This article is a study on Catholicism in the Polish People’s Republic and the state authorities’ policy towards the Catholic Church. In October 1959, the metal tower of a Warsaw church began to glow, hich was especially visible at night. The phenomenon was not explained scientifically, and interpreter by many people as a miracle, a sign from God. Many people even saw the Mother of God at the top of the tower. For several weeks, the church attracted crowds of many thousands of gawkers, curious onlookers, and pilgrims. The author describes the reaction of the Church authorities, state authorities (repressive apparatus), and common people drawn to the extraordinary event. The miracle in the Warsaw district of Muranów is one of the most spectacular examples of the manifestation of the believers’ miraculous sensitivity (consciousness).

After the Second World War, Communist Poland and the Holy See did not maintain official diplomatic relations for over a quarter of the century (1945–1974). Despite that complicated situation, there were several personal meetings between the Pope and the representatives of Communist Poland during the pontificated of Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI. These meetings seemingly confirm the definite rule of the Vatican’s diplomacy which does not refuse to talk with anyone and to conduct dialogue in any situation. The analysis of the circumstances and the courses of meetings between Communist politicians from Poland and the Pope allows us to draw the line that divides the period in question into two parts. Until 1965, the Pope held audiences with Catholic activists engaged in public Communist Poland, while after that date, there were also meetings with Communist politicians, including two foreign ministers and a First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party. Throughout nearly the entire period, the primary goal of the relations between Poland and the Vatican, including meetings with the Pope, was to win the Holy See’s favour, particularly in opposition to the Primate, and create the propaganda image of religious freedom and good relations between the state and the Church in Poland. It is difficult to assess how the Holy See benefited from those meetings. The dialogue started in 1965, and it took an institutional form in 1974, but that did not affect the model of religious policy in Poland, and the strong position of the Church did not result from the dialogue between the Communists and the Vatican, but the unrelenting and principled policy of the Episcopate lead by the Primate. I have based the present article primarily on materials prepared by the Communist diplomatic service and stored in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and documents prepared by the Party and administration of the Communist Poland, particularly the Office for Religious, and stored at the Polish Central Archives of Modern Records. Diaries and memoirs also proved to be important – particularly those by Jerzy Zawieyski and Janusz Zabłocki.

Vatican Radio (RW) is tasked with providing information about the activities of the Pope and the Holy See, as well as the situations of Churches worldwide. The Polish Section of the Vatican Radio (SPRW) implemented these tasks, and among the many topics and information presented on the RW waves it also commented on issues related to State-Church relations in Poland. The aim of the article is to look in more detail, among others, on whether and how the SPRW presented the PRL state-Church relations during the period of 1957–1979. While presenting this topic, in the 60s, the SPRW usually drew from the opinions of the western press and foreign press agencies, and in the 70s primarily from the communications of the Polish Episcopacy Conferences. The SPRW informed its listeners about the most important issues affecting State-Church relations - among others, about the lack of religious freedom in PRL, persecution of the clergy, lack of permission for sacral buildings, efforts made by the Church for allowing it freedom in its actions and respecting human rights and the rights of Polish citizens by the PRL government. The SPRW defended the Polish clergy. Additionally, for the Polish people, the SPRW was the main source of uncensored information about the situation of the Church; not only worldwide, but primarily in Poland. The SPRW aired a series of educational programmes to counteract the attempts of secularisation of the society by the Communist government. The election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope contributed to the growth of the role of the Church in Poland, and made the SPRW face new challenges. It had its unparalleled contribution in accompanying the Pope during his pilgrimages and providing Polish listeners with the latest information not presented in the state media.

The text presents an attempt to depict the reception of the exchange of letters between the Polish and German episcopacy in 1965, by the GDR government. It points out the direct reactions undertaken by the party and state elites in order to decrease the importance and the international aspect of the clergy initiative. The propaganda actions included a wide range of instruments and tools available for the state government, primarily the media. It resulted in marginal interest in this topic among the GDR society and creation of the reception of the event desired by the government

In the above analysis, I have discussed the attitude of the Main Council of the Polish Episcopate towards the pre-August opposition. The approach of the leading body of the Polish Church to the opposition groups that originated in 1976–1977 has not been the topic of a separate and comprehensive study. The former part of the article outlines the increasing social importance of the Church in the 1970s and the role of that institution during the 1976 strikes. The introductory section is followed by the presentation of Primate Wyszyński’s and the most important Polish bishops’ attitudes towards opposition groups that originated in the latter half of the 1970s. The author focused on the position on the issue taken by the members of the Main Council as the most important decision-making body in the Polish Church after 1945. This is followed by a description of the Episcopate’s opinion on ordinary clergy’s cooperation with the pre-August opposition in order to highlight the Council member’s stance on the opposition more. A separate fragment of the analysis is devoted to the discussion of the bishop’s attitude towards the risk of “politicisation” of academic ministries. It is particularly important due to the fact that the origin of certain opposition organisations can be seen in the activity of specific ministries. The next part of the article shows the attitude of the Council members towards the role of the opposition during the first papal pilgrimage. The final section outlines how the most important hierarchs of the Church felt about the role of the pre-August opposition during the legal existence of the “Solidarity” with particular attention to the circles related to the former Workers’ Defence Committee, which the members of the Main Council of the Episcopate were most passionate about.

The Church and the Catholic community during the Great Novena (1956–1966) contested the liberal abortion laws introduced by the Communists, arguing that it led to the depopulation of Poland. Formed of pronatalist attitudes based on the experiences of the previous epoch: Catholic parish counseling was developed, spouses were trained on natural family planning methods. Poles were integrated around the Millenium program proclamation of Card. Wyszyński, in which conscience of women through prayer, pilgrimage and preaching. Particular attention has been paid to single mothers and to large families, offering them social and organizational assistance in their parenting. The program of reception of church teaching in the field of marriage and the family was transferred to the forum of the council debate, actively developing the content of the document “Humanae vitae”. In this regard, the effect of the Church and the Catholic community was to strengthen the image of Poland as a country in which it struggled in defense of life and effectively countered the government’s reproductive policy.

The article presents an outline of the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Lviv in 1953-1959. It discusses the history of individual parishes in that city, as well as all attempts at influencing and exposing those religious communities made by the Soviet authorities, for religious activity was especially interesting to Soviet notables. The text also presents the Church’s situation in the light of Soviet legislation. At the time, the term “Catholic” in former Eastern regions of the Polish Republic almost always referred to a person of Polish nationality. Thus, the article can be considered as a presentation of the life of Poles who remained in Lviv until the “second repatriation”. It was the last moment when that community was relatively numerous. As a large proportion of the believers left in the second half of the 1950s, the Polish element became considerably weaker. It obviously led to a change in the Roman Catholic Church’s situation. Nevertheless, a slow suppression of religious activity began much earlier. It grew stronger during the period delimited in the text. The sources on which the article is based include the documents of Soviet provenance (mostly secret internal documents of the local Religious Cult Plenipotentiary). A large portion of them appear in a scholarly publication for the first time.

The article analyses the content of the longest running Lithuanian underground magazines from the 1970s and 1980s: Lietuvos katalikų bažnyčios kronika, Aušra, Rūpintojėlis and a few others, were published in independent circles associated with the Church. The aim of the analysis is to verify whether the figures of medieval Lithuanian heroes, Grand Duke Vytautas and Saint Casimir, were presented in those magazines as models for the Lithuanian Catholic. Scholars note that the notion of a Lithuanian Catholic and, in a broader sense, of an almost inseparable link between Lithuanian culture and Catholicism as a prerequisite of survival in Soviet reality, were present in the Lithuanian national ideology among both the emigrants and in the country. It was also important as motivation for the underground publishing activity. The analysis of the texts devoted to these two heroes leads to the conclusion that their identification with the model of a Lithuanian Catholic can only be observed in a very narrow aspect of their image in the underground press. At the same time, it demonstrates the tendencies and directions of the development of their images. This article is therefore also a study on social memory in which I attempt to investigate how the memory of the country’s patron saint and of its most distinguished ruler was actualized or evoked in the conditions created by late Sovietism in Lithuania. Not only did the analysis offer the answer to the research question, but it also permitted the author to sketch the direction of development of these two images. Vytautas was portrayed by referencing his nationalist and secular cult, consolidated during the interwar period, while the authors of the articles published by the underground did not add much to his image, and certainly did not make it more Catholic. The image of Saint Casimir was more dynamic and ambiguous, as he was depicted as a figure in the national (next to Vytautas and other great dukes) and Catholic national (e.g. next to the Blessed Bishop Jerzy Matulewicz) pantheon, as well as – in a more novel way, albeit evoking hagiographical tradition – an ideal of both a ruler and a citizen. I draw my methodological models from two sources: the classic work by Stefan Czarnkowski devoted to the cult of a national hero (I examine Vytautas and Casimir as such) and a study by Jan Kubik (Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power). I attempt to apply the category of discourse that he introduced and used for a reconstruction of the political situation in Poland in the period before and during Solidarity’s activity.

The acquisition of power by the communists in Yugoslavia after World War II proceeded in a different way, than in case of other Central and East European countries (except Albania). First of all, Yugoslavia had been liberated mostly by partisans, naturally supported by the Allied Powers. Secondly, taking into account their impact on political reality in the country, they did not follow other communists (e.g. from Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria etc.) in implementing a “transitional period”, but straight away started massive terror against all potential or real political enemies. One of the “natural” enemy of the new government was the Catholic Church (CCh), Institution especially strong in Croatia and Slovenia. Thus, the CCh was oppressed by communists. The authorities used administrative repressions, some of most active priests were killed. The archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, the leader of the Church in Croatia, was sentenced and imprisoned. Gradually, after WW II, communist terror had been substituted by administrative and political repressions. Belgrade had started a kind of political game with Vatican, where the situation of the Church in Croatia was at stake. At this point the pattern was similar to other communist states: the “priests-patriots” associations were established in whole Yugoslavia. However, a lack of success led Josip Broz-Tito, Yugoslav leader, to break off the diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1952. The diplomatic détente between the Holy See and Belgrade appeared in mid-‘60s, when tough negotiations between states had begun. The agreement, finally signed in 1966, resulted in improvement of the CCh’s position in Croatia and Slovenia. It is worth to be noted, that Vatican was interested in looking for deeper frames of cooperation with Yugoslavia. The main goal was to sign a concordat with a socialist state, what would have a huge impact on Catholicism the whole Eastern Bloc. Apart from that, as Belgrade continued its policy in Non-Aligned Movement, Vatican sought an opportunity to expand its influence in the Third World. Eventually, the concordat was signed in 1970 and in the following year Josip Broz-Tito, as the first communist leader, officially visited pope Paul VI in Vatican. At the end of 1971 a symbolic event for a Church’s history in Croatia took place – “The Croat Spring”. Massive protests in the republic were suppressed by the authorities. Oppositely to clergy in other countries like Poland, the Church in Croatia/Yugoslavia remained passive. This fact had significant consequences, as the Croatian elites almost up to ‘90s felt deep reserve to the Institution.

The political trials of members of male orders and congregations in the Czechosloslovakia in the period of 1948–1989 The study depicts persecutions of male orders and congregations in the period of the Communism regime in the Czech lands during the period of 1948–1989. It indicates the graduał restriction of their activities after the Communist takeover in February 1948. The first part includes the period of 1948–1968, namely the mass attack of the Communist oppressors on the orders shortly after assuming authority, the restriction of their public activities until the complete liquidation of all male orders in Czechoslovakia in April 1950, the so-called K campaign implemented by the state security services (in Czech: Státní bezpečnost). It also mentions the life of monks in centralising internment camps and the illegal renewing of communes as well as the continuation of conventual life in hiding in the 1950s and 1960s. The most significant form of the persecutions committed on monks were the political show trials. In the early 1950s and subsequently in the 1960s, within the Czech lands, during two large rounds of trials, 361 monks were convicted in 175 trials, including 18 of them more than once. The frequent cause of the imprisonment and conviction of the monks was, firstly, their public activities, reading pastoral letters, criticising Communism during their sermons or helping people related to the Anti-Communism movement. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the majority of case, these were group trials including several dozen members of the order, the purpose of which was the liquidation of any signs of life emanating from the Order: secret meetings, enrolling new members, ordinations. In particular, the 1950s were characterised by severe sentences (58 monks were sentenced to 10-15 in prison, 14 to 20 years or more and 3 to life imprisonment). The most striking aspect was the cruelty of the interrogation methods of the secret agents of the state security, mentally and physically torturing the persons they interrogated; at least 3 monks died in remand centres and 6 while serving time in prison. The second part of the text provides an analysis of the orders in the period 1968–1989. The nationwide thaw in the period of the so-called Prague Spring in 1968 brought a short-term attempt at reviving conventual life in the Czech Republic. After the invasion of the Warsaw Pack military forces and progressing normalisation in the 1970s, conventual communes underwent a process of destruction at the hands of secret church officers and the state security services, while the existence of male orders, including the recruitment of new members, research, publication of religious literature, was deemed illegal, and thus punishable under law. In the period of normalisation, in contrast to the 1950s and 1960s, there were not hundreds of cases of arrests, interrogations and convictions but there were individual trials. Only in the case of the Franciscans during the Vir campaign in 1983, and during other campaigns against them within the republic were dozens of order members prosecuted, of whom only five were sentenced in the Czech lands. Many of the cases that were brought to trial, despite serious interest from the state security services, ended in failure or reversal. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Communist authorities refrained from the previously widespread practices of interning monks in camps or nationwide manhunts. This was caused mainly by the negative reaction of the national opposition as well as international protests and coverage of those cases in the Western mass media. The persecution of male orders and the trials of their members continued in Czechoslovakia throughout the entire period of the Communist regime, with the exception of late 1960s. Since 1950 until the fall of the regime in 1989, with the exception of the period of the so-called Prague Spring, the activities of male orders were deemed undesirable and illegal. The long-term objective of the Communist regime was the complete destruction of conventual life in Czechoslovakia and to convert the society to atheism.

Stara Błotnica is an important local sanctuary in the Radom (former Sandomierz) diocese. The icon of the Our Lady of Consolation enshrined in the local church was for centuries considered to be miraculous by the faithful. In the 60s, the efforts for coronation of the icon were undertaken by the administrator of the Sandomierz diocese, bishop Piotr Gołębiowski. For his efforts, pope Paul VI agreed to the coronation of the icon which took place on 21st August 1977. During preparations for the coronations it was decided to renovate the church and to subject the icon to conservation works. As a result, among others, after removal of several re-paintings, the icon was restored to its original appearance. A part of the faithful, confounded with this change, did not accept the outcome. The Secret Police swiftly decided to use this situation, fanning the icon-related conflict lasting for several years and trying to undermine the religious dimension of the event and the authority of the Church. It was suggested, among others, that the icon was switched and then sold abroad by the rector Józef Gałan in consultation with Bishop Gołębiowski. The preserved documentation created by the Secret Police allows for the partial reconstruction of the so-called disintegration activities (also called D-activities) conducted for several years against, among others, priest Józef Gałan and the Stara Błotnica sanctuary.

The paper presents the course of decrucification action in Sandomierz County located in former Kielce voivodeship. The action was planned by communist authorities and legally based on the Circular no. 26 of the Ministry of Education dated 4 August 1958. In order to present the course of the action, the author needed a query of source materials: KP PZPR and Department of Education of PPRN in Sandomierz, security force act and local Bishop Curia. The author shows all stages of decrucification action carried out on a country level. The first one were preparations, consisting of meeting KP PZR executive, trainings for school directors and state institutions. Another stage was to remove crosses from common schools and state institutions, which did not take place without argument. At the end of the decrucification action, summaries and evaluation concluded that removal of crosses had gone without major problems. In order to present a full picture of the described action, the author presented an outline of the introduction process of Circular 26 by Ministry of Education on 4 August 1958 and discussed the school network of Sandomierz County. The paper is another attempt to show the ways communist authorities fought the Catholic church after the II World War.

The article is an attempt at determining the actual casualties of the Ukrainian population in the occupational Lublin District between 1939 and 1944. As a result of the research to date, which is still continued, the search reached for previously unused sources, e.g. archival materials dating from the war, memoirs or press. As a result, the data concerning Ukrainian population: the number of killed, wounded and arrested divided according to specific poviats, years and months as well as perpetrators, has been made more precise. The results thus obtained contradict the thesis about mass murders in the Lublin region in 1942, which supposedly preceded the purge against the Polish that the OUN-B initiated in Volhynia in 1943, which is a statement popular in Ukrainian historiography. On the other hand, the data prove that the operations carried out by the Polish underground in the spring of 1944 (the so-called Hrubieszów Revolution) were much more brutal and led to many more casualties among the civilian population than the Polish historiography had previously stated.

The participation of Ukrainian Hilfspolizei in murders of the Jewish population in eastern Ukraine has been poorly investigated, especially at the local level. The articlr focuses on the activity of the Ukrainian Hilfspolizei with regard to the murder of Jews and the plundering of Jewish property. It also investigates the motivations of those who joined the Ukrainian police in the Sumy oblast. Ukrainian auxiliary forces took part in extermination of Jewish population and communities in many regions of Ukraine. But how high was level participation in persecutions, plundering and murders of Jews by Ukrainian policemen in Sumy Oblast – a Borderland between Ukraine and Russia? Did they take part in mass shooting or played auxiliary role? Who were members of Ukrainian police in Sumy oblasts? What about their background and collective social portrait? The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Organizatsia Ukra’inskych Nationalistiv) took active part in creation and activity of the Ukrainian militia (Ukrains’ka narodna militsia) in western and central regions of Ukraine. After disband of the militia OUN infiltrated its member in structures of police. The same situation we can see in case of Russian right radical party National-Labor Union of New Generation (Nazional’no-Trudodvoy Souz Novogo Pokolenia) and its actions in Russia Nazis occupied. How strong was influence and infiltration to Ukrainian police abovementioned totalitarian nationalistic organization in mostly Russian speaking regional center like Sumy? What influence to local police did the Soviet intelligence have? How deeply did integral nationalistic ideology penetrate in Weltanschauung of Ukrainian policemen in Sumy oblast? What were motivations which forced Ukrainian policeman take part in anti-Jewish actions? Could we speak about specific social-psychological motivations of members Ukrainian police in Sumy oblasts? Such questions in the context of “ordinary men/willing executors discussion” using new unpublished sources from German, Ukrainian, American and Israeli archives are addressed here.

On 22nd July 1942, Germans initiated the Grossaktion, i.e. the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. The first known piece of information from the Polish Underground State addressed to the Polish Government-in-exile in London is the dispatch of 26th July 1942 by Stefan Korboński. However, its complete content has been unknown to date. All the evidence suggests that the key sentence about the daily “contingents” of Jews transported for extermination was wrongly understood in London. Moreover, unlike Korboński’s intention, the dispatch was publicised via the radio, which contradicts the thesis about the silence of the Polish Government-in-exile (at least in the initial period).

The present article is an academic study on the wartime fate of Stanisław Basaj, nome de guerre “Ryś”, one of the best-known commanders of the Peasants’ Battalions guerrillas in the Lublin region. The author raises the issue of the conflict between Basaj and the Home Army and the Ukrainians in the Zamość region in 1943-1944/1945 and cooperation with the Soviet guerrillas in the final period of the German occupation and cooperation with the local Communist authorities after July 1944. At the same time, the article includes attempts at separating facts from myths that have been surrounding the figure of “Ryś” since the Polish People’s Republic. The figure is still a legend for many Polish residents of the Hrubieszów area and a villain for the local Ukrainians.

Stefan Staszewski, born in 1906 in Warsaw as Gustaw Szuster, was an active member of the Young Communist League of Poland and the Communist Party of Poland, trained from 1926 to 1928 in the International Lenin School in Moscow. He was arrested three times in Poland for communist activity. In 1934, he fled to the USSR, where he was reprimanded for membership in M. Lampe’s group, and then expelled from the AUCP(b) and arrested by the NKVD. He was sentenced to 15 years in a Kolyma Gulag camp. He was released in 1945 thanks to Bolesław Bierut’s intervention, and after coming to Poland, he joined the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) and changed his name to Stefan Staszewski. The Secretary of the PPR Central Committee dispatched him to Katowice to take the position of the secretary for industrial affairs. Soon, he became the editor-in-chief of Trybuna Robotnicza, which achieved considerable success under his management. In 1948, the party leadership gave him the very responsible post of the director of the Department of Press and Publications of the PUWP’s Central Committee. Staszewski changed radically the organizational system of the party press and of the publishing businesses’ activity, and contributed to the development of communist journalism. In 1954, he was dismissed from the post of the Department of Press and Publications’ head and moved to the Ministry of Agriculture. During the thaw, he became a critic of the former party leadership and began to actively aid supporters of reforms. As the First Secretary of the PUWP Warsaw Committee, in October 1956 he organized and supervised rallies at Warsaw universities and work places. During the Eighth Plenary Session of the PUWP Central Committee, he was attacked by activists belonging to the “Natolinian group”. His stance was violently criticised by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, which resulted in his dismissal from the post of secretary of the Warsaw party organization. Staszewski largely contributed to the success of the party reformers and to positive transformations initiated during the Eighth Plenary Session. Having left the PUWP Warsaw Committee, he worked for a short time in the Polish Press Agency. His relationship with new party authorities steadily became worse, which resulted in him being removed from the post of the assistant of the member of PUWP Central Committee. That is why he began to work for the State Scientific Publishers (PWN) in the editorial section of the Great Universal Encyclopaedia. In 1968, party propaganda presented him, together with Roman Zambrowski, as the most dangerous threat to the PRL’s constitutional order. In the 1970s, he maintained close relations with the Workers’ Defence Committee. Under martial law, his flat was searched by the Security Service.

The intelligence services of the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance member states cooperated from the moment the Iron Curtain fell over Central and Eastern Europe. As the specific branches of the intelligence expanded following the example of the KGB, information exchange encompassed an increasing range of issues. In the 1950s, following the example set by the USSR, the Polish and East German leaderships of the party and the state started to lay the foundations for the so-called scientific and technical intelligence (WNT), whose task was to provide the economy with innovative technologies, including ones subject to the trade embargo imposed by the capitalist countries. The first half of the 1970s brought dynamic development in the field of organisation and staff of the scientific and technological intelligence across COMECON, which can be seen both in the case of the Polish People’s Republic and the German Democratic Republic. Both countries tried to correlate the tasks of the scientific and technological intelligence (which was known as SWT – Sektor für Wissenschaft und Technik – in East Germany) with the national research and development goals set for the economy. As regards the general technology level, the GDR had advantage over all other COMECON countries, including the USSR, which also had impact on relations with Poland, which was much more underdeveloped. The author begins his tale by outlining the economic position of both countries and their joint projects in the areas of research and development and the industry. The author’s primary intention was to determine the chronology of clandestine contact between both scientific and technological intelligence services, show the thematic spectrum and the scale of information exchange, and to define the points of gravity of the cooperation. The analysis of archival documents created by Department I of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on one hand and by various divisions in the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit on the other makes it possible to determine that components of both countries’ intelligence active in the field of science and technology submitted analyses and informational materials to each other, particularly in the field of nuclear energy and the military complex of NATO countries, as early as the late 1950s. The cooperation deepened around the mid-1970s, where annual consultation between the managements of the WNT and the SWT combined with exchange of experience with regard to industrial espionage became a standard. With the passage of time, the interest of both services expanded into all key branches of the industry such as metallurgy and exploitation of natural deposits, polymer chemistry and biotechnology, and particularly microelectronics and information technology. In the 1980s, the cooperation reached its most advanced stage and encompassed mutual exchange of construction and technological documentation and designs, as well as samples of materials and chemical compounds obtained on the “black market” (i.e. through informers recruited in Western companies).