“Soviet citizens” in Poznań region in 1945–1949

The article discusses the fate of individuals of interest of the Soviet authorities and deemed the USSR citizens. Some of them were forced labourers on their way back home from Germany and the occupied countries. A large part of them were inhabitants of Wielkopolska who used to have Russian or Soviet citizenship. The article presents treatment thereof in Wielkopolska in 1945-1949.

Tematem artykułu jest system więziennictwa w Polsce Ludowej, funkcjonujący w latach 1945–1958. Celem artykułu jest udokumentowanie i analiza funkcjonowania systemu więziennictwa w tym okresie na przykładzie Wojewódzkiego Więzienia Karno-Śledczego w Bydgoszczy. Realizując cel pracy autor sformułował hipotezę badawczą, zgodnie z którą rozbudowa i funkcjonowanie powojennego systemu więziennictwa przyczyniły się do zaostrzenia i rozbudowy systemu represji wobec skazanych. W celu weryfikacji hipotezy zastosowano metody badawcze oparte na analizie dokumentów archiwalnych i danych statystycznych.

In 1991, Bulgaria adopted the Law on Civil and Political Rehabilitation of Persons Repressed under Communism. The law came into force only in 1993 and continued until 1996. The article critically analyses the law and points out its undemocratic character in relation to the Pomaks, victims of the violant assimilation, the so called “revival” process. The Ordinance to the Law puts the victims in the position of seeking proof of innocence from the same repressive authorities that persecuted and killed them. The approved, but mostly rejected Decisions of the Municipal, District and Central Commissions, are analyzed and kept in the State Archive – Blagoevgrad (SAB) and Central State Archive – Sofia (CSA). The article traces the tendency of the Commissions to reject applications for rehabilitation of Pomaks, affected by the worst cases of murder and imprisonment during the name change.

Analyses of communist repression in post-communist Romania focused on anticommunism and its totemic figures. Laws, institutions and people promote this perspective, transforming the suffering of the formerly politically persecuted into a patrimony meant to be preserved and passed on. On the official level, the anticommunist paradigm gained momentum in December 2006 when the communist regime was condemned as ‘criminal and illegitimate’. However, a majority of the population have not embraced the official approach to communism as the fallen regime still acts as a ‘millieu de memoire’ (as defined by Pierre Nora). My article deals with the main institutions and laws which aimed at promoting and transmitting the memory of repression in post-communist Romania. Analyzing the memory politics as regards the communist repression might provide fresh insight into the ongoing process of building a cultural memory through selection, reconstruction and adjusting figures, deeds, and memorial items.

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.

The aim of this article is to discuss judicial repression on the example of trials of members of underground youth organisations (1944/45–1956). The repressive measures consisted of a partial negation of basic rights: the right to defence and to hearing by an impartial and independent tribunal. The application of the presumption of innocence and the interpretation of evidence according to the in dubio pro reo rule were also restricted. Penalties inadequate to the level of the so-called social harm of the act were applied. The materials used mainly concerned the activity of military regional courts in the years 1946–1955. The judges who adjudicated in those courts were not only a model of the ‘new type of lawyer’, but also participated in the ‘class struggle’, eliminating persons considered by those in power to be an opponents of the system. Statistics of sentences and the amount of punishments handed down in cases of members of youth conspiracy, including death sentences, are presented. It also discusses the so-called aggravating circumstances that increase the applied sanctions. Those circumstances related, e.g., to the political assessment of the defendants’ activities and their social background.

As part of the repression against the Catholic Church, the communist authorities of the Polish People’s Republic at one time called up graduates of major seminaries for military service. In the 25-year history of the military service of clergy, can be distinguished three periods of activities of security organs: years of chaotic activities (1959–1964) when clerics were scattered among military units, years of formulating guidelines (1964–1966) regarding the investigation of clerics and years of intense operational work (1966–1980) in specially designated units – in Szczecin-Podjuchy, Brzeg and Bartoszyce. In August 1976, clerics of Military Unit 4446 in Brzeg found, during cleaning works, the notebook of the 2nd company command, fragments of which had been copied by hand. The notes show the methods and directions of work of the offi cer staff directly involved in the training process. The observations they made served counterintelligence offi cers to build a psychological profi le of the clerics-soldiers and then arrange operational actions against them, the results of which were to bear fruit in the future.