In 1944, Poland found itself in the Soviet sphere of influence. Meanwhile, its new borders significantly different than before World War II. In practice, the 1925 concordat was enforced in a selective way. Part of Poland’s eastern territories had been annexed by the USSR, while the organization of Church life there was disrupted. The biggest problem, however, was the Church’s administration of the so-called Recovered Territories. Surprised by this turn of events, Cardinal August Hlond created a temporary circumscription, thus creating a rudimentary Polish ecclesiastical organization in those territories. The communist authorities undertook steps in order to gain control over the Church’s matters there. Meanwhile, although the Vatican did not disavow Hlond’s accomplishments, it considered them to be non-canonical and not justified by the authority that had been granted to him from Rome. Not wanting a schism in the formerly German territories, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the Primate of Poland, made the administrators that had
been appointed by the government their vicar generals.

The attitude of minority Christian churches that were members of the Polish Ecumenical Council towards the Roman Catholic Church in communist Poland resulted from both earlier, often difficult, relations as well as the new socio-political situation that resulted from
such factors as: changes in the demographics of denominations after 1945, the significant impact of the ruling regime on the scope and shape of contacts between denominations, the ecumenical openness of the Roman Catholic Church resulting from the Second Vatican Council, and the insurmountable quarrels resulting from such issues as the education of children in mixed marriages (with respect to denomination) or the fate of ecclesiastical buildings that had once belonged to the Lutheran and Greek Catholic Churches. Despite membership in the structure of the Polish Ecumenical Council, individual member churches presented diverse attitudes towards the Roman Catholic Church. Furthermore, their attitudes evolved over the course of various decades. Despite the generally
positive direction of those changes and the efforts of part of the Roman Catholic clergy, not all grievances and lesser or greater conflicts of interest could be successfully overcome until the end of the existence of the Polish People’s Republic. Nonetheless, it is impossible not to notice that in 1989 the attitude of minority churches towards the Roman Catholic Church was much more positive
than in the immediate postwar era. It is worth mentioning that this topic has been much better researched at the level of the leadership of individual churches than at that of specific parishes.

In this article, the author’s attention focuses on ordinary believers representing various denominations in the Soviet Union who became actors in the Cold War. Using materials from the archives of the highest governing Soviet bodies, she presents how believers
used a legal channel of communication, converting it into a form of protest and filling it with new contents. The letters became not only a means of communication with the bodies of Soviet authority, but in some cases, they had international resonance, thus gaining the interest of such Western organizations as Keston College, Gaube in der 2. Welt, or Amnesty International. Evangelical Christians, particularly Baptists, were pioneers in fomenting large-scale petition campaigns; in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they practiced sending letters containing detailed descriptions of repressive measures aimed at non-registered religious communities signed by numerous believers. Both Orthodox Christians, who asked that their churches be opened once more, and Catholics made use of this means of communication. The author of the article in particular focuses on the open letter of the leaders of the Catholic Church in Lithuania in 1977 in which they suggested that the new Soviet constitution take into consideration religious liberties.

During the Soviet era, Kazakhstan, which is home to more than one hundred ethnic groups, was a kind of laboratory in which gigantic social experiments were performed. After the brutal collectivization and forced sedentism of the nomads in 1931–1939, the following groups were deported to the republic: Poles and Germans from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936, Koreans from the Far East in 1937, and the “punished nations” from the Caucasus in 1943–1944. The last wave of migrations took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s and was related to Khrushchev’s project of “reclamation of the Tselina.” This was accompanied by the gradual liberalization of the position of the “special deportees.” In the ethno-religious hierarchy of Kazakhstan, Catholics occupied the lowest rung. Lacking the possibility to participate in the religious revival that accompanied the patriotic mobilization of the “Great Patriotic War,” Catholics in Kazakhstan were sentenced to spend many long years in the underground. They asked for legalization fairly late, in the 1970s.

After World War II, highly-placed Soviet officials in collaboration with the leadership of communist Poland made decisions regarding Poland’s Orthodox Church. As a result of discussions between the Polish and Soviet authorities, it was decided in 1945–1946 that the Moscow Patriarchate would give the Polish Orthodox Church autocephalous status. Next, both sides of the agreement determined the conditions and circumstances in which this would take place. On the eve of the Pan-Orthodox Council, which was supposed to take place in Moscow in July 1948, the Soviet leadership determined that a separate voice for Polish autocephaly would bolster the position of the Russian Orthodox Church during the voting. Less than three weeks before the planned council, through one act the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church received the Polish Orthodox Church’s renunciation of autocephaly, which it had been granted in 1924 by the Patriarch of Constantinople and gave the Orthodox Church in Poland autocephalous status, which had previously been treated as canonical. In subsequent years, the Patriarchate of Moscow, pressured by Soviet officials, fought for the recognition of the new status of the Polish Orthodox Church by the Eastern patriarchs. 

Gustáv Husák was one of the main figures in the campaign against the Church in Slovakia from after the Communist Party took power until his political downfall in 1950. Despite coming from a Catholic background, he became a convinced communist and obediently followed the instructions of the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. When he was entrusted with the task of dealing with the ecclesiastical issue in Slovakia, and thus with all the anti-Church interventions of the communist regime, he carried out orders in a disciplined manner. He was, however, mainly involved in measures against the Catholic Church. Gustáv Husák considered the Catholic Church to be compromised because of its activities in 1939–1945; he later used this factor in attacks against the Catholic Church and its highest representatives. He quite rightly saw the Catholic Church a danger to establishing the communist regime. His goal was to firmly bind all churches, and especially the Catholic Church, to the communist regime. After taking office as commissioner–chairman of the Slovak Office for Ecclesiastical Affairs, he pursued a tough anti-Church policy in Slovakia and participated in such measures of the communist regime against churches as the forcible establishment of a new leadership of the Banská Bystrica diocese, Action K and Action P. In particular, the last two actions were characterized by extreme brutality. Despite the fact that he did not always agree with the decisions of the Communist Party leadership in the field of anti-Church policy, he always complied with them. He officially justified his actions with the alleged anti-state activity of Church representatives and religious orders. In public pronouncements, he did not question religious freedom, which, however, was to be limited to the performance of religious ceremonies. In his opinion, the Church should not be allowed to interfere in political life and express itself critically about the communist regime; on the contrary, the Church should be fully subordinated. Ironically, Gustáv Husák lost all his important political functions during the implementation of these anti-Church measures. His personal downfall, which culminated in his arrest and imprisonment, followed shortly afterwards. In prison, Husák also met with priests and religious who had been imprisoned precisely because of his anti-Church measures. However, not even this fact changed Husák’s communist beliefs. Nevertheless, at a time when he held the highest state and party positions in Czechoslovakia, he played a significant role in the establishment of an independent Slovak ecclesiastical province. 

This article presents two cases of Jehovah’s Witnesses illegally crossing the border between the Polish People’s Republic and the USSR in the mid-1950s. The necessity to evangelise that this group required them to reach out to their co-religionists living in the USSR who had for some time been deprived of religious literature and other materials. Jehovah’s Witnesses needed to provide them with various such publications as well as look for other persons interested in their teachings. However, both attempts were unsuccessful. Polish Jehovah’s Witnesses were quickly seized by Soviet border guards, arrested, and sentenced to many years of imprisonment in labour camps as persons who were engaged in blatantly anti-Soviet activity.

The activities of the secretly ordained Bishop Pavol Hnilica in the Slovak exile community in the free world for the benefit of persecuted Church behind the Iron Curtain, his significant position in relation to the Holy See under the pontificates of Paul VI and John Paul II, and, finally, his numerous contacts with Slovakia across the Iron Curtain were subject to scrutiny by Czechoslovak State Security (ŠtB) during the entire time when the Communist totalitarian regime was in power. ŠtB interest in the activities of Bishop Hnilica was most intensive in the 1960s, especially in relation to the Second Vatican Council and his extraordinary relationship with Pope Paul VI. The State Security monitored his activities in detail from 1964 to 1974; there is a special monitoring file under the cover name Metod (in English: Methodius) which can be found in the Study Institute of the Archive of Security Services in Prague. This  study aims to analyze, on the basis of available ŠtB files, the interest of the communist regime in Bishop Hnilica, who had been continuously living in exile from 1951 to 1989 and could not travel to Czechoslovakia; to map information the ŠtB gathered about him; and to use this example to document a radically hostile attitude of the regime towards Bishop Hnilica, Slovak Catholic exiles more generally, and, finally, towards the Roman Catholic Church.

The period of Khrushchev’s rule was exceptionally difficult for the Catholic Church in the USSR. In 1958, an exceptionally aggressive atheistic offensive encompassing all spheres of life was launched in the USSR in 1958. A characteristic trait of this campaign was a focus on administrative methods of fighting against the Church combined with an intensified indoctrination of society. A series of normative acts that legalized persecutions was adopted. The regime’s primary efforts became concentrated on regaining complete control over institutional and collective religious life, the limitation of pastoral activity, and the intensification of atheistic propaganda. The main aims of the USSR’s religious policy in 1958–1964 included above all a radical reduction in the number of priests, the liquidation of places of worship, the closure of religious sites, and the dissolution of religious communities. During the communists’ anti-religious offensive, some of the intended results were achieved. However, the campaign began to break down before Khrushchev’s departure from the political arena. Despite the reduction in the number of priests and the slimming down of parish structures, society’s level of religiosity did not change significantly. Ultimately, the campaign ended along with Khrushchev’s stepping down.

The association of Catholics “Caritas” as a state charity organisation was established on the basis of the illegally seized property of the church charity Caritas.Despite pompous slogans, the communist authorities reduced its charitable activity to running group homes for people with intellectual disabilities. Beginning in the late 1950s, it served as a smoke screen for the activity of the clergy who collaborated with the people’s government contrary to the will of the episcopate. Its primary purpose was the recognition of the
assumptions of socialism and loyalty towards the state on the part of most priests. This was an institution that made it possible for priests to express a positive attitude towards the authorities. The communists treated “Caritas” in an instrumental way, depending on the political needs of the time, especially with respect to the Catholic hierarchy. It was intended to provide the regime with the opportunity to support various aspects of the Polish People’s Republic’s internal and foreign policy. However, it usually served the
communists only in order to achieve a certain political effect. Apart from such campaigns, this association was marked by stagnation and passivity. 

The Orthodox Church’s relations with the communist authorities in postwar Poland were unquestionably complicated. This was caused by conflicts as well as the fact that not all the clergy accepted the circumstances and means of introducing autocephaly in the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939). Another element was the acquiescent attitude towards the German authorities during the war. After 1944, this was complemented by the new vision of the state’s relationship to the churches and religious bodies in Poland implemented by the communist authorities. Despite gestures intended to ensure them of its loyalty, the Orthodox Church, like other denominations, especially the Roman Catholic Church, was the subject of surveillance by the security apparatus. Along with the passage of time, the state authorities became the most important authority in the settling of all disputes within the Orthodox Church. The loyal implementation of the authorities’ policies and speaking out in favor of the Orthodox in their conflict with the Roman Catholic Church strengthened the position of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church; at the same time, it had a large network of informants that made the Orthodox hierarchy dependent on the state, which was evident in official declarations of support for economic, social, and political campaigns initiated by the communist authorities. Such activity limited the opportunities for engaging in dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.

This article discusses the process of disintegration of the PAX Association after the events of October 1956. In response to criticism of the activities of the association’s leader, Bolesław Piasecki, the opposition formed the “Secession.” Its core was made up of several distinct milieus working together, including: part of the editorial team of Kierunki (e.g. Anna Morawska, Stefan Kurowski, and Jacek Wejroch); Słowo Powszechne (Ligia Iłłakowicz, Ewa Fiala, Lech Bartoszyński, and Zygmunt Krasucki); the so-called “parliamentary fraction” (Konstanty Łubieński and Jan Frankowski), representatives of the association’s branches (including Lublin and Szczecin); independent journalists (e.g. Jan Meysztowicz, Jerzy Mikke, and Aleksander Bocheński); and a group of “young poets” associated with the Wrocławski Tygodnik Katolików (e.g. Jerzy Krzysztoń, Władysław Terlecki, Jacek Łukasiewicz, and Stanisław Grochowiak). After an unsuccessful attempt to take over power in PAX in September 1956, they established the Provisional Coordinating Committee of Catholic Activists at the National Committee of the National Front. In March 1957, the so-called “sesese” formed the Christian Social Association. It also obtained concessions from the communist authorities and received permission to publish its own weekly (Za i Przeciw) and to lease the Ars Christian company. The ideological profile of the group was ambiguous, as it consisted of two currents: the Catholics and the revisionists (leftists). As a result of internal personnel and ideological disputes, a split took place in the fall of 1957. Its leading representatives (including Micewski, Horodyński, Kętrzyński, and Łubieński) left the “Secession.” Frankowski’s supporters formed the Christian Social Association. In terms of the program, he focused mainly on the promotion of ecumenism, interfaith dialogue, and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Despite its declared Catholic worldview, the Christian Social Association did not enjoy special recognition in the Church, either by the Episcopate or other groups of lay Catholics. They were treated as a servile group of lay Catholics who were totally dependent on the authorities and lacked ideological clarity.

This article presents the relations between the state and the Orthodox Church using the example of the relations between Rev. Aleksander Dubec, the Dean of Rzeszów and Przemyśl who in 1983 became the Bishop of the Diocese of Przemyśl-Nowy Sącz, and the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic. The author has tried to establish how the state administrative apparatus influenced him in managing the Orthodox Church in South-Eastern Poland, if he sought the government’s support with regards to promotion, how his collaboration with Poland’s Ministry of Public Security proceeded, and how it impacted Dubec’s activity as a dean and bishop. This article makes use of the analytical method. Rev. A. Dubec tried to make use of his loyalty towards the state authorities in order to expand the structures of the Orthodox Church in the Rzeszów region. This approach, however, did not significantly impact the development of the Orthodox Church’s structures in that region, as attested by the secular authorities’ refusal to erect new Orthodox parishes in that region. Such administrative policies, however, were conducive to the development of the Greek-Catholic Church. Rev. Dubec’s collaboration with the Ministry of Public Security was voluntary in nature. During their meetings, he provided officials with information about the Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches as well as Ukrainian activists.

The author’s aim in this article is the presentation of the publishing activity of Rev. Franciszek Blachnicki during 1965–1981. The materials initially published by Rev. Blachnicki were devoted to liturgical renewal and were related to the National Ministry of Altar Servers. When Rev. Blachnicki expanded the activity of the Oasis Life-Light Movement in the late 1960s, however, the literature he published was mostly intended for the formation of children, youths, and the movement’s adult members. He also published numerous liturgical aides, such as hymnals, prayerbooks, and lectionaries. In the period under discussion, Rev. Blachnicki also prepared and published several hundred books and initiated the publication of several magazines. Rev. Blachnicki’s publishing activity expanded without the consent of authorities. He created a network of hidden mimeographs and his own independent system of distribution. This culminated in the creation of the Life-Light Publishing House, which was supposed to perform all the tasks expected of a publisher, in 1978. From the very beginning of his publishing activity, Rev. Blachnicki was under the surveillance of the Security Services. Despite the Security Services’ operational activities and far-reaching revisions, his publishing activity did not cease.

During the August 1980 strikes and the Solidarity revolution, the authorities of the German Democratic Republic closely observed the Polish Catholic Church with concern. Erich Honecker’s government was afraid that the leadership of a weakened Polish United Workers’ Party would be inclined towards far-reaching compromises with the clergy. However, it lacked effective tools in order to do anything to stop this. In the documents of the Communist Party, diplomatic corps, and secret services of the German Democratic Republic of 1980-1981, the Polish Episcopate appears to be an experienced player that makes use of every weakness of the ruling communists, supports Solidarity, and at the same time makes instrumental use of that social movement in order to best secure its interests.

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the reasons for the spread and the character of radical left-wing ideology in the territory of Western Volhynia in 1920–1939 in order to discover the forms and methods of communist propaganda in the Volhynia province, and the authorities’ attitudes towards the activity of the left-wing Ukrainian parties and organizations. It demonstrates that the communist movement in Volhynia remained one of the dominant political forces during the entire interwar period, which was predetermined by both internal and external factors. The Communist Party of Western Ukraine became the leading left-wing party in Volhynia. The most widespread forms of that party’s activity in the territory of the province were the following: the distribution of agitation leaflets; hanging anti-government posters; participating in the organization and the organization of strikes by agricultural and industrial workers, foresters, and school employees; and campaigns against equality. Thus, it did not reject terrorist-diversionary methods of struggle. The Polish administration considered the left-wing movement to be one of the greatest dangers to the territorial integrity and safety of the state; therefore, it employed all its resources against the left-wing movement. In the article, I showcase the reasons which resulted in the reduction of the influence of left-wing parties on the social and political life of people in the area, which resulted in the weakening of the pro-Soviet atmosphere in the community of local Ukrainians in the late 1930s.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the forms, mechanisms and procedures for exercising comprehensive control of the Communist Party over the activities of local governments, in particular the Lutsk City Council in 1939–1990. The source of the article consists of the dokuments from the State Archives of the Volhynia region, press publicatiions, and the memories of the events’ participants. It has been proved that the nature of activity, function and order of formation of local self-government institutions in the territory of Volhynia determined the totalitarian political regime of the Soviet Union with a one-party political system. Based on a study of the problem of political and legal consolidation of the institute of local councils, it has been found out that in the Soviet period it was actually implemented an undemocratic state model of local self-government when local councils at constitutional level were recognized by state authorities. Much attention has been paid to the specifics of the formation of local selfgovernment bodies. It has been shown that these were not elections in the ordinary sense, but in fact voting in advance of the candidates for election by the party bodies and at the same time a manifestation of citizens’ loyalty to the dominant political regime. The process of control of the CPSU over self-government institutions in cities was monitored through a system of measures and procedures that included: selection of candidates for deputies on political, social-class, gender grounds, etc., nomenclature principle of selection of city council leadership, their executive committees and other structural units, practice of holding joint meetings of party committees and executive committees, system of co-optation of representative government institutions, and seats of local representative offices.

The Archive of the Stutthof Museum contains the hitherto unpublished concentration camp correspondence of Witold Nełkowski, one of thousands of victims of the campaign of extermination of the Polish elites and all members of Polish society who were a danger to the policies of the Third Reich that began in Pomerania and the Danzig region after the outbreak of the war on September 1, 1939. The letters that Witold Nełkowski sent to his wife were mailed from Pröbbernau, a subcamp of Stutthof. The preserved correspondence demonstrates that his wife Łucja Nełkowska looked for her husband in the fall of 1940 in other concentration camps as well (KL Dachau and KLMauthausen-Gusen). These edited letters are the basis for this article. This text is an attempt at a synthetic presentation of the camp epistolography of the Nełkowskis, which is a kind of document of concentration camp life that presents an individual perspective, which is fundamental in the humanities. Sources such as the letters of concentration camp inmates are within the category of personal documents and thus enrich studies of the Second World War.

The movement of “socially progressive” Catholics, initially known under the name “Today and Tomorrow” and subsequently the PAX Association, began to be shaped in 1945 pursuant to an agreement between Bolesław Piasecki and General Ivan Serov as well as discussions between a group of Catholic intellectuals led by Aleksander Bocheński and Jerzy Borejsza. The presented text of the discussion regarding these events by its participants, which was held thirty years later, allows us to understand their motivations and dilemmas. Coming from diverse milieus and disappointed by the failure of their political concepts, they sought their place in the new reality, believing that undertaking armed resistance against the communists would be disastrous. This is all the more interesting as many of them had previously beloved to the Falanga National Radical Camp and the National Confederation, sharply anti-communist organizations, while others held a conservative worldview. The attitude that they adopted in 1945 led them to a far-reaching acceptance of the communist system in Poland. The transcription of this debate, which was never published in the PAX Association’s press, is also an excellent historical source on the political history of the first years of People’s Poland, demonstrating the authorities’ attempts at creating conflicts between Catholic milieus.

The source edited in this place presents an interview that Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński gave to Le Figaro Magazine and which had previously been absent from Polish academic literature. Its contents supplement the correspondence exchanged between Przemysław Przyborowski, its initiator, and the primate, as well as presents the circumstances of the publication of Wyszyński’s statement to the French magazine. We present the interview in its entirety in the form that Cardinal Wyszyński presented to P. Przyborowski on November 7, 1980, and not in the abridged version that would be published later. The interview that the primate gave is very important, as it contains reflections on the role of the Church in Poland up to 1980s; an evaluation of the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as pope and the significance of his pontificate to Poland, the world, and the universal Church; and its final section deals with the events of August 1980.