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History of the Soviet secret police in Volyn is a perfect example to illustrate the main problems of Soviet power in controlling the newly incorporated and also hostile to the USSR territory. On the one hand, we are dealing with an extremely efficient reproduction of power structures, but on the other hand we are dealing with a shortage and an exceptionally poor quality of personnel forming the new...
Knowledge of communism, so carefully presented in the best and the most famous work of Milovan Ðilas entitled The New Class. An Analysis of the Communist System, New York, 1957, undoubtedly resulted from his previous political practice and theoretical reflections. In the years 1941-1949, Ðilas was both a politician and one of the main ideologists and propagandists of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia...
The issue of the presented article is a continuation of the author’s reflections concerning Central Europe in recent history. The main attention in this article was focused on a small, in terms of area and population, the historical-geographical region, which is Prekmurje. Till World War I it belonged to two western Hungarian administrative units of Vas and Zala, and together with the adjoining Porabje...
Lajos Kossuth Letters written for The New York Times in the years 1853-1856 are short essays commenting on current political, social, ethnic and military events associated with the ongoing Crimean War. Originally entitled Democratic Letters on European Matters and American Policy and then Letters from L. Kossuth, written in exile in England during the Crimean War in Europe, create a very specific...
Józef Piłsudski Institute was founded in New York, July 4, 1943. The main aim was to maintain constant and independent scientific research facility dealing not only with collecting and organizing historical documents, but also with popularizing unadulterated knowledge about Poland and its recent history. From its earliest days the Institute was based on financial support granted by Polish activists...
This article is devoted to changes in Bulgarian-Soviet relations in the last decade of the twentieth century. Throughout the whole postwar period the relations between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union were exceptionally close. The connections were rather one-way - the USSR gave Bulgaria economic aid and thanks to that the country became more industrialized and almost until the end of the system could...
This article discusses the activities of Oskar Halecki, a professor of the University of Warsaw, in the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. He sought to win support for the further development of intellectual life in the economically ruined countries of Central and Eastern Europe between 1922‑1925. This paper focuses on the concepts and motives that drove...
The Polish population of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia was gripped by fear of ethnic cleansing at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists in the years 1943‑1944. This fear varied in form and intensity depending on the perceived aims which ranged from their physical extermination to simple eviction. This article attempts to analyse the fundamental determinants of Polish defensive actions in response to...
The purpose of this article is to clarify the role of Lewis Namier, a Foreign Office expert on Polish affairs, and his contribution to the drawing of the “Curzon Line” – the Polish‑Ukrainian border in Eastern Galicia after World War I. Namier was of Polish‑Jewish descent, and he has gone down in Polish historiography as a man of rabidly anti‑Polish inclination; during the war and later at the Versailles...
The 1860s were marked by an exceptional affection and friendship in the bilateral relations between the United States, a young American republic, and the long‑established tsarist Russia. This phenomenon, which had never occurred with such intensity before or since, inspired Russian and American researchers and politicians to organize The Tsar and the President: Alexander II and Abraham Lincoln, Liberator...
This is the second part of an article devoted to people who made a lot of effort to build an independent research institute with an archival base dedicated to promoting knowledge about Poland and its history. The Józef Piłsudski Institute was financially supported by the Polish community abroad, membership fees, and larger donations by some of its members and sympathisers.
This article represents an attempt to analyse the political desiderata underlying the activities of East Central European geographers during the First World War and in its immediate aftermath. These scholars, drawing on the achievements of German and French geographical studies, and who were frequently graduates from western European universities, employed sophisticated research tools and arguments...
The insurrectionary struggles of 1768‑1772,1794,1830‑1831 and 1863‑1864, aimed at liberating Poland from Russian domination, were accompanied by propaganda campaigns which sought to implant specific images of Russia and the Russians in the public mind. This analysis seeks to recreate those images which are extant in select appeals, manifestos, declarations and miscellaneous pronouncements of those...
The article seeks to characterise the activity of GUUAM, an organisation of post‑Soviet states set up in 1997 comprising Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan (officially withdrew in 2005), Azerbaijan and Moldova, to cooperate on issues of shared importance. After presenting a historical overview of the organisation’s beginnings, the author analyses their joint security issues, their dependence on Russian...
Ever since the emergence in 1931 of the idea of signing a non-aggression pact with the USSR, the Romanians, bound since 1921 by an alliance with Poland, remained sceptical about their own benefits from such an agreement. The politicians in Bucharest feared that the negotiations would evoke the question of Bessarabia, a region which underwent a controversial unification process with Romania that remained...
The article presents the evolution of the Soviet operational warfare since its initial phase in the 1920s, followed by a characterisation of the impact of the Great Purge on the evolution of the Soviet military doctrine and the Red Army itself. Finally, Soviet strategic planning is analysed in the context of the offensive war with the Third Reich from the point of view of operational art and its...
The Soviet state that emerged after 1917 became the heir of the Russian Empire and its geopolitical situation, which the Bolsheviks intended to preserve and consolidate in order for different communities to adopt one common Soviet system of values, norms and opinions. The resettlement of the Jewish community into rural areas was one of the aspects of the ethnic integration policies. The operation,...
The article presents Tadeusz Schaetzel's memorandum from 26 December 1922, containing his analysis of the first round of negotiations at the Lausanne Conference. It was prepared on request of the General Staff, following Schaetzel's return from Lausanne, where he assumed the duties of observer at the peace conference. The document proves strong hopes for a future involvement of Turkey in the anti-Soviet...
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