This article contains information and analysis of the Security Service's operational activities against the Catholic Church in Olkusz, based on an archival document produced by the security apparatus. The territory in question belonged administratively to the Krakow Province, while in the church administration it belonged to the Diocese of Kielce. The document includes a number of important issues: a description of the Catholic Church in Olkusz, including deaneries, and the description and staffing of individual religious congregations (for which the security police also kept up-to-date documentation); Catholic activities, being part of the structures of the church organization of individual deaneries and their parishes; a current list of Catholic agents and assets; agent cases conducted against individual church objects and the clergy; repression of the clergy; issues of catechization; cases of religious construction; cooperation between the security division and civic militia; difficulties in the work of the Olkusz security service in church matters; and “hotspots” in Olkusz. Thanks to the agents it acquired, the security apparatus had current information on the functioning of the church in Olkusz, especially the clergy. Therefore, it could effectively watch over the church’s activities, neutralize many of its intentions, and punish defiant clergy in various ways. This edited archival document illustrates a wide range of issues dealt with by the Security Service of the 1960s. Its form, and this systematic range of issues, was imposed from above and was compulsory throughout the entire territory of the People's Republic of Poland.

Activity recognized as terrorist in the Piła Voivodship in the 1980s in the light of the object case code-named «Violence» (selected issues)

The object-related case, codenamed “Violence”, was conducted by the 3rd Department of the District Offi ce of Internal Aff airs in Piła during the years of 1984–1990. Its purpose was to identify, neutralize and eliminate acts bearing the hallmarks of terror, in particular; killings, beatings or deprivation of liberty for political reasons, explosions and arson of political objects and state institutions, collecting weapons and explosives in order to organize terrorist attacks, kidnapping people and planes, illegal political and nationalist organizations that use terror as a form of combat, as well as the operational control of channels to terrorist centres in capitalist countries.

Father Jerzy Popiełuszko in denouncing reports by secret collaborators of the Security Service

Despite the large number of publications about the figure and activities of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, there is a shortage of reliable academic studies analysing the documentation concerning the priest produced by the communist apparatus of repression. The aim of the present text is to present the reports of secret collaborators focused on Father Popieluszko and an extensive historical analysis of their activities. For the purposes of this text, the work files and personal files of three secret collaborators with pseudonyms were analysed: „Jankowski”, „Kustosz”, „Tarcza/Miecz”. The personalities of these persons and the file references were previously known and mentioned, mainly by journalists, but no solid scholarly work, apart from the files of tw „Jankowski”, has been done so far. The records of tw „Janusz” and the steelworkers „Bogdan”, „Uczciwy” and „Fredek”, which have not been mentioned so far, were also discussed. The basic sources for investigating this issue are the materials produced by the Ministry of the Internal Affairs, above all personal files, work folders and records from card files.

The Toruń Security Service tried with extraordinary zeal to dismantle underground structures, especially secret printing houses and distribution structures. For this purpose, informers were used and the information obtained from them was carefully collected. All found copies of leaflets, underground leaflets, posters, etc. were also carefully collected. By January 11, 1982, the Security Service in Toruń had collected a collection of 172 leaflets, into which (as well as subsequent leaflets), the prosecutor’s office initiated an official investigation. They continued until the fall of 1983. The article discusses the methods of operation of the Security Service in Toruń in order to crack down on the Solidarity underground. Searches, interrogations (sometimes brutal), informers and technical means (e.g. wiretapping) were used.

Systemic struggles of the Security Service against the Catholic Church in Podhale in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Selected examples from the Nowy Targ area

The article illustrates the struggle of the communist authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland against the Catholic Church in the local dimension on the basis of factography contained in the files of the apparatus security apparatus files from the 1950s and 1960s. The Marxist-Leninist ideology was to oust the Catholic religion from the consciousness of Poles and to completely laicise society, replacing faith with an atheistic utopia. The text gives examples of how the communist apparatus of power restricted and prevented freedom of religious practice on the example of the Podhale region. The multifaceted nature of the issues of religiosity in the analysed areas made it necessary to present the most representative forms and methods used by the communist authorities, both central and local, whose link directly involved in surveillance and repression was the security apparatus, with the help of local agencies of the communist state administration, including the Religious Affairs, Internal Affairs, Finance, Architecture and Construction, Penal and Administrative Colleges of the Presidiums of Municipal and District National Councils. The ‘people’s’ authorities enacted laws that prohibited the construction of religious buildings, the free public profession of faith, pilgrimages, processions, and the teaching of religion in schools. The communist minority imposed on the vast majority measures aimed at eliminating religious symbols from public space, thus institutions (including educational institutions), forbidding pastoral ministry outside the walls of temples, reviewing statements, sermons, state teachings, taking a wide range of preventive measures (e.g. probing and frightening talks, called ‘preventive’, ‘warning’), as well as punitive ones (bringing criminal proceedings and trials, imposing fines and financial penalties, dismissal, etc.). The text gives the issues and matters dealt with on an ongoing basis by the security apparatus operating in the Podhale region, which described the highlanders as strongly religiously fanaticised and thus not susceptible to the influence of an ideology that was to completely secularise them.