On the morning of 10 April 2010, news spread around the world about the crash of the Polish government plane near the city of Smolensk in Russia. by Piotr Bejrowski Polish society still honors the memory of the victims of the unprecedented crime that the Soviets committed against Polish officers in the spring of 1940,…
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…
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…
The peace concluded between the Republic of Poland, of the one part, and Soviet Russia and Ukraine, of the other part, brought political order to the territories between the Baltic and Black Seas for 18 and a half years. Eventually, Hitler’s ally Moscow declared it ‘null and void’. by Wojciech Stanisławski Who knows, maybe…
The Polish Democratic Society (Towarzystwo Demokratyczne Polskie, TDP), which announced the Poitiers Manifesto, was one of the most important political organizations of the Polish émigré community. It was made up mostly of November insurgents who left the country to escape repressions after the uprising’s fall in 1831. The TDP was a radically democratic and republican…
In October 1956, when Władysław Gomułka became the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR), the society started to hope for the liberalisation of the communist system and more social freedom. Such hopes, expressed mainly by the intelligentsia, proved to be vain. In the autumn of 1957, the relations…
