The ordeal of Polish Army officers, policemen, prison and forest guards, intelligence and counter-intelligence agents as well as Polish administrative staff in the Easter Borderlands began on 17 September 1939. It was then that the Red Army invaded Poland, belatedly implementing the arrangements of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939. Soviet captivity awaited around…
Hugo Kołłątaj was a towering figure of the Polish Enlightenment: a statesman, political writer and philosopher, as well as a promoter of science and education. He was a spokesman for socio-economic and political changes and a co-creator of the Constitution of 3rd May 1791. He was born in Derkały Wielkie in Wołyń on 1 April…
Bronisław Geremek was a man of many passions: history and politics were the most important among them. His political achievements are much more noticeable because of their social impact and significance for the Polish state. Geremek embodied the successes of the foreign policy of post-1989 Poland: the country’s accession to NATO and the European Union….
Screams, gunshots, and the burning of thatched roofs. Yet this was not a full pitched battle. When faced with the weakness of the state, the 17th-century Polish nobility settled their differences by fighting. by Antoni Olbrychski Duels Duels in Poland are a complicated issue. Scholars of 17th-century society emphasize that violence in this period…
Although the Polish literary language began to develop much earlier, it is Mikołaj Rej who is considered ‘Poland’s Dante’ as the father of national literature and the creator of an original Polish style. Mikołaj Rej, the Renaissance writer, poet, and translator, was born in Żurawno in Red Ruthenia [eastern Galicia] on 4 February 1505. by…
In his actions and writings, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski combined the ethics of the Enlightenment with a romantic vision of the world. From St. Petersburg and Paris he pursued a European policy, and in his book Rozważania o dyplomacji (Reflections on Diplomacy, 1830) he presented and developed the idea of a united continent ‘A Europe of…
