‘Let it be “national” but not “provincial”,’ – this is what Karol Szymanowski wrote in 1920 (‘Uwagi w sprawie współczesnej opinii muzycznej w Polsce’, trans. ‘Remarks on contemporary musical opinion in Poland’), referring to the desired shape of new Polish music and weaving it into the space of widely understood universal humanism. During the inter-war…
“I am mostly scared of the moment when I feel that I have planted all the trees or I have written all the pieces, but I am far from this – I still have plans,” he stated on his 80th birthday. Krzysztof Penderecki, one of the world’s greatest contemporary composers, died on 29 March at…
There is no doubt that the newcomers from Scandinavia did not found Poland. For the state ruled by the Piast dynasty was established before they reached the region of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland), Mazowsze (Mazovia) or Kujawy (Kuyavia), i.e. its cradle. Although the links between the Piasts and the Vikings are sometimes overestimated, this does not…
On 27 March 1981, “Solidarity” organized a protest in response to the beating of union members by the militia. Their strike, with at least 2 and a half million participants, is also remembered as their largest protest. by Tomasz Kozłowski In February 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski became Poland’s prime minister. For over a decade,…
Without the Belarusian People’s Republic and several military formations established at the end of the First World War and several months after its end, there would be neither the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic nor the present-day Republic of Belarus on the territory between the Bug and Berezina rivers. by Wojciech Stanisławski For many reasons,…
A wave of protests swept over Poland in June 1976 after the announcement of an increase in groceries’ prices. The authorities eventually resigned from price changes but introduced repression against the protesting workers. This met with a quick response from the intelligentsia, who organised financial and legal support for the repressed and soon started forming…
