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.

A strong nostalgia for “the good old days” is a cultural phenomenon underway throughout the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The filter of nostalgia “tames” communism, though it does not negate its absurdities and inconveniences. Only in exceptional cases does nostalgia mean a genuine desire to restore the past. Nonetheless, the very fact of a swelling nostalgia for communist times is symptomatic and indicates that despite strong public support for the narratives of the transformation in the post-communist countries, there are also narratives created in a bottom-up manner and managed by small and often private museum institutions. The musealization of post-communist nostalgia is a widespread process, but it differs in the various countries of the region. This article will analyze examples of nostalgic museum exhibitions in Poland and the former East Germany. Based on the study of these cases, the author attempts to describe the importance of such exhibitions for the public.

This paper presents the impact of salinisation on the aquatic mollusc fauna in flooded mine subsidences in the Karvina region (Czech Republic). The results of the previous research on salinity in flooded mine subsidences show that some of them contain a high content of dissolved inorganic substances (above 1000 mg·l-1). These substances can affect the vegetation and animals occurring in the water and the surrounding area. The phylum of Mollusca was selected as a model group for the fieldwork as it includes species with the proven bioindication potential.

The occurrence of aquatic mollusc species was studied at 10 sites. The sites were selected based on the content of dissolved substances (the salinity gradient from <500 to >1000 mg·l-1. A total of 12 aquatic mollusc species were found, including one species identified as a potential bioindicator of the negative effect of salinisation on aquatic biota.

The analysis showed statistically significant positive correlations between the content of dissolved inorganic substances and the presence of alien species Potamopyrgus antipodarum (J.E. Gray, 1843). The gradient of salinity significantly affects the species composition of the mollusc fauna in flooded mine subsidences and may affect the biodiversity of this group.

Words and images of the Republic: Italian political propaganda (1946–1948) – The article intends to highlight how the transition from monarchy to republic represents a significant boundary in Italian history not only from the institutional point of view but also from that of national political propaganda, in which words and images – the expression of a harsh ideological confrontation – contributed to the building of a national collective memory of which there are still evident and rooted traces in current political confrontation.

The paper is dedicated to the names of associations from the period of the Second Polish Republic, taken from a publication which is a guide to the rich and differentiated world of the social organizations of the 1930s.

The introduction is devoted to the state of Polish linguistic research into the names of organizations. The description of the collected material is based on the concept of social chrematonymy by Artur Gałkowski.

Next, the names are investigated from both a structural and a semantic perspective. The following elements are regarded as distinct qualities of the naming structures: descriptive character, multicomponent structure, development of right-sided attributives, insignificant share of names with a separate distinctive element, including some other types of proper names as components (toponyms, anthroponyms, names of historical events). Also, lexemes in the function of the main component of the analysed structures — nouns having the semantic value of ‘formalized group of people’ – have been presented.

When analysing the semantic aspect of names of organizations more closely, the author indicates the most frequently exposed bases of community feeling of members. Those could be: common experience, social and professional status, the purpose of activity, gender, generation, religious identity, nationality, ideology, place of activity or founding an organization. In the majority of names, various elements of community feeling are combined.

Finally, attention is paid to the tremendous informative value present in the names of associations, connected with their descriptive quality. The close link between socioideonyms and the reality they are connected with means that they are bearers of various historical-cultural contents.

Therefore, the names of associations, especially historical ones, might be an interesting object of culture-oriented linguistic studies.

In her book Anna Ziębińska-Witek deals with a question of displaying and interpreting the experience of communism in various historical exhibitions in Central and Eastern Europe. The book enables the readers to get acquainted with analysis of historical discourses concerning contemporary history conducted neither in form of sophisticated monographies, nor in form of superficial press commentaries, but basing on such an unique media as historical exhibitions. Ziębińska-Witek stresses here the fact that museums are more often than not instruments of the politics of memory than a method of disseminating objective historical knowledge. Therefore she analyses and deconstructs various types of exhibitions: those stressing heroism, those underlining martyrdom, and, finally, those with a gadget-focused sentimental approach. Although it is hard to speak about one single interpretation of communism in historical exhibitions in Central and Eastern Europe, Ziębińska-Witek points out that in all Central and Eastern European countries the dominant role is played by large, stateowned museums.

The unpublished novel Jacopo Foscari. Storia Veneta del Secolo XV (1838) by the Pisan writer, lawyer and politician Tommaso Paoli is presented for the first time. The novel is based on the story of the trial and conviction of the son of the sixty-fifth doge of Venice. It is an episode already dealt with by Byron in the tragedy The two Foscari but which Paoli proposes in a new guise starting from the choice of the narrative form.

The author analyses a history of research on culture in communist Poland and the USSR (later Russian Federation). She finds similarities and differences. During the time of communist Poland a tendency was to standardize the supply of culture and make the access to it more democratic. The basic task of the sociology of culture in communist Poland was to control the advancement process of culture dissemination and research into the various forms of participation. However, in the second half of the 70s attention was more and more focused on the directions of cultural sociology development and functions. Following the fall of communism this discipline was faced with a challenge of embracing all the important directions of changes while indicating a now socio-cultural model at the same time. In the USSR, on the other hand, the government was interested only in the cultural research which was to confirm a hypothesis on fast cultural development of masses. Sociology of culture did not exist as a science, though. Following years of deep crisis, when perestroika period began, sociologists of post soviet Russia faced a serious challenge: how to move from “the only one true” Marxist paradigm to the mastering and usage of various theories which functioned in sociology around the world. The Author indicated the contribution in this respect i.a. of Vladimir Yadov or academics circled around Yurij Levada. In general one can say that in Poland as well as in Russia, the sociology of culture following the fall of communist regime and following certain major political, economic, social and cultural changes, found itself in entirely new reality.

Ethnic return migration is a widespread strategy for migrants from economically disadvantaged coun-tries. This article is about those ethnic return migrants who might successfully migrate thanks to their ancestors; their decision is based upon economic, pragmatic or rationalistic incentives aside from their diasporic feeling of belonging. Although this phenomenon has already been studied, scholars still mostly refer only to the benefits proposed by immigration policy as a key to understanding it. The impact of policy in the country of emigration on ethnic return migration is understudied. This article fills this gap. I found that when the Soviet Union introduced an attractive policy for Ukrainians/Russians in terms of study or work opportunities and the inhabitants in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic were quick to proclaim themselves as Ukrainians or Russians, the dissolution of the Soviet Union quickly changed this motiva-tion. Ukrainians with Czech ancestors started to aim at obtaining official status as Czech members of the diaspora because of the benefits proposed by the Czech government (mainly permanent residency). However, it is difficult to prove the required link to one’s Czech ancestors due to Soviet-era documents in which the column with the Czech nationality of people’s ancestors is often missing. These observa-tions lead to the conclusion that an attractive immigration policy aimed at the diaspora should not be treated as the only comprehensive explanation for ethnic return migration. Ethnic policy in the country of emigration also shapes this kind of migration and – in this concrete case – could even discourage ethnic return migrants.

The ground source of drinking water for the village of Skalice nad Svitavou is located 35 km North of Brno (Czech Republic). An evaluation of developments in selected indicators of water quality in this groundwater source in the period 2013–2017 was the essence of this work. The data was provided by Vodárenská akciová společnost, a.s., i.e. the operator. At the same time, annual monitoring of water quality in the Úmoří stream, which flows through the catchment area and can affect the quality of groundwater, was carried out. Water samples were collected in 2017–2018 from 6 profiles on the Úmoří stream and its two tributaries. Raw water from the groundwater source does not meet the requirements for drinking water in some indicators and needs to be treated. Monitoring of surface water shows that the most problematic indicator is total phosphorus, the concentration of which exceeded limit values on all sampling profiles. The highest values were found in the tributaries, where total phosphorus concentrations exceeded 10 mg∙dm–3. There are 12 municipalities in the area of interest, only two of which have their own sewage treatment plant. It is clear from the results that wastewater in some municipalities is discharged directly into the recipient and is the cause of above-limit concentrations of both phosphorus and nitrogen. Intensively used agricultural land is another major source of pollution. Based on an analysis of sources of pollution, corrective measures have been proposed to improve the quality of surface and groundwater in the area.

The article examines the language biographies of two generations of a family of German origin in the Czech Republic from the end of World War II to the present day. The content analysis of the biographies is based on the application of the narrative interview method developed in qualitative sociology. The analysis of the data obtained by this method follows the stages in the language use of the two informants in coping with the challenge of the language policies of the state.

A short story, based on Sallust, retelling the war of Catiline from the perspective of Fulvia, Cicero’s informer in Catiline’s camp.

The Parliament of the Republic of Poland was one of five European parliaments which – in view of the full-scale aggression by Russia against Ukraine which commenced on 24 February 2022 – adopted resolutions declaring the Russian Federation as a state associated with terrorism. The Polish acts are consistent with resolutions adopted on the same subject by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the European Parliament of the European Union (EP).
Although not legally binding, the adoption of these resolutions have a large symbolic dimension and may have a negative impact on the perception of and possibilities of Russian participation in the international arena. From the Polish perspective, the national decisions linking Russia with terrorist activities will influence decisions taken within the sanctions regime, as well as with regard to the legal qualification of certain acts under Polish criminal law in the course of proceedings conducted by Polish prosecution authorities in relation to the war. Finally, as long as the war continues and the assessment of Russia as a terrorist state remains in place, it will not be possible to restore and maintain ordinary diplomatic, economic and other relations with that state.

The article presents the image of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Catholic press of the Second Polish Republic. Attention was paid to both his socio‑political and military achievements, as well as a general assessment of the character. The source basis is mainly the texts that appeared on this subject in periodicals dealing most often with socio‑political and historical‑political issues. They were compared with the findings of both contemporaneous and contemporary historians. The aspect of the then political propaganda in Poland, emphasising the importance of the Polish-‑French alliance, as well as the former importance of Napoleonic policy for the “Polish cause” was taken into account. The power of the solemn celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Napoleon's death, together with its patriotic connotations, as well as the issue of his religiosity, influencing the nature of the then state‑Church relations, are particularly exposed. The text is intended by the author to fit into the categories of the history of historiography and have a comparative character in relation to the historiography of the Napoleonic era in interwar Poland.

The incarceration of those determined to be security risks was a common feature of the wartime regimes of most European belligerents throughout the Great War. Yet, especially in several of the Habsburg successor states, internment and politicised incarceration continued as the war morphed into smaller wars, revolutions, and counterrevolutions. This paper traces the social history of political incarceration in Hungary between approximately 1914–1924, with special attention to the post‑armistice period, during which wartime emergency laws were extended or revised to deal with political upheaval and renewed regional warfare. Within this framework, the paper focuses on the experience of one woman, a university‑educated teacher, who became a leading leftist educator and was imprisoned for her role in the Hungarian Republic of Councils (also called the Hungarian Soviet Republic) in 1920. She left Hungary for the Soviet Union in the 1920s as part of a prisoner exchange, and she remained there until the end of World War Two. She later returned to Hungary, and in 1953, published a memoir about her experiences during World War One and its aftermath. Using a gendered analysis to move from the larger context to the individual experience helps reveal continuity and change from Hungary’s Great War to its “war after war,” as well as the systematic and improvised nature of carceral deprivation and violence against female political prisoners. It also shows how the gendered memories of the Long World War One inflected the post‑1945 socialist party’s ideological mobilisation of women, putting forward an example of socialist womanhood that simultaneously challenged and reinforced the categories of prisoners and activists.

Turkowski refers to Michał Przeperski’s much-read biography of Mieczysław F. Rakowski, which constitutes interesting literature not only for those interested in the political history of the Polish People’s Republic, but also for those researching social processes in post-war Poland. In particular, Turkowski ascertains that one can discover numerous valuable observations concerning the issue of social advancement in this biography, observations that question the durability of the heritage of the system of real socialism in this respect.

Lubiewo (2005) by Michał Witkowski presents a particularly high number of cultural elements related to the last decades of the Polish People’s Republic (1952–1989), which far from serving exclusively as a historical background, turn the latter into one of the novel’s main characters. The present paper aims at investigating and comparing the way these elements, whose translation is known to be problematic, have been transferred into the Russian ( Любиево 2007) and English ( Lovetown 2010) translations.

This article concludes a series of three articles. The first two, published in 2022, were divided into time periods; 1) until 1989, and 2) since the 1990s. The present one discusses the issue of the fate of police officers after September 1, 1939, and includes a summary and research postulates. The timelines used in the series are not accidental, of course, as they had a significant impact on the way historiography devoted to public security organs was conducted in the interwar period. The literature that deals with pre‑war police is relatively rich in terms of quantity. However, it is worth examining it more carefully as several works raise a number of questions and doubts. Next to very good ones there are some that should not have been published. If we take a closer look at the style of narration in particular publications, we will notice that the authors in the vast majority limit themselves to describing and reporting facts, avoiding factual analysis. Many of the publications deviate from scientific standards, focusing their attention exclusively on creat-ing the preferred image of the public security organisation in a given period of time. Unfortu-nately, this is noticeable not only before 1989, but also later, when the negative image of the pre‑war police was replaced by its excessive glorification or even mythologisation. Despite the fact that more and more issues are raised and some of them are further developed, we still cannot consider the state of research that I am interested in as being satisfactory. The following issues still need to be highlighted and thoroughly investigated: 1) police biography; 2) issues of formation, socialisation and mentality; 3) the state of morale of the police corps; 4) participation in the Polish‑Soviet war; 5) participation in ensuring the internal security of the state; 6) police‑society relations, including the creation of the image of the police in culture texts; 7) police participation in the protection of state dignitaries; 8) international police co-operation; 9) the history of the police in the individual provinces; 10) women’s police service; 11) the functioning of police associations and cultural and educational activities; 12) war pre-parations; 13) the fate of police officers after September 1, 1939.

This article offers a survey of the careers of 54 Polish female historians who received the habilitacja degree in 1945–1989 at seven Polish universities – four of those were founded soon after the Second World War (University of Łódź, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, University of Wrocław, Maria Skłodowska‑Curie University in Lublin), while three had been established earlier (University of Warsaw, Jagiellonian University in Kraków and the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań). Analysis of personal files and various biographical materials has led the author to a number of conclusions about female historians’ academic careers. The careers reflected the discipline’s development, both in terms of the expansion of its field of inquiry, as well its methodological diversity and the conditions in which it operated. Career paths followed by women were not much different from those followed by men. Neither advancement requirements, nor employment policy at the schools of higher learning were discriminatory towards any of the sexes. However, as far as the female career advancement is concerned, there were some differences between the old and new universities: it was easier for women to obtain managerial positions at the latter.

This article is part one of a discussion that attempts to examine the state of research on the history of the police in the Second Republic of Poland as presented in to‑date historiography. My interest includes literature concerning both the State Police and the Police of the Silesian Voivodeship, two organisations independent from each other. The 1989/1990 timeline is obviously not accidental, as it was of great significance for the way research on public security organs in the interwar period was conducted.
The recent 100‑year anniversary of the National Police created an excellent opportunity to assess the achievements pertaining to its history and the organisation modelled on it, i.e., the Police of the Silesian Voivodeship (PWŚl). Although their history has been the subject of several studies, it is worth taking a closer look at them trying to assess both the problems addressed and the quality of these studies. The author has made an attempt to carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the existing literature, which is to lead to the identification of significant accomplishments, as well as to highlighting unexplored possibilities.
The author has chosen scientific publications as a basis for his analyses. Publications of an occupational nature, that is, manuals, specialist materials, handbooks, course books, etc., remain outside the area of the author’s interest.
The resulting analysis leads to the conclusion that it was not until the late 1980s that the one‑sided image of the pre‑war police, constructed through the discourse of repression against the “progressive” communist and workers’ movements, began to be abandoned. However, still dominating was the factual history, unfortunately not preceded by theoretical reflections.

During the interwar period, period many examples of sports facilities were built in the Second Polish Republic. These groups of facilities had one function designed for practicing a specific sport discipline but also multifunctional facilities were also built. Sports centres played a role not only enabling amateur exercises and improving sports skills but they were also the seats of sports societies, unions, clubs or circles that associated sports enthusiasts and promoted the development of physical fitness through sport. The activity of such groups was necessary due to the political and economic situation of the country at that time. The period of the first half of the interwar period was a time of state reconstruction, uncertainty and challenges for society after the end of the First World War. The reconstruction of the country also concerned the sports infrastructure, in which apart from facilities with a form resulting directly from their function (stands, halls, ski jumps) formal buildings were also built. One of the examples of such facilities is the Sports House in Lviv, designed by Jerzy Nechay. The example of the Sports House in Lviv and its formal location a short distance from the city centre is an example of modern design that combines a form of use with a formal function.

The present article is part two of the discussion attempting to assess the state of research on the history of the police in the Second Republic of Poland in historiography. This time I focus on the publications since 1990. I am interested in the literature concerning both the State Police and the Police of the Silesian Voivodeship, two independent organisations. The subsequent part deals with works published since 1990, and the last part is focused on the fate of police officers after September 1, 1939. This section also contains more complete summaries and research postulates. Obviously, the 1989/1990 timeline is not accidental, as it had a significant impact on the way historiography dealing with public security organs in the interwar period was conducted. The turn of the 1980s and 1990s was extremely fruitful for Polish historiography, including research on the history of the pre‑war police. On the one hand, access to archival materials became free and easy, thus opening new perspectives for researchers. This unrestricted possibility of using documents from the family archives of police officers and their family members was of great importance for gaining information about the everyday service of police officers. On the other hand, in some publications we notice a prevailing tendency to over‑heroise and sometimes even mythologise the pre‑war police, and this unfortunately is still happening today. All this coincided with the fact that there were an increasing number of authors dealing with the history of the police in the Second Republic, and consequently, the scope of research I was interested in had to expand.

The article presents a reflection on the loss of historical and cultural heritage caused by the pursuit of energy efficiency reduction of buildings. The paper will present the post-war construction development in the Ostrava region, especially the completion of the railway network with the implementation of new railway stations. It is these stations, whose architecture refers to the success of the Czechoslovak Expo 58 pavilion in Brussels, that have faced increased interest in the last few years from conservators seeking to preserve these cultural assets for future generations. The author illustrates this with the example of the inappropriate reconstruction of the railway station in Havířov. The scientific method used is mainly the communication of the author’s own activist experience in saving the railway station from demolition and his own observations during the recent reconstruction of this object. The response to the activities of the Důl architektury association was very topical at the time and led to the production of a documentary by Czech Television titled Requiem for the Station (Hollander, 2015) from the series My Private War.

Western Ukraine arouses a high emotional charge of historical origin. There are a number of buildings and complexes in this area created since the 14th century, that are the witnesses of the Polish presence and our contribution to the culture of these lands. The monuments of sacred architecture and numerous military ones occupy a special place. In the short interwar period a number of structures and complexes that demonstrate a high level of design technique were created. Their current technical state is usually very bad. Our participation in restoring splendour to the witnesses of our, historical centuries-old presence, would be beneficial.