The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) was the most influential communist party in the Western Hemisphere until the 1950s. Although it never had a mass membership, it gained the allegiance of many influential political and cultural figures. Its membership consisted of Anglo-Saxons as well as immigrants and children of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. The CPUSA played a controversial role in American political history in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s when attempts by anti-communists to discredit the party as an arm of the Soviet Union backfired. Scholarship on the CPUSA is deeply divided as a result of these political controversies. Traditional scholarship emphasized the CPUSA as an indigenous development with limited ties to the Soviet Union. This school lauded the CPUSA for its apparent support of civil rights, unions, and racial equality. A revisionist approach emphasized the party’s ties to Moscow and viewed it as dedicated to supporting a foreign totalitarian regime. Since 1991, the release of many secret CPUSA documents has strongly supported the revisionist school, demonstrating that the party followed closely the political and operational directives of Soviet security services and was deeply involved in assisting Soviet espionage and acted as an agent of influence for the USSR.

The quantitative and qualitative participation of communist Jews in the power apparatus of “People’s Poland” was exceptionally large, and in some segments (the central party apparatus, secret police, propaganda) even dominating. Jewish minority enjoyed autonomy and relative privileges in Poland. It was in fact a mapping of the situation from the Soviet Union of the twenties. The purpose of this article is to summarise the results of research on the involvement of Jews in the apparatus of communist authorities in Poland so far, based on scientific and source publications, and partly the author’s own research in this area. The article reminds us of the myth of “Judeo-Communism” (żydokomuna) in the power apparatus of “People’s Poland”, where it came from and what was its influence on anti-Semitic attitudes in Polish society. Next, the number and influence of Jews in the structures of the communist authorities in the Stalinist period and in the times of Gomułka is characterised with particular emphasis on the security apparatus. It also looks into the reasons for such involvement of Jewish on the communist side and their promotion in the power apparatus, and the problem of their national identity. The article is an attempt to verify the myth, i.e. to determine how much it coincided with reality.

The Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) was established in 1948 and was ruling Poland for 45 years. This meant its dominant influence on two generations of Poles. It pursued the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and the principle of permanent subordination of Poland to the Soviet Union. From the beginning of its existence, it exercised almost absolute control of the country’s internal and foreign policy, administration, the economic sphere and official manifestations of social life. It penetrated into all areas of activity of Poland and its citizens. Collectivism with central planning of the society’s future became the most important for it. The economic and social doctrine of communists assumed the elimination of private property from the economic life. Communist dogmas and the primacy of politics led to a total State control in all areas of life in the country and interference in all spheres of citizens’ lives, including the most broadly understood culture, including customs and religion, and private life. At the end of the 70s, the PUWP reached its peak – it brought together nearly 3.2 million members, i.e. around 15 per cent of adult inhabitants of Poland. The rule of PWP/PUWP led to the creation of a totalitarian regime of the State. Over the course of 45 years, it had varied development dynamics. Nevertheless, the fundamental principle of the monopoly of communist power and the perception of the State as the ownership of one party was a canon until 1989.

Communist Party of Burma (CPB) represents an interesting case studies in the international communist movement. It is interesting by its independence: CPB grew from local, Burmese tradition of nationalism and for many years, if not decades, had little contact with external communist parties (mostly with Communist Party of India and, later, Communist Party of China). Hence, it remained independent from both Moscow and Beijing (later, in 1960s it leant towards the latter). A few times close to getting to power, CPB never achieved that goal, even though it controlled large area of Sino-Burmese borderland in 1970s and 1980s. Until its demise in 1989 it remained the second political force in Burma and Rangoon’s biggest opponent. Initially independent and nationalistic, later it embraced Maoism which contributed to CPB’s failure: first in central Burma in early 1970s and later in the borderlands in 1989.

The article analyzes a nomenclature policy of the VKP(b) Central Committee during the World War II and the early postwar period. As the key sources the authors study following documents: lists of nomenclature positions, reports about changes in the number of positions, information on the composition and number of executives and another documents created in the Central Committee of the VKP(b). This paper briefly explores the dynamics of the quantity of nomenclature, the internal and external factors that determined the growth and decline of nomenclature positions. The greatest increase in nomenclature positions occurred in 1939–1941, when the nomenclature of the Central Committee included almost all significant positions in the USSR at that time. During the war between the USSR and Nazi Germany, a reverse trend was indicated. It was a sharp decline in the posts of nomenclature. This decline was caused by the occupation of Soviet territories and the reduction in the party's control over state structures. Separately, the article analyzes the personnel reform of 1946–1948, undertaken by the Secretary of the VKP(b) A.A. Kuznetsov. This article offers the reasons for the failure of this reform.

The article is devoted to the scale, causes and mechanisms of rotation of party provincial committee first secretaries in the postwar period (1946–1952). The source base of this a research are documents of governing bodies of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) and its divisions that engaged in personnel work. The study revealed that rotation of the regional leadership was significant, but in 1946–1952 it was updated by about a third. This rotation was largely reduced to the movement of the secretaries from one region to another and from the region to the center and back. Similarly, the problem of the lack of qualified managers was tried. Until the end of 1948 the Central Committee restrained the rotation of obkom first secretaries. In 1949–1952 the personnel rotation was very intensive as the center sought to update the regional leadership, mobilize it to solve current economic problems and prepare for the XIX Party Congress. In some cases, the center replaced not only the first secretary, but also the entire leadership of the region. In the postwar years, such purges were at least two dozen, but only four turned into repression.

When the Red Army entered Lviv in July 1944, the Soviet special service (NKGB) proceeded to immediately deal with the Polish population, including civilians. At that time, Poles were the most numerous national group in the city. Despite the progressive changes, they treated Lviv as a Polish centre and did not intend to leave it. The article presents the attitude of the NKGB towards Polish civilian population in Lviv during the two-year transition period (1944–1946) and the actions to intimidate them and force them to leave the city. The text was based to a large extent on materials of the Soviet provenance, not known to Polish science so far.

The study presents political thinking and practical policy of the Czechoslovak exile President Edvard Beneš and his pro-Soviet-oriented collaborators in the years 1940–1948. His policy enabled the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to participate in political power in 1945 and later, in 1948, to seize unlimited power. It deals with Beneš’s authoritarian exile government and the management of anti-Nazi resistance, with Beneš’s socialist and pro-Soviet orientation and his influence on the post-war organization of political relations in the restored Czechoslovakia. In the text, post-war authoritative-totalitarian system of the so-called popular democracy is presented, which was introduced in Czechoslovakia in May 1945 and which lasted till February 1948. This post-war political system was the precursor of the unlimited communist power and its policy of the Sovietization of the state and society; it was revolutionally establihed by the coalition of political parties that was propagandistically called the National Front, eliminated right-wing (right center) parties and adopted radical leftist so-called Košice government program prepared by the Communists in order to subject the state to Bolshevism. At the same time, the text presents and comments on the book of Beneš’s propagandist collaborator and minister of the exile government Hubert Ripka, entitled “East and West” and published in Czech and English in London in 1944. This book deals with Beneš’s foreign policy and promotes its pro-Soviet orientation.

The focus of the study is the analysis of the elite at the regional and departmental levels of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) in the period 1945–1956. Specifically, it deals with the holders of the administratively, most important function, that of political or later head secretary. However, it also respects an actual state of affairs within studied regions and departments and designates elite accordingly. Through methods of prosopography it examines social background of the selected elite and how these performed dominance in their respective domains. It comes to the conclusion that within the concerned period the social origins and power practices of the elite shifted dramatically in accordance with the transformations of the Czechoslovak state-socialist dictatorship itself. These changes did not happen continuously, but in conditions of strained hardships and major turnarounds. In the process, new or semi-new elite was created and revolutionary ethos gave way to stabilization and smooth performance of power.

Yugoslavia was a country in which the Sovietisation process ended the fastest among all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Yugoslav politicians treated Poland as the closest ally in Central and Eastern Europe, after Czechoslovakia and the USSR. They treated favourably the policy of the Polish Workers’ Party (PWP), which strived to absorb the Polish Socialist Party (PSP). Regardless of the faint support of the communists in Polish society, they argued that the PWP is enjoying greater and greater prestige among Poles, and its economic and international policy – unlike in 1918–1939 – is carried out in a rational manner. When Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform on 28 June 1948, politicians in Belgrade wanted to maintain their independence but also expressed their hope that they would succeed in the reconciliation with the countries subordinate to Moscow. In spite of the anti-Yugoslav campaign, which initiated the process of introducing Stalinism in Poland, the activity of the PWP for full domination of the political scene by this grouping would still meet with an approval. Only the break of relations with the countries of the Eastern bloc in the second half of 1949 led to a sharp conflict and actions to legitimate own regime in opposition to that imposed by the USSR. The party and diplomatic documents emphasised all the problems caused by the inept policy of the communists in the Eastern bloc, including Poland. Such actions were to deprecate the communist policy behind the “Iron Curtain.” In the case of Poland, they were publicised particularly strongly during periods of political crisis.

This article endeavours to analyse some characteristic segments of Hungary’s communist party élite between 1948 and 1962. Besides considering nationwide data, I introduce, at least partially, through highlighting one or two major characteristics, some smaller geographical areas, too. First of all, I survey the distinguishing features of Hungary’s capital Budapest, which is followed by an in-depth analysis of certain specific data characterising Zala County, a western region of Hungary. In the second half of the 1940s, a generation in their twenties to thirties seized control over politics within the MKP-MDP apparatus, and the same generation – changing only in terms of the individuals it comprised – retained its hold on power. It is partly for that reason that, after the revolution was crushed in 1956, the reconstructed party now named MSZMP was not simply built upon the membership of the old MDP but on its former staff of apparatchiks. While in the late forties a young and hardy individual unencumbered with personal loyalties represented the ideal type of party operative, after 1956, the experienced, reliable activist embodied the most desirable paid party apparatchik. It was an activist who had proved his loyalty during the perceived watershed year of 1956, so he or she belonged to the aforementioned generation, and therefore was obviously older.

The objective of cooperation between the representatives of religious divisions of the government administration of the Polish People’s Republic (PPR) and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSR) was the exchange of information and experiences, and consultation on religious issues. One of its forms were joint meetings and consultation. The initiator of this consultation was the Czechoslovak side which was striving for it for a few years. The first one – sounding – took place in 1957. Until then, there was no consent to such consultation of higher party and government circles of the PPR. Both sides undertaking cooperation agreed on its essence and purpose. These were meetings at the “right level” with a specific composition of participants, with appropriate authorisations from their superiors. The subject of the talks was agreed in advance, and their results were in the nature of findings, then presented for acceptance to the party and government leadership of the PPR and the CSR. Both sides shared their experience in planning and implementing measures towards the Churches, especially the Catholic Church, and informed each other about current activity in religious policy. They exchanged documents and materials on the subject. This article also presents the subject matter discussed during these meetings and shows the scope of knowledge of religious officials of the PPR and the CSR, especially in the matter of the Catholic Church. The effect of this cooperation in religious policy is the postulate of further research.

The communists who criticized the policy of the PUWP’s leadership from the principled positions in December 1965 established an illegal organisation called the Communist Party of Poland (CCP). The unquestionable leader of this group was Kazimierz Mijal who in 1966 fled to Albania and supervised the activity of the CPP from there. This organisation illegally printed and distributed thousands of leaflets and brochures in which the “revisionist” policies of Gomułka and Gierek were condemned, holding the Albanian and Chinese doctrinal solutions as a model. The infiltration of the Polish Maoist circles by the security apparatus of the PPR in the seventies led to the marginalisation of this structure. The article, based on documents collected, among others, in the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance and the Central Archives of Modern Records, presents the inside story of the founding of the CPP, its major leaders, political programme and secret cooperation with Albanian diplomats, and summarises the activity of Kazimierz Mijal in the background of the discord in the communist camp in the 60s, indicating among many reasons for the failures of Polish “Maoists” a dogmatic political programme which did not gained wider acceptance in society.

The article describes the situation within the county and urban structures of the Party in Pruszcz Gdański at the three turning points of the history of the Polish People’s Republic: October ’56, December ’70, and August ’80. It is also an attempt at finding common traits within the local Party authorities’ responses to the subsequent outbreaks of social dissent and on a small scale, the course of the so-called Polish Months in a small provincial town living in the shadow of the Tri-City Agglomeration. Due to the proximity of the Tri-City, the residents of Pruszcz Gdański often witnessed the grand history that happened there. Many of them worked in factories or attended schools or universities that were located in Gdańsk, Gdynia, or Sopot. Thus, the dramatic historical events that took place in the Tri-City directly affected their lives. The article is based on fragments of Pruszcz Gdański w latach 1945–1990. Partia, bezpieka, „Solidarność” by Piotr Brzeziński, Arkadiusz Kazański, Marcin Węgliński, which was published in late 2016.

In the nineties of the 20th century, the relations between the Polish People’s Republic and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea were visibly intensifying. One of the evident levels of this intensification were inter-party relations. The objective of this article is to discuss the nature and main areas in which the Polish United Workers’ Party and the Workers’ Party of Korea maintained contact and organised visits in their countries in 1980–1989.

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the Communist Party and Komsomol policy concerning informal youth associations in Soviet Ukraine. The author paid considerable attention to the factors that caused the emergence of informal associations’ phenomenon. It is shown that if up to the first half of the 1980s state structures preferred repressive methods of influence on informal youth associations, then from the mid-1980s onwards the policy of party-state leadership changed using the principle of cooperation according to a differentiated approach to associations. This led to a decrease in destructive activities of certain associations and overcoming tensions between the informal youth and public structures. However, in general, the authorities failed to establish constructive cooperation with informal youth associations. Informal organizations became politicized, opposition informal associations formed and consolidated in the second half of 1988. Their authority among the youth was growing amid the decay of official youth structures.

The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was founded in 1921, a year before the march of the fascists on Rome. After only a few years of existence, it was broken up and its individual units continued to operate in exile. During the Cold War, it was the largest communist party in the West. Unlike many other Western parties with this ideological profile, it quickly became a mass party. On the one hand, the PCI remained a communist party which maintained close relations with Moscow and its satellite states, and on the other, it sought democratic legitimacy and “national” roots. It is this complexity (some Italian historians use the word ’anomaly’) in the history of the party that caused and causes the unrelenting fascination of many researchers. Many publications and articles about the PCI have already been written but some areas of its history remain unexplored. This article is an attempt to organise the rich scientific achievements related to the party, to present problems related to its historiography and to indicate research postulates for the future.

When Poland regained its independence, a decision was made to pull down the Orthodox St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral as part of clearing Warsaw’s public space from the remains of the symbolic politics of partition. This matter was widely commented on both among the political elites of the Second Polish Republic and the residents of Warsaw, and the inhabitants of whole Poland were informed about it. Social organisations and the Town Hall of Warsaw were the first to take the issue of demolition of the Cathedral. Information on this subject appeared in the press and reached the Government of the Polish Republic. The Presidium of the Council of Ministers took a stand on this matter at the request of its Chairman, Ignacy Jan Paderewski. It was unambiguous – the Cathedral had to be demolished, and the Ministry of Public Works was to do it. Due to the interventions of the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Enlightenment and the Ministry of Military Affairs, demolition was ceased. This subject was again taken up by the Legislative Sejm which, after conducting public consultations and lively discussions at the plenary session, postponed the demolition for a later period (interestingly, requests for demolition and maintaining the Cathedral were presented to the Sejm by representatives of one party). Then, the issue of demolition was taken up by the government of Gen. Władysław Sikorski (which met with a failed counteraction of members of national minorities) and commissioned to the Ministry of Public Works. The subcontractor chosen by the Ministry failed and only the City Hall of Warsaw completed the demolition works, and then gave the Saski Square for the representative needs of the Polish authorities in July 1926. These works were managed by the future Mayor of Warsaw, Zygmunt Słomiński. The article is a case study of demolition of the former Alexander Nevsky Cathedral as an action requiring the cooperation of many state and local government institutions of the reborn Polish State, an action which resulted in the polarisation of views, often not coinciding with the political affinity.

After the May Coup of 1926, a few dozen (at least 43) professional officers, enjoying the trust of Józef Piłsudski, were admitted to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs as full-time officials. About half of this group were military intelligence officers in the past. They left the army by orders of their superiors. Along with military attachés officially employed in the Ministry and residents of military intelligence working in the agencies of the MFA, there were over one hundred of them. They formed a noticeable group in the Ministry which in the 30s employed 1300 officials (full-time and contract). And because they usually held high-ranking positions (including the highest) – also an influential group. Changes can be seen in the MFA after 1933 indicating the transfer of military models: strictly enforced demand for professional secrecy, influence of superiors on the choice of a spouse, employment of only Polish citizens, reduction of reporting and bureaucracy, transfer to other positions without consideration of the will of the interested party, etc. The style of management of diplomacy by Minister Józef Beck, far from collegiality, somewhat authoritarian, can be associated with patterns prevailing in the army. The officers saw making the Ministry more efficient tool to implement the will of Marshal Piłsudski as the main value of their presence in the MFA. The “centralisation” of the decision-making process, corresponding to the traditional military structure, was highly valued. Civilian officials pointed to the negative effects of work of the military men: the dominance of patterns harmful in diplomacy, such as the lack of respect for individualism, combating criticism (even of unjust decisions), worship of obedience (even against common sense), the lack of professionalism and good manners.

The emergence of Ukrainian political emigration on the territory of the Second Polish Republic was due to the defeat of the Ukrainian revolution. The desire to settle on the territory of the Volyn Voivodship was motivated by the people’s eagerness to get into the Ukrainian-language, mostly Orthodox religious environment, which reduced the intensity of the psychological adaptation of the emigrants. The figure of Symon Petliura was controversially evaluated by various political environments, however, in the Volyn Voivodship, the chieftain’s companions treated him mainly respectfully. Starting from 1926, every year in May throughout all western Volyn mourning events took place in the form of memorial services, academies, presentations of abstracts. In the regional centers there were Ukrainian public committees to commemorate the memory of Petliura. The sympathizers of Symon Petliura offered the format of celebrations, their ideological content, celebrated the honor of the Chieftain by collecting funds for the assistance of the Symon Petliura Library in Paris and donations to the funds of the Museum of the Liberation Movement of Ukraine in Prague. Remembrance of the name of Symon Petliura played an important role in unifying emigration, the formation of historical memory. The beginning of the Second World War interrupted this tradition on the territory.

World War II caused the outbreak of bloody conflicts on the grounds of nationality and ethnicity. The former Volhynian Governorate, where unimaginable acts of violence took place, became a particularly dangerous place. For almost one hundred years, these areas were inhabited by, among others, few Czechs who tried to survive various turmoil around them. Attacks on the Czech minority in Volhynia ceased with the end of World War II when the majority of Czechs decided to return to their homeland.

Party cleansing in the communist elites (PWP-PUWP) took place in Poland between 1948 and 1956. The search for “internal enemies” was conducted by a special secret unit of the MPS, initially called a special group (1948), then the Special Office (1950), and finally Department X of the MPS (1951–1954). Work of these units was supervised by Gen. Roman Romkowski (deputy minister at the MPS) by order of the management of the Polish United Workers’ Party. The introduction of the article briefly outlines the history of the establishment of the Special Office, indicates the persons deciding on the local scope and course of the search for “internal enemies” (including Bolesław Bierut, Jakub Berman, Roman Romkowski) and mentions communists representative of the whole issue (inter alia, Władysław Gomułka, Marian Spychalski, Włodzimierz Lechowicz, Leon Gecow, Hermann Field), who were arrested, imprisoned and interrogated under false allegations of treason, cooperation with foreign intelligence, striving for a systemic coup in “Polska Ludowa.” The document published further shows the moment of transformation of the non-formalised, secret special group of the MPS, operating under the direction of Col. Józef Różański, into a formalised, still secret, unit with fulltime employees – the Special Office, managed by Col. Anatol Fejgin. This structure was functioning for less than two years because the growing auto-aggressive terror required another reorganisation of the secret structure. The newly established Department X of the MPS covered the entire country.

Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski treated the “normalisation” of the State-Church relations, announced in December 1970 by the authorities, with caution and distance, though also with some optimism. He hoped that at least some of the postulates of the Episcopate would be implemented, especially regarding sacral construction. However, already in the spring of 1971, he knew that the “normalisation” is merely a propaganda evasion. In 1972, in a document prepared for the meeting of the Main Council of the Polish Episcopate of 4 May 1972 entitled “Political situation in Poland and the normalisation of relations between the State and the Church,” he summarised the State-Church relations in the first two years of government of Edward Gierek’s team. In it, Cardinal Wyszyński thoroughly discussed the social and political situation in 1972 in the context of the entire Eastern bloc. The most important observation was the exhaustion of the “dynamics of post-December renewal.” In the document, the Primate also discussed the concept of “normalisation” propagated by the authorities, mainly on the example of the most important – in his opinion – statements of the leading dignitaries of the “People’s” Poland, confronted with their real actions. The material in question proves that Cardinal Wyszyński thoroughly analysed the political reality of the PPR, not being misled by the propaganda of the authorities.

On 20 August 1987, the counsellor of the Polish Embassy in Beijing held a conversation with the deputy head of the Research Unit at the Office for Religious Affairs at the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. The article includes a report on it. It is preceded by an introduction which outlines historical and cultural conditions which have a significant impact on the policy of Chinese communists towards religion. It is also pointed out that the decision-makers of the Communist Party of China considered the greatest potential threat to their power to be the Catholic Church, which was subjected to the most severe repression during the dictatorship of Mao Zedong and benefited from the later liberalisation the least. Methods used to subordinate representatives of particular denominations to the policy of the PRC as well as formal and legal conditions for the functioning of religious associations in the Middle Kingdom are also presented.