate the organization. Finally, he contributed to sentencing the leaders of the ‘Sword and Plough’ to death and executing them. In the summer of 1943 he started the co-operation with Marian Spychalski – the head of the intelligence of the People’s Guard (Gwardia Ludowa, later People’s Army – Armia Ludowa, AL). At the same time he contacted a Gestapo officer, Wolfgang Birkner, and the collaborator of Abwehra, Włodzimierz Bondorowski. Simultaneously, he started working for Wacław Kupecki – the employee of the Security Department of the District Delegation of the Government of the Republic of Poland at Home (Wydział Bezpieczeństwa Okręgowej Delegatury Rządu RP na Kraj) for the city of Warsaw which kept the archives on the anti-communist intelligence (at ul. Poznańska 37). On 14 February 1944 Hrynkiewicz, having acquired the consent of Spychalski, supervised the attack on the archives carried out by two rank and fi le members of the AL, three collaborates of Bondorowski and the Gestapo offi cer being in command of the whole operation. Materials on communists were passed to Spychalski, who in the spring of 1944 took them to Moscow. Spychalski and Hrynkiewicz also organized operations of denouncing the members of the Polish independence underground before Gestapo. On this occasion Spychalski contributed to a slip-up, which turned out to be disastrous for him. Via Hryniewicz he passed to Gestapo the address of the conspirational printing house of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK). When the Germans entered the printing house, the AK members started fl eeing to the next building. And it happened that there was a communist printing house located in there. Germans arrested their employees. After the War Spychalski and Hrynkiewicz landed in prison among others accused of collaborating with Gestapo and the AK. Hrynkiewicz was also in the NKVD prison, later he landed in the psychiatric hospital. After the political changes, which took place in 1956, the actions of both communists were again considered ’patriotic’.

In 1937 Łódź was the second biggest city in the Republic of Poland with approximately 653 000 inhabitants, with Warsaw being the biggest one. Although Poles constituted the majority of inhabitants, Jews and Germans formed not only numerous but also economically affluent ethnic minorities. Łódź as one of the biggest cities in Eastern and Central Europe and at the same time one of the main centers of the German minority in Poland for a long time was of interest of the Reich. This interest increased especially after Hitler had taken over the power in 1933 and it stemmed from the fact that the Reich considered demographic issues important. The Nazifi cation of the German minority in Poland including the one in Łódź, supported and inspired by the Reich, made it easier for Hitler to plan the changes in the ethnic relations in Eastern and Central Europe after the victorious war with Poland in 1939. Poles and Jews were to be removed from Łódź to central Poland and they were to be replaced with Germans. That way the Nazi authorities wanted to transform Łódź into the city with the German majority. It was a great experiment of the Nazi ethnic policy as a result of which the deep demographic changes unprecedented in the history of Łódź took place. First of all, the general demographic potential of the city was seriously reduced. Although, the occupier signifi cantly enlarged the territory of the city at the end of 1944 the general number of the inhabitants amounted to 486 000 that is as much as 186 000 less than before the outbreak of the War within the pre-war city borders. If we take into consideration the territory of the occupation-time Łódź, the general decline in the number of inhabitants was much larger – by as much as 290 000. The number of domineering Polish inhabitants decreased from 452 000 in 1939 to 342 000 in May 1944; the decrease thus amounted to 110 000. The Jewish inhabitants of the city were nearly totally removed. The only ethnic group whose demographic potential increased signifi cantly was the Germans. Deep and irreversible demographic changes in Łódź, however, cannot be perceived as the success of the Nazi ethnic policy. The ethnic experiment which lasted here from the autumn of 1939 ended in the winter of 1945 in the manner completely unexpected by the Nazi. As a result of the hasty evacuation in the wake of the approaching front about 35 000 people of German nationality remained in the city that is half of the number of Germans before the WWII.

The article is a contribution to the history of the Polish Authorities in exile during WW II. It describes the attempts of “legalization” of the National Radical Camp – the “ABC” group (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny “ABC” – ONR “ABC”) and the unsuccessful endeavors of introducing its representation into Polish quasiparliament in exile: National Council (Rada Narodowa) during the years: 1939–1941. Since the autumn 1939 the political circle of the Radical National Camp – the “ABC” group, during WW II generally called the “Szaniec“ (“Rampart”) group, headed by secret and hierarchic Polish Organization (Organizacja Polska), has built its own conspiracy: military organization – Salamander Union (Związek Jaszczurczy) and underground administration Civilian Commissioners (Komisariat Cywilny). From 1939 to 1940 the “Szaniec” group sent two official emissaries, who were to represent this political circle at Polish Government in exile headed by general Sikorski. Tadesz Gluziński was the fi rst emissary who left occupied Poland at the end of December 1939. He died in Hungary having his legs frostbitten after trespassing Tatra Mountains and Slovakia. The next, Mieczysław Harusewicz reached Paris at Easter 1940. Harusewicz’s attempts to join the National Council – as an official representative of ONR “ABC”, despite the initial declarations of the prime minister Sikorski, failed. After the military collapse of France, Harusewicz passed to Great Britain, where he established Committee of the National Radical Camp (ONR). Unfortunately, he was not successful in the efforts undertaken to introduce his organization to the system of Polish political parties which based the Polish authorities in exile. The members of ONR did not managed to gain the political importance among the parties consisting the government of gen. Sikorski (except Stronnictwo Narodowe – National Party) nor introduce its representative to The National Council. It was mainly caused by the prewar “black legend” of ONR, and the accusations of anti-Semitism, anti-democratism, fascism and last but not least, the consideration of the Polish authorities for the English public opinion.

The article deals with the activities of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in the western part of Lemkivshchyna (Łemkowszczyzna) in 1945–1948. This issue has not been researched into by the historians very often as it is considered a third-rate activities of UPA. Jasło district in 1946–1947 was covered by the activities of the troops (sotnia) of Roman Hrobelski codename ‘Brodycz’ from the battalion (kurenia) of Martyn vel Wasyl Mizerny ‘Ren’ and the independent subunit of Michał Fedak ‘Smyrny’. The number of soldiers in those units ranged from 100 to 150. In 1945 in the Jasło district there were only singular operations organized by the Ukrainian nationalist underground including the attack on Krempna. The period of the most intense activities of UPA in the discussed period was the second half of 1946. The main motive of the UPA offensive operations was the need to get food, clothes, and to a lesser extent pursue propaganda and ideological goals, that is to say infl uence the local society of Lemkivshchyna which in majority was not pro-Ukrainian, and often loyally co-operated with the security apparatus and the people’s authorities. Starting with the beginning of 1947 the attacks of the UPA troops were rarer and rarer, despite the fact that in the fi rst months of that year the presence of UPA soldiers was noticed in several villages of the Jasło district. The following factors infl uenced the decline in UPA activities: the increase in the military efforts of the Polish Army, which co-operated with the Citizens’ Militia, the Volunteer Reserves of the Citizens’ Militia and the Offi ce of Public Security as well as the change of tactics of fi ghts with irregular Ukrainian units. In the course of the Vistula River (‘Wisła’) operation the UPA troops were not able to slow down the displacement operation. At that time solely small or dispersed UPA units resorted to petty thieving operations. In July 1947 the commander of the last unit (sotnia) operating in Jasło district received an order to evacuate to the American occupation zone in Austria. In Jasło district the Polish-Ukrainian confl ict differed from the fights with UPA waged in the areas located in the more remote eastern parts of Poland. There were no larger clashes with UPA troops there, and a small number of casualties on both sides of the confl ict are known. As a result of the operations of the Ukrainian underground the material losses were incurred by the villages located in the southern part of Jasło district – as they were partially burnt down.

The Association of the Polish Youth (Związek Młodzieży Polskiej, ZMP) established in July 1948 became one of the most important helpers of the party and state authorities when implementing the ‘ideological offensive’ among the young generation. The aim of the organization, among others, was to engage the youths in the ‘class fi ght’. That is why the ZMP (which from 1951 was the only official youth organization) supervised all forms of activities of the youth who where deprived of any possibility to gather outside structures subordinated to communists. Carrying out the tasks entrusted to them, the ZMP authorities co-operated with another institution which was equipped with means of ‘disciplining’ different social groups – the Offi ce of Security (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, UB). The UB employees perceived the ZMP as both the ally in the process of supervising the youth and also the next ‘surveillance object’. That is why in the documents executed by them we may fi nd fragments referring to using the ZMP, and to be more exact, the leaders and members-confidents as a source of information on the moods of the youth. In some cases the ZMP members helped select candidates for secret collaborators. Sometimes the selected activists also pursued other goals: isolating the young generation from the ‘undesirable’ – according to the party and state authorities– infl uences of teachers, scout instructors, priests. The ZMP activists organized propaganda operations orchestrated by the UB consisting in condemning a catechist or a form tutor. Simultaneously, the officers recruited from the community secret collaborators whose task was to keep surveillance over all youths, including the members as well as the leaders of the ZMP. The described methods were typical of the daily work of security apparatus bodies co-operating with the ZMP as one of the creators of the Stalinist system responsible for the youth circles. The representatives of the UB similarly as the representatives of the communist party could treat the Association in a strictly utilitarian manner being interested only in using it for the realization of specific – sometimes short-term – goals. The co-operation between those organizations was to be secret and unknown to society. Lublin region serves as the example illustrating the cooperation between the ZMP and the UB among others on disciplining the youth.

The Special Commission for the Fight against Abuse of the Law and Harmful Economic Activity (Komisja Specjalna do Walki z Nadużyciami i Szkodnictwem Gospodarczym), in short called the Special Commission, existed from 1945 to 1954. It was a specifi c body of the judiciary in the Polish penal sytem. It could imprison people – send them to labour camps for the period of maximum 2 years – or could impose fi nes. Under its decisions, as that was the name of the judgments given by this unit, over 84 000 persons landed in labour camps, and over 200 000 were penalized with a fi ne. If we include people who were unlawfully arrested and released without determining whether they were guilty or innocent or people taken into custody, the number of people affected by the operation of the Special Commission would exceed 100 000. The Special Commission under the vested powers prosecuted the so-called economic crimes – including hiding goods, refusal to sell goods, collecting excessive prices, speculation, usury, foreign currency trading, illegal slaughter of animals for meat and trading such meat, illegal grinding, illegal tanning and sale of leather, smuggling, chain sale, illegal manufacturing of alcohol, selling alcohol and cigarettes. It also had jurisdiction over other crimes: insulting state officers, forging documents, crossing borders illegally, sabotage, botchery, as well as the deeds which were not considered crimes that is to say: aversion to work, loitering, gambling or soliciting. From the fourth quarter of 1950 the Special Commission was authorized to prosecute a new crime: ‘causing panic in order to harm the interest of the working masses’, that is whispered propaganda. That way the Commission became the tool of the Polish People’s Republic used for combating the opponents of the political regime. The victims of the Commission were usually ‘common’ people expressing their opinions or observations on various topics, teddy boys, ‘political hooligans’, joke tellers, persons abusing alcohol, criticizing social, political and economic situation, and listening to Polish radio stations broadcasting from capitalist countries. The article presents the judicial decisions of the Special Commission first and foremost on the whispered propaganda. Selected examples illustrate the mechanism of penalizing. The detailed analysis of the activities of the Commission has enabled to show its role and place in the Polish political system and judiciary.

The issues concerning the unifi cation of Europe, especially its central and eastern parts, occupied a central place in debates of émigré circles from the Second World War – starting from the Polish-Czechoslovak confederation and federal clubs and ending with the participation in the initiatives on behalf of the European Federation. Poles among others actively participated in the European Movement, International Peasant Union, Christian Democratic Union of Central Europe, Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN), they established the Polish Federalists’ Association (Związek Polskich Federalistów – ZPF), connected to the Polish Freedom Movement ‘Independence and Democracy’ and affiliated to the European Union of Federalists. For the security apparatus of the communist Poland both the emigration and the federalist initiatives posed a threat. First of all, it was the consequence of the Moscow’s attitude. Next, the authorities in Warsaw aimed at liquidating any connections between the state and the emigration due to their platform by discrediting the latter among others by stressing the relations with foreign intelligence services and accusing them of engaging in agent network operations and ideological sabotage. Still, the direct actions against the circle of federalists were not carried out for a long time. It was among others conditioned by weak reconnaissance of the potential of specifi c émigré organizations. Especially at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s the diffi culties also resulted from internal changes in the functioning of the civil and military intelligence of the communist Poland. Starting with the so-called second repatriation action (1955–1956), and ending with the guidelines of the Vice-Minister of Internal Affairs, Mieczysław Moczar of 1958 one may see that the understanding of and the knowledge about the apparatus as far as emigration structures and functioning are concerned were better and better. It gave a stimulus fi rst to keep under surveillance singular federalists (among others Zbigniew Rapacki, Tadeusz Parczewski, Jerzy Jankowski), and in 1968 also the Polish Federalists’ Association (existing from 1949!). It was a paradox that it was a decadent period of the organized activities of federalists in emigration – out of the structures operating in Great Britain, the USA and France the latter were in the best condition, the rest of them were, in fact, non-existent or their activities were very limited. No wonder that the case of the ZPF was closed very quickly – just within two years. The actions of exposing particular persons were carried out a little bit longer but they were also stopped in the fi rst half of the seventies.

The author reviews trends in Modern Polish History among Polish and Anglo-American scholars. In the study of the 19th century and the Second Republic, he fi nds increasing attention to the ways that national identity is invented, and in particular to the importance of relations with other national groups shaped Poles’ conceptions of themselves. Scholarship on World War Two, as well, is now recognizing that confl ict’s role as a crucible of national identity, though some historians still limit themselves to simpler stories of national unity and betrayal. The Communist period, in turn, is yielding some of the most innovative work, as scholars move from fi lling in the blank spots to investigating the mechanisms of accommodation and opposition. In conclusion, the author offers some thoughts on the directions that Polish history can take in the near future.