Present study examines nonfinancial support granted for older people in Poland and other European countries in order to understand the relationships between family structures and that support and to diagnose the challenges that the Polish population may face in this respect in the nearest future. The analysis is based on the data from the Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The study attempts also to answer the question about the need for informal support in future generations of older Poles. The study is focused on the population of individuals aged at least 50+, because they will decide about the situation of older people in the near future. The author considers, in addition to personal care, help in running a household and help with paper work. The most frequently received type of support is the help in running a household, received primarily from neighbors and family members, which reduces the need for institutional care. Personal care is provided to the minority of the examined population, even in the highest age group, and, apart from household members, it concerns usually biological children.

Late, unlike heavy, modernity until now has been devoid of any radical project for the future. It rather makes people use a rose‑tinted past to cope with future‑oriented anxieties. Solidarity’s desire for heavy modernity demonstrates that this sickness has been around for a long time. In what ways were the people of Solidarity nostalgic, and how did modernity’s global crisis reinvigorate the “desirable heaviness of being”? “The desirable heaviness of being” depicts the phenomenon of nostalgia for postwar heavy modernity within the early Solidarity movement. The theory of post‑socialist nostalgia highlights the importance of nostalgia for the future‑oriented past of heavy modernity in appraising the system during the Solidarity period. The interplay between Solidarity, late state socialism, and the crisis of heavy modernity exemplifies Eastern Europe’s interactions with globalising economies before and after 1989. The recollections of the August Strike as well as the Solidarity trade union’s programme provide examples for the longing. The links between state socialism and the global crisis of modernity shed light on current reasons for nostalgia, which may be of interest to “rescue history”.

The Author analyses some methodological solutions adopted in her studies on historical presentation of women in the "Solidarity" underground movement.

The article presents the question of solidarity in relation to the energy policy of the European Union. This topic seems particularly important in the context of the crisis of the European integration process, which includes, in particular, economic problems, the migration crisis and the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit). The issue of solidarity was analyzed from the legal and formal, institutional, and functional and relational points of view. The aim of the article is to show to what extent the theoretical assumptions, resulting from the provisions of European law on the solidarity, correspond with the actions of the Member States in the energy sector. The practice of the integration process indicates that the particular national economic interests in the energy sector are more important for the Member States than working towards European solidarity. Meanwhile, without a sense of responsibility for the pan-European interest, it is not possible to effectively implement the EU’s energy policy. The European Commission – as the guardian of the treaties – confronts the Member States with ambitious challenges to be undertaken “in the spirit of solidarity”. In the verbal sphere, this is supported by by capitals of the individual countries, but in practice, the actions taken divide the Member States into opposing camps instead of building a sense of the European energy community. This applies in particular to such issues as: the management of the energy union, investments in the gas sector (e.g. Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II), and the position towards third countries – suppliers of energy raw materials to the EU (in particular towards the Russian Federation). Different views on the above problems make it extremely difficult for Member States to take action “in the spirit of energy solidarity”. Thus, the energy problem becomes another reason for the weakening of European unity.

In my article I try to examine the genesis of the Round Table negotiations in Poland and East Germany in 1989-1990 on the basis of the existing literature and archival sources. Despite the shared name “Round Table”, there were many significant differences concerning the genesis of the negotiations between the ruling communist parties and the opposition in the two countries. These differences can be observed on many levels, starting with the internal situation in both countries in the wake of 1989 – through their varied economic conditions, disproportionate political power of the opposition and dissident movements – up to different, though so close in time, political-historical context of both negotiations. Describing these historical asymmetries helps better understand spectacular changes of 1989 and their long lasting consequences.

The concept of conscience is analyzed here in two different ways: the systematic and the historical-literary. As to the first, systematic perspective, I distinguish (in part 1) three levels of conscience and on every level I identify two opposite categories (conscience that is ‛individual’ versus ‛collective’; ‛emotional’ versus ‛intellectual’; ‛motivating ex ante’ versus ‛evaluating ex post’). In the second, historical-literary perspective, I analyze two literary cases of fictional characters usually thought of as being guided or affected by conscience. The first case is the ancient Greek tragedy and here I offer (in part 2) a comment on the Sophoclean Antigone and the Euripidean Orestes presenting them both as dramas that contain an exemplary formulation of the phenomenon of conscience. Although Antigone and Orestes express their main principles of action in apparently different words, I suggest (in part 3) the two poetical visions of conscience are equally based upon a highly emotional behavior called pathos by the Greek. Thereby I provide a reason, why ancient philosophers created a new concept of conscience intended as an alternative to the poetical vision of human behavior. The new philosophical concept of conscience was based upon an axiological behavior called ethos. I also coin (in part 4) a concept of the ‛community of conscience’ where I distinguish four ‛aspects of solidarity’ in conscience, namely, somebody’s own self, a group of significant persons, a group of the same moral principles, and a sameness of life. In the end I turn (in part 5) to a historical-literary case in Joseph Conrad’s last novel The Rover (1923), which provoked a lively discussion among Polish authors and seems useful as an illustration of several levels of ‛solidarity of conscience’.

We are currently witnessing the demise of Arab-Jewish identity and culture - a tradition that started more than 1,500 years ago is vanishing before our very own eyes. Until the twentieth century, the great majority of the Jews under the rule of Islam used Arabic as their language but after the establishment of the State of Israel, Arabic has been gradually disappearing as a language mastered by Jews. The Arabized Jews have been deliberately excluded from Arabism to the point that we can now assume an unspoken agreement between Zionism and Arab nationalism to carry out a total cleansing of Arab-Jewish identity and culture. The present article focuses on the changes in the concept of identity and belonging among the Arabized Jews, especially the Iraqi-Baghdadi intellectuals among them. As I previously argued, due to some processes that those Jews had experienced during the twentieth century and because of some global developments, they gradually developed a negative sensitivity toward the notion of stable identity, whatever identity. Instead of that, they started to assert, explicitly and implicitly, their particular singularities and to search for alternative forms of identification, mostly various kinds of inessential solidarity and belonging. The article refers as well to the scholarship on Arab-Jewish identity and culture that has frequently been moving into non-academic spaces, neglecting the necessary unbiased scholarly discourse.

The article depicts the personage of Karol Modzelewski (1937–2019) the outstanding activist for freedom of Poland, long-term political prisoner, prominent medievalist historian and full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

As far as the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) and the communist years are concerned, support from professional organizations, society members, authorities and Polish emigration in Sweden to the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union (NSZZ) Solidarity (“Solidarność”) and democratic opposition took a number of forms. Before the first independent trade union was established, activists of the Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party had supported the creation of such structures in the Polish People’s Republic (PRL). Furthermore, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen and Sverige – LO), whose members were mainly social democrats, already during the 1980 strikes got in touch with the structures organizing public speeches of Polish workers. Consequently, the Swedish party supported striking workers on an international arena. This help was provided among others by Olof Palme, chairman of the Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party, as well as in the form of financial assistance for organizational purposes and the purchase of printing machines. When martial law was imposed in the Polish People’s Republic and Solidarity together with other opposition groups were declared illegal, Social Democratic and other Swedish trade unions supported the Polish underground democratic opposition in a number of ways. Money and gifts were collected and sent to PRL, and numerous propaganda and information activities were undertaken in Scandinavia, Europe and all over the world. Apart from the assistance provided by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), support from the Swedish officials and Swedish society was of profound importance to the opposition groups established in the Polish People’s Republic. After martial law had been imposed in PRL, minister Ole Ullsten together with Danish and Norwegian ministers of foreign affairs unanimously criticized restricting civil liberties in the Polish People’s Republic as well as detaining (arresting) of Solidarity leaders and activists. Strong support for the then illegal structures of Solidarity and Polish people was offered by Swedish non-governmental and charity organizations such as the Swedish Red Cross, organization “Save the Children”, Lutheran Help, Free Evangelic Church and Individual Relief. Attention should also be paid to help provided by Swedish people and Swedish educational institutions. Special emphasis should also be placed on support that the democratic opposition groups in the Polish People’s Republic received from their compatriots in Sweden. Two organizations, namely Polish Emigration Council (RUP), consisting of 16 pro-independence organizations, and Polish Emigration Federation (FUP), coordinated aid programmes launched in Sweden to give a hand to Solidarity and the democratic opposition. Last but not least, one mustn’t neglect support from Denmark-based Scandinavian Committee for Independent Poland headed by professor Eugeniusz S. Kruszewski. By the time it was transformed into Polish-Scandinavian Institute in December 1984, the aforementioned Committee had been leading a propaganda campaign, among other things in Sweden, to provide reliable information about political goings-on, the persecuted oppositionists, steps taken by the communist regime and actions taken internationally to help Polish people.