The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the heart of the continent was one of the largest and most diverse European countries of the early modern age (16th-18th centuries), including the territories belonging nowadays to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine, as well as scraps of Russia and Estonia. The Commonwealth was created as a result of the…
King John III Sobieski is remembered as the commander of the victorious armies on the battlefield at Vienna. Yet this brave and talented commander was also a man of deep feelings, as evidenced by his love letters to his wife, Marie-Casimire de la Grange d’Arquien (Marysieńka). Marie-Casimire came from the old d’Arquien family and…
At the beginning of the winter of 1980, Warsaw Pact countries mobilized several divisions to take part in Soyuz-80 maneuvers scheduled on 8 December 1980. The White House was afraid that under the pretext of exercising, the Soviet army would enter Poland and break up Solidarity. Was Moscow really planning to invade Poland? by Tomasz…
There are many professors, there are also quite a number of editors-in-chief, and a handful of university deans. Holding all those public posts, and then some, Marcin Król was just a historian of ideas to many. Like no other though, he used to open, make available and redefine entire areas of intellectual legacy, unknown, banned…
When the Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, these two men called upon Polish Jews to fight. Then they attacked Stalin and paid the ultimate price. Up to this day, the deaths of Wiktor Alter and Henryk Erlich, leaders and activists of the General Jewish Labour Bund, a Polish Jewish socialist party, are among…
Politics and culture go their own ways. Fragmented Italy, plunged into feuds, gave the world the Renaissance. Spain suffered defeat after defeat in the 17th century, but was in its golden age in the field of literature and art. At the end of the reign of Jan III Sobieski, the Polish-Lithuanian state fell into utter…
