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,…
On the morning of 15 March 1939, German troops entered the western parts of Czecho-Slovakia, beginning the country’ s occupation. The next day, Hitler arrived in Prague and announced the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia “under the protection” of the Third Reich. As a result of German pressure, Slovakia declared state sovereignty…
Recalling the Katyn Massacre was an important aspect of the activities of the democratic opposition in the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), one of the reasons being the subject’s high importance for society back then. by Grzegorz Majchrzak This is best exemplified by the fact that a booklet by Ryszard Zieliński entitled ‘Katyń’ was the…
The question posed in the title is provocative, but it also refers to a special episode in history. Two states, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Electorate of Saxony, whose history, traditions, political systems, and social relations had been different until 1697, and which did not even share a common border, became united in a personal…
During his June 1979 meeting with youth in Gniezno, Pope John Paul II intoned the song ‘Red belt’. Three hundred thousand participants of the Holy Mass sang the refrain in chorus: ‘For a Hutsul, there is no life like in the highlands / when fate throws him into the pits – he soon perishes from…
