This paper falls into the realm of critical discourse studies by exploring the relationship between particular discourse structures and their meaning as set against a particular socio-political context. To do that it takes the popular analytical tool of transitivity taken from Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar to examine particular configurations of process types as employed by three Polish daily newspapers: Trybuna Ludu [People’s Tribune] - the official voice of the communist authorities, Trybuna [Tribune] - Trybuna Ludu’s ideological successor, and Gazeta Wyborcza [Electoral Newspaper] - the opposition’s newspaper. The time period considered is that between 1944 and 1991, which encompasses a number of defining moments in Polish history, as well as the period of communism and the breakthrough period of political transformation. The analysis mainly looks at process types in headlines featured on the front pages of the three dailies, against a specific historical backdrop and considers their critical potential. As such, the analysis aimed at establishing how particular, dynamic historical/political circumstances were represented through the types of processes in headlines. The results show that the discourse patterns were not only motivated, but also related to social structures in the form of power relations or certain ideological effects. Thus, the analysis is not only revealing when it comes to the notions of agency and control within a specific local context, but also proves the constitutive power of discourse which can both reproduce or change the social world, thus being itself the ‘agent’ of change, but also, and oftentimes instrumental in preserving a status quo.

The article highlights the legal challenges faced by Hasidic non-profit organizations operating in Poland. These organizations are established by foreign Hasidic communities with the goal of recovering places of worship lost in the post-war years and facilitating pilgrimages to these sites. These places, as a result of World War II and the actions of the communist authorities, are now largely in the possession of the State Treasury, local government units or private entities. Hasidic non-profit organizations face a variety of legislative challenges when striving to achieve their goals – in particular, the challenges related to the selection of legal form, restrictions on ownership of cemeteries, and the lack of legal succession to the pre-war Jewish communities. The research methods used in the study include historical-legal and dogmatic methods.

The explosion II of the world war made impossible the kelter of the Office of the Attorney of the Republic of Poland. The end of the war permitted the Office of the Attorney of the Republic of Poland to resume the activity. Under the management of the new President of the Office of the Attorney of the Republic of Poland of Jerzy Polamin the office worked to 1951 the year. Communist authorities for new concerning ideas of the political system of the state decided to do away the Office of the Attorney of the Republic of Poland and to charge the protection of the law the property of State to legal advisers working in government-institutions. The aim of this study is to presents key assumptions had communist authorities heading to liquidation of the Office of the Attorney of the Republic of Poland due to the progressive Sovietization of the legal system in People`s Poland. The changes in the state system were so important that they ultimately in the liquidation of the Office of the Attorney of the Republic of Poland and forced legal services for the state`s property interests to be based on principles completely different from the previous ones. The article is based primarily on archival materials subject to analysis and criticism.

The article discusses the significance of elections to the process of legitimation of the communist rule in Poland after the Second World War. The main research question is whether the elections gave the totalitarian/authoritarian rule real legitimacy and if they did (or didn’t), then why. The author draws broader conclusions from the example of Poland, which is his focus. The departure point of his analysis is the discussion of the circumstances in which the communist rule was established in Poland in the years 1944–1947, when the first two post-war general votings took place: the referendum and the elections to the Legislative Sejm. Further discussed are the first elections to the Sejm of the People’s Republic of Poland in 1952, during which practices used in the Soviet Union were implemented to the greatest extent, unsurpassed in entire the history of the communist rule in Poland. Presenting the characteristics of the Sejm elections in the following years, the author concentrates on their social perception, with a view to its connection to the article’s central issue of legitimation. In the final section, the influence of the elections on the legitimation of communist authorities is juxtaposed with the classical theories of legitimation by Max Weber and David Beetham. In the conclusion the author points out that the legitimation imparted on the communist rule by the elections was just as illusory as the choice presented to the voters.

The first post-war years caused major changes in the cultural movement of Romanians in the Yugoslav Banat, which primarily consisted in the introduction of ideological content in all cultural activities at the country level. Even before the end of the war, the new communist authorities tried to neutralize the influence of the Romanian Orthodox Church and all pre-war factors, especially the ASTRA association from the Yugoslav Banat, which they considered a collaborator of the German occupation regime during the Second World War II. In order to introduce new ideological contents and direct the cultural development of Romanians in the direction proposed by the communist regime, the agitrpop apparatus took a series of measures to use the cultural movement of Romanians from Banat in the interests of the new authorities, with the main aim of including Romanians in the new order that was being formed. They tried to achieve this by establishing the Cultural Union of Romanians, in 1945, and from 1948 all cultural activities came under the control of the Union of Cultural-Instructive Societies of Voivodina – Section for Romanians.

Oral history is an important source of national and historical memories of a people, especially in relation to those periods of the life of an ethnic or national community that are existential for it, when it struggles for its survival and existence and when few written documents have survived. Therefore, in order to fully and completely record the testimonies of eyewitnesses of events of great importance in the history of the nation and the state, the state authorities, scientific institutions and the public must unite their efforts to fulfill this task in the best possible way. One of such important existential events in the history of the Ukrainian people was the Holodomor of 1932–1933 perpetrated by the criminal communist authorities of the USSR, a national Сatastrophe for Ukrainians that claimed millions of lives of our compatriots and was hushed up in the Soviet Union for decades. It is clear that this tragedy of the Ukrainian nation deserved the fullest possible recording of oral testimonies, also considering the fact that very few written documents about it have survived. The local authorities and the patriotic public of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi district of Kyiv region were aware of this, and with joint efforts there was organized a continuous recording of the testimonies of eyewitnesses of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in all populated areas of the district and a bookcompilation of these testimonies was published. The peculiarity of this book is that it was the result of mass collective cooperation of several hundred residents of Pereyaslavshchyna - representatives of the authorities, informants, scientists, recorders, donors. Another feature of the book was its 3-part structure, which consisted of a corpus of testimonies about the Holodomor in populated areas of the district, a broad analytical introductory article and copies of written documents that were found in the archives of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi and Kyiv. Later, especially during the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932– 1933, several more books similar to “The Holodomors...” appeared, created on a regional basis in the areas of Central-Eastern and Southern Ukraine that experienced this artificial calamity organized by the criminal authorities USSR with the aim of genocide of Ukrainians as a nation. The same policy is continued by the current fascist government of Russia, having started a war against Ukraine. It is clear that due to the fear of punishment, these inhumans will sweep away the traces of their bloody crimes, destroy any documents that testify to their atrocities, as their predecessors did with documents about the Holodomor. The same policy is continued by the current fascist government of russia, having started a war against Ukraine. It is clear that due to the fear of punishment, these inhumans will sweep away the traces of their bloody crimes, destroy any documents that testify to their atrocities, as their predecessors did with documents about the Holodomor. Therefore, the issue of complete and continuous fixation of the oral history about the criminal actions of the Russian occupants in Ukraine arises again with particular urgency. And here you can use the experience of preparing for the publication of the book “Holodovka...”: close cooperation between the authorities and active representatives of civil society, the regional principle of collecting materials and publishing memorial books, the 3-part structure of such books. This organization of the oral history preservation process proved its efficiency and effectiveness on the example of the successful publication of the book “Holodovka…”. Similar approaches can be applied when recording testimonies about the actions of individual territorial military formations (battalions, brigades), testimonies of Ukrainian prisoners of war, civilians deported to Russia, forcibly deported Ukrainian children, etc. The methodology of collecting eyewitness testimonies (regional principle, close cooperation of local authorities with patriotic public, mass involvement of public representatives, 3-part structure of the collection) and their publication can also be applied to the recording of testimonies about the Holodomor of 1946–1947 from its still living eyewitnesses. Keywords: Holodomor, oral history, testimony, Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi region, National Historical and Ethnographic Reserve “Pereyaslav”.

Abstract In the 1970s, the Romanian authorities put together a large collection of compensation claim files of Romanian citizens victims of Nazi persecution between 1939 and 1945. The Romanian Communists’ scope was for a hard-currency settlement with the Federal Republic of Germany. In doing so, the Romanians claimed that the Federal Republic of Germany would pay for persecutions for which the Romanian state had been responsible. The selective denial of the Holocaust was the Communist authorities’ approach to the topic after the end of the Second World War. Especially after 1948, they carefully avoided tackling the issue of country’s own involvement in the persecution of its citizens, externalizing the blame on Nazi Germany. Additionally, in the official narrative the focus was on anti-Fascist resistance and Communists’ martyrdom during the Holocaust and not on Jewish sufferings. By analyzing different claim files part of the larger Romanian collection to be found in the Arolsen Archives I argue that Romanians’ plan of getting Germany’s money–and indirectly recognition of Germany’s responsibility for the Romanian authorities’ wrongdoings during the Holocaust – would have solidified the externalization of blame at international level on the long run.

Piotr Biliński, Adam Vetulani. Historyk prawa polskiego i kanonicznego, Kraków 2023, ss. 414 Piotr Biliński’s Adam Vetulani. Historyk prawa polskiego i kanonicznego (Kraków 2023) is devoted to an outstanding scholar. Vetulani was a professor at the Jagiellonian University, secretary general of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and vice-president of the Main Board of the Polish Historical Society. During World War II, he served as a delegate of the National Culture Fund in Switzerland. He was active in the Polish People’s Party. Repressed by communist authorities, he withdrew from political life during the Stalinist period, remaining under surveillance by the security services. In the Polish People’s Republic, he focused on science. Among his university colleagues and students, he was admired for his courageous and dignified ideological stance during a period of intense ideological pressure. This biography is a reliable, engaging and factually rich study, filling the gap in the absence of a separate monographic study dedicated to Adam Vetulani.

The topic of the article is the release and return of deportees and political prisoners to Lithuania. As the Soviet regime was modifying itself, it abandoned mass repressions as of 1953 and authorised a large part of the deportees to return home. According to the available information, in 1953–1958 over 40,000 people returned to Lithuania from exile and imprisonment. The release of political prisoners within the context of USSR’s repression is clearer. The release of a political prisoner could happen in three scenarios: (i) after serving the full sentence, (ii) prematurely, i.e. after serving 2/3 of the sentence, or (iii) after serving a fixed period in exile following the sentence at the labour camp, which was usually 5 years. The specific period of deportation was not fixed, the Soviet perpetrators used the term ‘na viečno’ (for eternity, forever). As a result, the communist authorities and repressive structures had to take various decisions to release the deportees: they had to adopt many orders and resolutions, and the fate of each family had to be decided by the commissions for the review of deportees’ cases. Therefore, in light of these complex procedures, the article focuses more on the release of the deportees. This paper examines the cooperation between the Lithuanian Communist Party and the repressive structures in their attempts to ensure a gradual return of deportees and political prisoners, as the return of the repressed was raising great concern for the Soviet authorities. Such concerns mainly resulted from the fact that some of the repressed were entitled to restitution of confiscated property (often no longer available), while there was a potential threat that a sudden or massive return of these people would incite the anti–Soviet sentiment in Lithuania. Research into the activities of the commissions for the review of deportees’ cases was based on archival documents. Both statistical data and deliberations of the fate of individual families by the commissions are presented in this paper. The analysis of the sources demonstrates a significant change as of 1956 triggered by several driving factors: the growing number of repressed returnees, the news of the 1956 Hungarian anti-Soviet uprising reaching Lithuania, and anti-Soviet demonstrations in Kaunas and Vilnius during the 1956 All Souls’ Day. Sensing danger the Lithuanian communist authorities took some precautionary measures. In January 1957, a decree banned the return to Lithuania of prominent Lithuanian statesmen, leaders of the armed resistance and anti–Soviet underground. At the same time, the returned deportees and political prisoners were ‘under supervision’ by strengthening the repressive apparatus of the LSSR’s KGB, by preventing the returnees from registering, from getting a job, and by prohibiting them from returning to their hometowns. In this way, the communist authorities achieved their goal: some of the returnees, unable to settle, went to Latvia, the Kaliningrad region, or even back to Siberia, where they had a guaranteed employment. In this way, the Lithuanian communist government tried to create a ‘critical mass’ of the Lithuanian population which it could lead towards a ‘bright communist future’.

Po wyborze członka MKOl z Polski, prof. Jerzego Lotha, „władza ludowa” podejmowała nieudane próby usunięcia go i zastąpienia „swoimi” ludźmi. Zupełnie inny sposób działania przyjął Włodzimierz Reczek, kiedy w 1952 r. stanął na czele Głównego Komitetu Kultury Fizycznej i Polskiego Komitetu Olimpijskiego. Chociaż sprawa zmiany członka MKOl z Polski była ważna, stanowiła bowiem część planu działań Kremla wobec MKOl, Reczek pozornie zrezygnował z prób dokonania tej zmiany. Taktyka Reczka przyniosła pożądane przez komunistów skutki. W 1961 r. Reczek zastąpił profesora Lotha w MKOl.

In past centuries, the Roman Catholic Church collected movable and immovable property, easements and privileges. Like every entity, it needed specific goods to achieve its goals (the mission of the Church). History shows that both expropriation of owned property and restitution also affected the Church. Similarly, in the post-war period, as a result of changes in the State-Church relationship, an inevitable conflict began in Poland, which consequently turned into a "propaganda war" waged by the state authorities against the Church. Its scope covered many areas of life, both religious and financial The communist authorities tried hard to deprive the Church of many institutions and reduce its assets. The "goods of the dead hand" have become a tool for limiting the material base of the Church, and thus the possibility of financing activities that go beyond the framework of strictly cult activities. Strict control of the Church's property and its institutions, including administrative repressions and propaganda campaigns, were to lead to the Church's subordination to the authorities, weakening its authority in society, and even to its complete liquidation.

The article presents the fate of the Jewish population settled in Lower Silesia, Poland, during the anti-Semitic campaign of 1967–1968, focusing on two towns: Dzierżoniów and Bielawa. Through an analysis of archival sources, the text reconstructs the fate of individual members of this community, including its leaders, beginning in 1967 (during the Six-Day War) and continuing through the following months, till the events of March 1968. The paper takes a special interest in the attitudes of Jews towards Poland, as well as in the government anti-Semitic campaign and accusations of disloyalty to Poland. It also presents the experiences of hostility, as well as the consequences of stigmatization by anti-Semitism. The analysis exemplifies the impact of the anti-Semitic campaign on a small, provincial Jewish community, living far from Warsaw and the student protests in 1968 or the centre of communist authority.

During the Second World War, the leaders of the Aromanian population in the Balkans intensified their efforts to affirm their national identity and create an Aromanian state. After 1944, some of the Aromanian patriots took refuge in Romania and came to the attention of the new communist authorities. The study reconstructs, based on unpublished documents, the way in which the Romanian authorities pursued, arrested, investigated and sentenced these Aromanians whom the governments before 1944 supported.

This article explores the popularization of yoga by Tadeusz Pasek (1925–2011). His characterization of yoga as ‘relaxation and concentration exercises’—cwirki—allowed practices derived from yoga to gain popularity in communist Poland. Classes were officially taught through the centres of the Society for the Propagation of Physical Culture (TKKF), a state institution funded by the communist authorities. Details of these classes were published in 1973 by the State Medical Publishing House (PZWL) in Theory and Methodology of Relaxation and Concentration Exercises. Pasek created a system of instructor training and certification within the framework of the TKKF, coordinated on a national level. He innovated model ‘calming centres’, combining TKKF structures within state-run housing cooperatives, functioning as yoga studios, community centres, and venues for psychiatric rehabilitation after in-patient treatment. Pasek introduced relaxation and concentration exercises for the rehabilitation of patients with neurotic disorders. Consequently, yoga practices, smuggled under the official name of relaxation and concentration exercises, entered academic circles of scientists and doctors, and also popular culture. Although its popularity waned as more yoga schools established themselves in Poland after 1989, Pasek’s innovation of culturally embedding the practices established a foundation for the development of many yoga traditions in post-communist Poland.

The article depicts the history of the White Cross. It was made in 1981 on the occasion of the outdoor Mass, organised by the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union (Polish: NSZZ) “Solidarity”. Later the Cross was moved to the vicinity of the [Gorzów] Cathedral. In 1982 when the Union was suspended and then disbanded under martial law by the Communist authorities the place around the Cross became the meeting point for Solidarity activists. On August 31, 1982, the White Cross was the place where five to ten thousand people gathered to start the most numerous rally in the history of Gorzów. In March 1983 under pressure from the authorities the diocese decided to move the Cross again, that time to Żeromski Street, where a new church was being built. There the White Cross was again unveiled in 1986, and a year later a commemorative plaque was added. In the years that followed replicas and miniatures of the White Cross appeared in various places in Gorzów; thus, the White Cross has become one of the symbols of the town and an element of its identity.

This paper focuses on an early role in the theatrical career of the actor, director, and scenographer Liviu Ciulei (1923-2011), created on the stage of the theatre gifted to him by his father, the civil engineer Liviu Ciulley, in 1946. The role in question is Pyotr from the play The Last Ones by Russian playwright Maxim Gorky, which premiered at the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest on the 16th of March 1948. My point is that Liviu Ciulei was drawn to this play by a psychodramatic impulse, finding in it issues related to his father who, like the protagonist in Gorky’s play, had embroiled his family in a major scandal when his son was only thirteen years old. The season in which the play premiered was marked by the increasing interference of communist authorities in art, so the intense psychodramatic process through which Liviu Ciulei consciously or unconsciously worked through his early adolescent trauma intertwined with the collective drama represented by the imposition of the Soviet-enforced communist regime in Romania at the end of World War II. Keywords: Liviu Ciulei, The Last Ones, Gorky, psychodrama, Moreno, socialist realism, communism, theatre, Romania.

ABSTRACT The Site of National Remembrance in Łambinowice, Poland is a complex of former prisoner of war (PoW) and resettlement camps that operated near the village from the time of the Prussian-French War (1870–1871) through the First and Second World Wars, including the interwar period, until the liquidation of the labor camp established by the Polish communist authorities in 1945–1946. Since June 2022, The Central Museum of Prisoners of War has been carrying out a project, a key part of which is the integration of various archaeological research methods for mapping the material remains of the camps that have been preserved until the present day in the local, mostly forested, landscape. Among the most important research problems was the issue of unknown and unmarked PoW burial sites and mass graves. The applied research methodology allowed, among other things, the locating of 60 structures, which can currently be interpreted as the quarters of Italian PoWs interned in Stalag VIII B (344) Lamsdorf at the end of the Second World War. The excavations ended with the identification by name of the first two Italian soldiers.

The Communist regime in Romania sought to subordinate various societal sectors, including the judicial system and religious denominations, to its ideological goals. This study delves into the relationship between the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Communist authorities, highlighting the various legal and canonical strategies employed to exert control over religious entities. Specifically, the research focuses on the Romanian Orthodox Church’s alignment with Communist regulations, leading to legitimacy and canonicity in state interventions. Through an examination of legal sources and archival materials, the study emphasizes the changing dynamics of religious freedom in Romania during the Communist era. An in-depth prosopographical investigation is conducted into the case of Father Arsenie Boca, shedding light on the canonical framework of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the early Communist years and its implications for a modern understanding of this period.

In Romania, the list of “enemies” of the Communist totalitarian regimes included church representatives, and those who had connections with the Vatican (thus belonging to the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches) held a special importance. Decree 358 of 1 December 1948 declared the official end of Greek Catholic “cult” activities, and many officials, clergy and simple believers drew the attention of the Communist authorities and the Securitate. Among them was the Greek Catholic priest Ștefan Tătaru. In 1950, he accepted the position of clandestine Greek Catholic vicar general in Bucharest for Oltenia, Muntenia, Moldova and Dobrudja. For this, on 30 January 1951, he was arrested and sentenced to hard labour for life for the “the crime of high treason”/ “high treason to the nation in favour of the Vatican”. He served his sentence in some of the toughest prisons in the Communist prison system and was released on 3 August 1964. After his release, he remained under the surveillance of the Securitate until the fall of the Communist regime.

The aim of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of two different approaches to the migration problem. The first one refers to the government of the Polish People’s Republic, which agreed to accept several thousand Greek and Macedonian political refugees fleeing from Greece after the communist side lost the civil war. The policy of the Polish communist authorities brought success in the form of successful coexistence between Greeks and Macedonians with Poles. The second approach is presented by the current Polish government. This is a policy of not admitting any migrants brought to the Polish-Belarusian border by the Belarusian and Russian regimes that are hostile to Poland. The presented comparison is an original attempt to draw conclusions regarding the sources of these different approaches and their political and social consequences. The topic discussed in the article is important not only for Poland and the eastern countries of the European Union, but for the entire EU, because the destination of migrants is not countries such as Poland, Lithuania or Latvia, but wealthier Western countries.