The article concerns selected aspects of the housing policy of “people’s” Poland, due to the adaptation of new legal regulations regarding the housing market in the post-Stalinist period. They are shown against the background of normative acts and the actual situation in the first, post-war decade of communist rule in Poland. The actual exclusive electrical installation was also presented: Elbląg and Wąbrzeźno. The basis of the article was the literature on the subject, legal acts regarding housing management in the “Journal of Laws” and “Monitor Polski”, as well as archival documents, providing access to selected cities during the communist period for socio-economic purposes.

The present text is a contribution to the reinterpretation of the poetic biography of Czeslaw Milosz, with a particular emphasis on the threads that can contribute to an insightful reinterpretation of the famous work “Whom You Wronged”. The author touches on the future Nobel Prize winner’s ties with the Żagary poetic group, recalls the catastrophic motifs in his work and, above all, focuses on the aforementioned work in the context of an analysis of wrong – doing and wrong-doer, power and faithful servility, putting into discussion the hitherto exposed attempts at interpretation.

In 1951, the communist governments of Poland and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics concluded an agreement to exchange some territories. Poland transferred lands located in the Hrubieszów and Tomaszów counties in the Lublin Voivodeship in the upper Bug basin (the so-called Grzęda Sokalska). The USSR gave up the area in the Bieszczady Mountains east of the upper reaches of the San River, including the town of Ustrzyki Dolne. The mentioned areas were part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Areas of 480 km2 for each side were exchanged. Poland and the USRS had to evict their citizens from the ceded areas and take away their movable property. Soviet Ukraine resettled 32,066 people. Poland over 14 thousand its citizens. Both sides had to provide care and state assistance to the displaced population. However, the grief for the lost „small homelands” remained among Poles and Ukrainians. Only a few managed to return to their hometowns in the Bieszczady Mountains after 1957, including: to Łobozewo, Teleśnica Oszwarowa and Polana. The return involved a change of citizenship. The exchange of some territories is sometimes referred to as “Action H-T”, from the first letters of the names of the Hrubieszów and Tomaszów counties from which Polish citizens were expelled. In turn, the term “Action-51” appears in Ukrainian literature. The border change made in 1951 was the largest in the post-war history of Poland.

The Toruń Security Service tried with extraordinary zeal to dismantle underground structures, especially secret printing houses and distribution structures. For this purpose, informers were used and the information obtained from them was carefully collected. All found copies of leaflets, underground leaflets, posters, etc. were also carefully collected. By January 11, 1982, the Security Service in Toruń had collected a collection of 172 leaflets, into which (as well as subsequent leaflets), the prosecutor’s office initiated an official investigation. They continued until the fall of 1983. The article discusses the methods of operation of the Security Service in Toruń in order to crack down on the Solidarity underground. Searches, interrogations (sometimes brutal), informers and technical means (e.g. wiretapping) were used.

Following the end of second World War, 48 percent area of the Second Polish Republic was incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. A significant number of Polish citizens remained in the annexed areas and along with them their pastors. As for members of the Society of St. Francis de Sales (Salesians), ten remained in the areas incorporated into the USSR, who helped organize the religious life of the faithful under very difficult circumstances. They maintained contact with the religious congregation in Poland, mostly it was limited to correspondence and short visits on the occasion of family visits to Poland. The source presents notes from the stay in the USSR of Fr. Stanisław Rokita SDB, who in 1973 was the first Salesian superior to visit his congregation remaining in the East.

The satirical nativity play is a specifically Polish entertainment genre that flourished on television in the 1960s. The programmes, broadcast after midnight at the turn of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, presented the most important personalities of communist public life as puppets, reciting and singing rhyming couplets. Although it was concessionary satire, the cribs aroused great emotion among the audience. Wojciech Jaruzelski experienced a special situation: he did not appear in the cribs most often, but he was the only one who was presented as an aspiring politician, holding and leaving the most important positions in the state. On his example we can observe the original strategies of the creators of nativity scenes and their attempts to shape the image of Polish politicians, in the Polish People’s Republic and the democratic Poland after year 1989.

Since the death of Stanisław Kostka, his cult began to develop. In this article, several selected manifestations of the cult of the Jesuit were referred to: the way to the altars, presence in the liturgical calendar, relics, hagiographic texts, patronage over sacral objects, other patronages, e.g. patron of youth, or performances in art.

The activities of the democratic opposition in the former Soviet republics and in the countries dominated by the USSR under the post-war Yalta agreements had a chance to emerge only in the late 1980s, i.e. when the framework of the geopolitical balance of power in Europe was determined by the democratization processes in the Eastern Bloc. Only then, on the wave of perestroika and glasnostia, the voice of circles contesting the existing order of things had a chance to resonate and be heard by the international community. However, not only the structures of the political opposition, but also dissident movements, equally interested in systemic change, marked their presence in the public space of states ruled by communist parties. Thus, the pages of the magazine “Obóz” discuss the groups and milieus constituting a political opposition in the classical sense, as well as groups which, due to their previous connections, of various nature, with the collapsing communist regime, should be considered dissident movements in the strict sense of these words.

The article presents the functioning of the heritage of the Russian colonization of northern California in the cultural memory of the inhabitants of these and surrounding areas of the state that belonged to Russia in the 19th century. The research concerns a specific location, the settlement known as Fort Ross, located in northern California. Today it has the status of the State Historic Park. The non-governmental organization Fort Ross Conservancy operates there, and this activity was analyzed using a case study research method. The characteristic elements of the cultural memory of the inhabitants of this territory were researched, such as: important historical figures, the most important events associated with for the formation of collective identity, institutions and organizations acting as memory guardians, as well as material and immaterial cultural heritage. These elements were analyzed in terms of the differentiation of their functioning in local cultural memory depending on a specific group (ethnic, cultural, religious) or specific subjects of cultural memory.

The paper presents a short biography of Marcin Rutkiewicz from Gniezno (1933–2016), a local politician and clerk, which in his youth and in the mature age fought against the communist regime in Poland. However, for several years between those two periods he was involved in the Polish communist party (PZPR), even as its offi cial ideological lecturer. The article fi rst focuses on Rutkiewicz’ clandestine activity in the Underground Scout Army at Gniezno when he was 18 years old, on the subsequent arrest, trial and repressions: a hard prison and then equal hard and exhausting military service. The second focus is Rutkiewicz’ braek up from the communist party in 1988, then involvement in the Citizen Committee (Komitet Obywatelski) „Solidarność” at Gniezno in 1989, and his late political and combatant activity in the free Poland. His interesting but not „linear” political life is a proper example of alternate fortunes of the generation grown under the Soviet regime in Poland after the World War II.