Church-State relations in the post-war period are still an open subject, despite the large subject literature available. The reason for this is not only its broadness but also the slow process of giving access to record series which are of fundamental significance, mainly documents created by the Security Service and Church institutions (Polish Episcopate’s Chief Council and plenary conferences, where crucial decisions were made). These new sources, sometimes fundamentally, change the historian’s outlook on the described events and occurrences. This study is an attempt to verify some of the theses, which argued without the knowledge of these records, have already become all too firmly entrenched. The communist authorities’ policy concerning religious matters practically did not change. This can be seen from the vantage point of the statutory law, the ruling atheistic ideology as well as the missions carried out by the Security Service and the Office of Religious Beliefs for the communist party during the whole post-war period. The fluctuations of this policy depended on the levels of social resistance and the strength of the authorities. Additionally, the heavy repressions instituted against the Church, its members and property, in the first decade of communism, aimed at pushing Catholicism onto the margins of political life, gave the changing ruling party groupings that followed the possibility to use far more refined methods to sideline the people of the Church. Analysing the efficiency of this policy is another matter. The Polish Church hierarchy – starting with Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Primate of Poland (1948–1981) – looked down upon priests who got involved in contacts with the authorities with censure, however, they also were very sceptical about priests who were on the verge of placing the interest of the widely understood political, legal and underground opposition above that of the Church. This scepticism concerns not only the Jesuit Władysław Gurgacz, a soldier and chaplain of the underground resistance in the 1940s, condemned to death by the communists, but also the Dominican Father Ludwik Wiśniewski, the university chaplain in the 1970s, who supported the democratic opposition and, finally, Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, the Chaplain of “Solidarity”. The bishops were similarly sceptical about the work of the so called “licensed” Catholics. This formation (which is especially interesting after 1956) in my opinion includes not only associations like PAX or the Christian Social Association but also the “Znak” grouping in Parliament and its varied background, which today is considered to have been one of the hotbeds of opposition to the system. From the point of view of the bishops, all these groups, which received a licence to run publicly, very often became a tool in the anti-Church policy of the ruling party in the years 1956–1980. The “secular Catholic” category should be spread out over circles, which in the eyes of the Church did not stop to be Catholic, whilst at least from 1948 never received the right to run publicly (that is the Christian Democrats and the Nationalists). The price for the licence was to acknowledge, contrary to the views of these circles, the government principles of atheist communism. The last question concerns the Catholic-Jewish, or further Polish-Jewish problem, which is complicated and thorny after 1945 due to historical circumstances. The problem concerns changes which took place, among others within the post-Vatican Council Church, as well as the post-war experience, when there was an overrepresentation of people of Jewish extraction in the communist authorities. During the PRL period the communist authorities – not only in 1968, but also in the following decades – used the Jewish issue to foment otherwise understandable resentments, which were also held by some secular Catholics as well as the Church hierarchy. The problem of Catholic-Jewish relations cannot be solved merely by assuming that the Polish (Catholic) side is guilty of the tensions existing after the war, which were not solved due to the fact that the Polish nation was not independent during the PRL period.

The article is an attempt to confront the picture of open Polish cultural life in Cracow under German occupation which emerges from reminiscences, with what has been established in subject literature. The author describes, how the official Polish cultural life was presented in the reminiscences of people who spent the years of occupation in Cracow. She uses published and unpublished diaries, reminiscences in the form of articles, competition essays, interviews and journals. She presents the principles of the Germans’ cultural policy in the General Gouvernement and the possibilities created in this field in Cracow. She refers to the opinions of people writing about the open cultural life, judging its level and arguments for participating in it or fighting against it. She reflects on such factors like the age of the writers, their level of education and their jobs influenced their way of writing about the official cultural life. It turned out that the time when the reminiscences were written was important, which proves that there was a set model of presenting Nazi occupation in the Polish People’s Republic and that the authors would self-censor their reminiscences, taking into account their publication.

The Union of Polish Patriots (ZPP) in Sweden assembled a group of Polish communists, who found themselves in Sweden during the Second World War. Its main activist was a seaman serving on a Polish merchant vessel, Jerzy Paƒski, who jumped ship in 1939. The organization’s work can be divided into three periods. As from mid 1943 at least, an informal group of Polish communists, supported by the Soviet legation in Stockholm, started spreading propaganda, which fought the Polish Government in Exile, amongst the Polish refugees. The Republic of Poland’s Legation trivialised it’s activities for a long time. The creation of the Polish Committee for National Independence (PKWN) in July 1944 was the turning point. That is when the Union of Polish Patriots officially inaugurated its activities and gained the acceptance of Swedish authorities. It became the actual representative of the Polish Committee for National Independence, later the Temporary Government, although they only made contact with the “Lublin authorities” in October 1944. The Union of Polish Patriots developed widespread organisational and propaganda initiatives. It published a simple news bulletin, organised meetings, registered refugees before their expected repatriation and vainly tried to recruit them to Berling’s army. The aim was to create a political centre which would compete with The Republic of Poland’s Legation, which represented the Polish Government in Exile and the local Polish community. It seemed that with the Swedish authorities’ passive attitude the Union of Polish Patriots might become an equipollent centre to the Legation. However, the communist propaganda did not gain many supporters and it seems that the Swedes, seeing the Soviet support for Jerzy Paƒski’s group treated it more seriously than the Poles themselves. The Union of Polish Patriots role in initiating Polish-Swedish industrial contacts was very small. However, Pański deserves credit for convincing the Swedes to send humanitarian help to Poland in December 1944. When the legation was taken over by the party from Warsaw in July 1945 and Pański soon departed to Poland, the Union of Polish Patriots started to search for a new formula as the basis of its activities. It tried to continue the pro-repatriation propaganda, but the Republic of Poland’s Legation started to get the upper hand. Additionally personal conflicts arose between members. Finally it was agreed that the organisation had fulfilled its mission and was dissolved.

One of the social groups which was intensely monitored and identified by the Security Services in the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) was that of the Home Army combatants. The article asks about the scale and results of the Secret Services activities regarding people whose postures were shaped by the Home Army ethos. It is intended as a stimulous for a wider discussion on the “the long lasting endurance” of the Home Army in the Polish People’s Republic. The Home Army members belonged to what the Security Services called “traditional” milieus (środowisko). There were hundreds of thousands of them in the country, they were counted by the thousand in Pomerania. It was neither a homogenous nor organised group. The combatants would gather round their commanders and colleagues in small groups from a dozen to a few dozen. It seems that in the period of their greatest activity (after 1956) as well as at the beginning of the 1970s no more than 700 people belonged to the Pomerania Home Army milieu. “Milieu” in this context is thus a Security Service term. It is a group of people who are an object of operational interest. It includes animators of combatant life as well as masses of socially passive Home Army members. They were registered and submitted to direct (circumstantial) invigilation as potentially hostile people. This state lasted throughout communism in Poland. Did the Security Services have reasons to suspect Home Army members of being disloyal or hostile? The Home Army members did not assume a homogenous political or ideological attitude. Those that continued fighting with communism were few. After 1956 active fighting lost its “bellicose” meaning. In the Polish People’s Republic reality, it meant consolidating the milieu, collecting documents and reports from participants of partisan fights as well as open, but more often semi-open challenge (to the authorities). From the beginning of the 1970s the Home Army supported independent initiatives such as funding plaques in churches or commemorating the Home Army in other ways, they also supported the political opposition. The latter form of fighting concerned a small group of people – led by Marian Gołębiewski, Kazimierz Pluta-Czachowski and a few other indomitable spirits. On the coast there were no anticommunist activists, who were so committed even though a few Home Army leaders managed to gather other people round themselves, consolidating them in opposition to the system. The vast majority took a conforming attitude, seemingly agreeing to the rigours of the people’s state. The non-compromising attitudes of these people were not only softened by the repressive character of the system, but also social privileges. Despite this obvious immitation, they did not resign from the core values of the Home Army ethos. From today’s point of view one can say that it was an important component of anticommunist opposition.

The article discusses the opening of GDR archives, which have paved the way for a large-scale reckoning with the communist past in Germany. The legacies of the Ministry of State Security were particularly important in this process. After the first stage of revelations on secret informers and the criminal methods of the state security service, the emphasis in research shifted to the systematic analysis of Stasi presence in each sector of society. At the same time the limits of secret police influence started to be discussed as well. The broad availability of former secret records opens opportunities for methodological innovation. One important development is the comparison with other dictatorial regimes such as Soviet Stalinism and Nazi Germany, with intense attention paid to both by international researchers. Opportunities of comparison are discussed on the basis of empirical data on the informer network in East German society. While the penetration of society by the MfS of the seventies and eighties gained a (supposedly) world-wide singular intensity, the Gestapo for instance worked with networks of relatively few informers. Due to the wide support within the German population in Nazi Germany, spontaneous denunciations and cooperation between Gestapo and other state offices were of much greater importance in political persecution. The article pleads for overcoming the traditional separation between history of government and the history of everyday life. Stasi research must not be restricted to the history of the repression apparatus and the persecution of opposition and resistance, but open its mind to the general history of society. Moreover, social history and the history of everyday life can’t be written “with politics left out”. For this effort, a broad, and even broader, access to secret polices archives is necessary.

Up till 1956 almost all the Churches and religious communities in Poland were affected by the religious policy of the authorities which was aimed at making society atheist while eliminating any subjects standing in the way of this process. Eliminating activities which affected faiths other than Roman Catholic mainly concerned Jehovah’s witnesses, the Polish Catholic Church, Evangelist-Baptist Churches and Unions, the Methodist Church and the Union of the Seventh Day Adventists Communities. “Custom made” solutions were advanced on the basis of the knowledge of the religious policy makers of the specifics, doctrines and dogmas of the various persuasions. The practice of coups within the various Church authorities and the repression of clergymen and leading authorities were typical. At the same time until 1956 the authorities did not try to use other Christian communities against the Roman Catholic Church. The change came in the mid fifties, when the forming of Polish Catholic parishes was supported. The Polish Catholic Church in the mind of the authorities was supposed to become a “Catholic alternative”. As from 1963 this stream was to be supported by Independent Roman Catholic Parishes, i.e. parishes which renounced their submission to the bishops. Most of the Churches and minority communities were used as a propaganda factor during the rivalry between the Catholic Church and State concerning the millennium celebrations in 1966. In April 1981 the “Reformed Evangelical Church” broke away from the group of pro-government Churches. The Church’s synod backed the Independent Self-governing Trade Union “Solidarity” and blamed the authorities for the country’s crisis. The Reformed Evangelists also changed their attitude towards the Roman Catholic Church, seeing it to be the forefront of the “clash with communism and atheism”. After 1989 the clergymen of the Reformed Evangelical Church came to criticize the Roman Catholic Church for the unfair judgement of their leaders, concerning minority religions in general which ignored the complex political context. The Polish People’s Republic’s religious policy did not make society lay or atheist. Its success in reference to Churches and minority religions is, however, that the period of manipulating them and influencing them in other ways, makes ecumenism amongst Polish Christians difficult.

One of the missions the communists set themselves was to change the outlook of the young Poles. One of the ways they wanted to do this was by eliminating the influence of the Catholic Church on them and trying to secularise them. The main role in the implementing of this plan was to be played by the Union of Polish Youth (ZMP) created in 1948, the only official youth organisation at the time. The aim of the article is to show whether in the years 1948–1956 the members of the Union changed their attitude towards the Catholic Church and if the possible change was a result of the ideological activity of their organisation. This problem has been discussed based on the behaviour of the youth in the Lublin province (województwo), where the majority consisted of a rural population which was strongly attached to Catholicism. The first part of the article describes the members of the Union’s behaviour, which show their attachment to the Catholic Church. It presents, among others, their participation in the events of “Lublin miracle” in 1949. The Union activists participated in retreats, Masses and received Sacraments. They participated in religion lessons organised in school and in Church. They would defend the priests teaching them religion, who were being removed from the school. Some of them would belong to Catholic youth organisations at the same time. On the other hand there was the behaviour of another part of the Union, of those who had already gone through the mental transformation. They demanded the removal of religion from schools and removed crucifixes. Some co-operated with the security services, spying on catechists, teachers and classmates. However, it needs to be said that changes in the mentality of particular members cannot be seen as an evolution of the collective outlook of this group. The majority remained believers and participated in religious life. They tried to combine the Union ideology with values taken from the family home. Despite the hopes of the United Polish Workers’ Party (PZPR) and the Union of Polish Youth there were no mass conversions to Marxism-Leninism. In 1956, when it was possible to drop out of the Union, many people from the Lublin region were prepared to do so.

The symptoms of a crisis in the religious beliefs’ sector of the security apparatus were apparent even before the abolition of the Ministry of Public Safety (MBP). The situation did not improve on forming the Public Safety Committee (KdsBP) and the transformation of Department XI of the Ministry of Public Safety into Department VI of the Public Safety Committee. The crisis in this sector in the security apparatus was intensified after 1954 as a result of the thaw processes, the fact that the Committees workers were under prepared and the lack of necessary cooperation between the different structures within Department VI. The Department’s work was also hampered and destabilised by its reorganisation and new specifications concerning their scope of work (1954–1955). The crisis was apparent in many of the Committee’s operational fields of activity against the Church in the years 1954–1956. It reduced the scope and even more so the effectiveness of religious policy, due to the fact that the Committee had a more important role than any other state institution in implementing the policy’s basic principles. After 1954 the Catholic Church used the disintegration of the power apparatus to strengthen its own position. Poland’s political situation at the time made it possible to force the Polish People’s Republic authorities to liberalise their religious policy and to fight for the recovery of the ground that had been lost. The State tried to oppose the Churches “offensive” by enhancing the security apparatus’s efficiency and scope of activity, firstly (but not only) that of Department VI of the Committee. For this reason as from September 1955 to October 1956 a turn towards counteracting the crisis in this sector and the intensification of a restrictive course of the religious policy took place. Due to the political thaw then in train the workers of Department VI of the Public Safety Committee did not manage to overcome the crisis by the end of the third quarter of 1956. The gradual improvement of this sector’s work quality visible from the end of 1955, was hampered by the socio-political changes in Poland, which reached their climax in October 1956. The extraordinary circumstances, which arose after the arrest of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, when the authorities could have totally subordinated the Church, were not used properly. They not only ran out of time but also of strength and resources. In this context the authorities religious policy ended in defeat. After 1956 a return to the persecution of the Church on a scale comparable the years 1944–1956 was impossible.

When Edward Gierek took over as the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the United Polish Workers’ Party (PZPR) once again the hopes of the Polish people for easing the Polish People’s Republic’s (PRL) antireligious programme rose, this includes the possibility of building places of worship. Unfortunately the hegemonic party, as a matter of principle, aimed to introduce atheism while slogans of normalising relations with the Catholic Church were a mere propaganda ruse. The policy of narrowing the legal activities involved in building places of worship was created by the central party structures (the Administration Department of the United Polish Workers’ Party Central Committee – KC PZPR), administration (Office of Religious Beliefs) and police (Department IV of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) and their local government equivalents. In general all applications for building permits for religious and church buildings were turned down. Appeals from the bishops and believers came to no avail. In this situation people tried to push their long-lasting efforts to get churches to a conclusion themselves. People from many housing estates, with tens of thousands of inhabitants, but without their own church as well as villages lying even over a dozen kilometres from their parish church, pressurised the State authorities. They were strongly backed by some of the Church leaders (especially by the Bishop of Przemyśl Ignacy Tokarczuk). Alongside legal initiatives (such as letters with thousands of signatures, delegations to the high authorities) illegal activities began to spread. Existing accommodation was adapted for devotional practices or various buildings were built and then transformed. Spectacular scenes accompanied the building of these clandestine places of worship. The fight with the so-called wild church building activities strongly engaged the Security Forces. In the “building files” there is information about the close observation of local communities, the intimidation of the most active people, the destruction of the buildings, the brutal treatment of anyone who resisted. The determination of the Security Services and Citizen Militia officers in the ˚ywiec district (powiat) most probably led to the murder of a young man from Cisiec only because he was participating in the building of a church. Repressions were severe but of little effect. Till the end of the “Gierek decade” the policy was not changed. Over two hundred churches and a hundred chapels (especially in central and southern Poland) were, mostly illegally, built, which was a drop in the ocean in relation to the needs.

The Father Ludwik Wiśniewski, whilst running the Dominican academic chaplaincy in Lublin in the years 1972-1981, passed on to young people the idea of religious involvement conceived as service for the benefit of society, especially for those, whose rights and dignity had been abused. He assembled round himself a wide group of representatives of various opposition groups, mainly the milieu associated with the independent Catholic youth periodical “Spotkania” (among others Zdzisław Bradel, Janusz Krupski, Wojciech Samoliński, Anna Żórawska) and the Lublin Defense of Human and Citizen Rights Movement (among others Adam Cichocki and Piotr Tomczak). Thanks to that many initiatives taken by the Lublin opposition were extended beyond closed interest groups. The meetings in the chaplaincy also sparked off contacts between opposition activists from Lublin and Gdańsk, where Father Ludwik worked till 1971. Father Wiśniewski himself was not involved in political activities, but he approved of and morally supported such activities among students involved with the chaplaincy, e.g. opposition protests against the undemocratic elections of 1978 and 1980. He himself was involved in matters that were essential for Catholics and important for society; among others he was the participant in the Defense of Human and Citizen Rights Movement. In the last days of August 1980 he was the spokesman for a group of several people involved with the chaplaincy, which took up a hunger strike in Lublin in solidarity with the striking workers on the Coast. It was due to the critics of his public commitments by his monastic superiors that he decided to leave Lublin. The Lublin Security Services assiduously followed Father Wiśniewski’s chaplaincy’s activities and at least since 1974 considered it to be aimed against the socialist system of the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL). In consequence, administrative, political and operational activities were taken up so as to hinder the running of the centre in the short term and in the long term to remove Father Wiśniewski from Lublin. The situation in Poland in August 1980 caused Father Wiśniewski to suspend his idea of creating a permanent independent Catholic youth organisation. But the people involved in his chaplaincy in 1977 started publishing their own periodical “Spotkania”. In 1980 they co-founded the structures of the Independent Self-governing Trade Union “Solidarity” in the country and the Independent Student Union in the Lublin universities and upon the introduction of martial law in Poland operated in the underground structures.

The article describes art under the patronage of parish churches in the years 1982–1989 as an important element of independent culture and as a unique phenomenon not only in Polish art but also in Church history. Some of the reasons for this movement are on the one hand the dying out of the avante guarde movement, with its strong criticism and the search for new avenues of expression and, on the other hand, the socio-political changes in the country and the Church’s opening up to culture. The beginning of this phenomenon was the activity of the Polish Artists’ Union in the years 1980–1981 and its taking the side of the Independent Self-governing Trade Union “Solidarity”. And later, on the introduction of martial law, their boycott of officially sponsored cultural life. It consolidated a large proportion of the community and made the independent circulation of art easier. The Catholic Church played an important part in this through rendering available its institutions – diocesan museums, Church premises and other accommodation in which galleries and exhibitions were organised. At the same time priests would “spread the word” in the artistic community and create chaplaincies to serve that community. community and create chaplaincies to serve that community. The Church-sponsored art movement created its own iconography (political-patriotic and religious), its own forms and styles of display (among others in the premises of the Churches), it had its own theorists and critics as well as its audience. It also had its opponents who sought to undermine its independence and artistic value. The reason this movement died out at the end of the eighties was the weariness of both parties: the artists and Church representatives, the arrival of a new generation of artists, the end of the boycott of official galleries and museums, finally the changes in Poland in 1989. The Church-sponsored artistic movement is hence, an important, but closed chapter in Polish post-war art. The Church, thanks to its involvement in independent culture renewed its contact with artists, but did not acquire modern religious art, which could permanently take root in places of worship.

In 1944–1945 100 000 Polish repatriates, including nearly 100 priests left the Tarnopol region. 259 churches and chapels became deserted. Toward the end of the forties there remained eleven legally functioning Roman Catholic communities, with almost 3000 faithful, looked after by seven priests. Despite the hostility of the atheistic, totalitarian regime, the communities not only preserved their religious tradition and national identity, but also became a moral support to the underground Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. In the Khrushchev era – in contrast to the Stalinist period – mass repressions were not instigated the clergy, quite the opposite – many clergymen were freed from prisons and camps. However, at the same time, atheist propaganda was intensified. Orthodox and Catholic churches were being closed, religious communities were being officially deregistered. Due to this, in 1964 only six registered Roman Catholic communities remained with the same number of churches. The remaining communities lost their previous status. Through delegalising them, the local authorities were acting according to the expectations of the Kiev and Moscow officials, however, they made it more difficult for themselves to control part of the Roman Catholics in future. Persecutions led to the closing of the Roman and Greek Catholics – not only in the Tarnopol district, but also in the whole of Western Ukraine. During Brezhnev’s rule the atheist course was continued. In the mid seventies in the Tarnopol region only three legally registered parishes remained, with three churches, while as many as ten functioned illegally. Naturally, this situation could not please local Catholics. The active attitude of the clergy, imbued by the spirit of the II Vatican Council, caused the faithful to become more active. They started systematically sending petitions to the district plenipotentiary for religious cults concerning the reregistration of the Roman Catholic parishes. The authorities consistently refused. Not until the policies of glasnost and perestroika, inaugurated by Gorbachov, were there conditions for religious freedom and the rebirth of Catholicism and other religions. The Roman Catholics of the Tarnopol region had their loyalty to Jesus Christ and the Holy See. They passed the test honourably and with a clear conscience.