The non-aggression pact and secret additional protocol from 23 August 1939 is among the historical events of the twentieth century that had the furthest-reaching consequences in terms of politics, ideology and the culture of remembrance. No other bilateral treaty so deeply influenced the fate of more states, nations and minority groups in Europe, primar¬ily in East Central Europe, than the Hitler–Stalin Pact. The date 23 August 1939, when Europe was divided into one National Socialist and one Soviet half in the state politics of history and in the culture of remembrance of the public and civil society, is virtually absent in Western Europe and the US. In East Central Europe, particularly in those states which were directly affected by the Pact and which found themselves on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain after 1945, the liberation from Nazi Germany is often interpreted as a replacement of the brown dictatorship by the red. The text starts with an overview of trends and topics in the international historiography on the Hitler–Stalin Pact, continues with a reflection on the spatially differentiated naming of the pact, which leads to a discussion of the pact’s different role as a lieux de mémoire in the US and Western Europe, in East Central and Eastern Europe. The international law dimension of the pact is discussed in the context of recent events, like the annexation of the Crimea.

The article concerns two main issues of the history of former Polish United Worker’s Party in a period of 1948-1968. First is the structural positioning of the academic communist cell at the Warsaw University of Technology. The Author tries to figure out, how independent it was, from it’s higher authorities of Central and Warsaw Committees. The second issue taken under consideration, is how big was their impact on the human resource policy? The answer seems not to be that obvious. From the formal point of view, the Communist Party at the basic level (like those at an University) was granted very little power. Almost every decision had to be consulted with the higher authorities. On the other hand, the latter, could have had an limited chance to embrace such a wide field. We may then come to the conclusion, that sometimes University Committees actually were making independent decisions. They were also considered being able to speed the things up – from the accommodation and everyday living problems – to an academic degree promotion. Both – the organizational and actual status of the members of Polish United Worker’s Party, was firmly affected by main political background. In late fifties, as a result of de-Stalinization, the polish academic society gained a limited autonomy. This has resulted in the weakening of the Communist Party structures operating in this environment. When the autonomy was legally halted and then backed in 1968 r., there was a good opportunity to rebuild the status of the communist University Agenda.