Katyn crime, also known as the Katyn massacre, committed on the orders of the authority of the Soviet country, then treated as classified information, finally totally denied, was one of those historical facts that were kept secret for a very long time. From 1943 when it was revealed to 1990 the soviet Union denied their responsibility for the massacre. It changed on 13 April 1990 when the government agency TASS released the official statement confirming the soviet commission of the crime. Therefore I found it very sensible to analyze the problem of Katyn crime in various history course books in Poland and Russia, formerly The Soviet Union.

In the communist times in Poland the authors of history course books generally omitted the problem although surprisingly it appeared in so called Stalin times and in the eighties when Poland was governed by general Wojciech Jaruzelski.

It looked similar in the Soviet Union. The situation changed at the end of Michail Gorbaczow pierestojka and glasnost period when the students of the 11th grade were informed in their history course books about the death of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940.

The article describes the politics of memory of the Soviet Union in post-soviet Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (1991–2016). The analysis is based on the following documents: Presidents N. Nazarbaev and I. Karimov statements, their publications, the politics of commemoration and historical education in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan after 1991. Author tries to compare two national historical narrations over the Soviet regime and argues that Uzbeks and Kazakhs were used two different approach of criticism of soviet colonialism, related to their foreign policy towards Russia

Democratization of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the context of the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the context of the underground magazine “Obóz”

The democratization of the former Soviet Union countries was a long and arduous process of regaining the sovereignty lost after World War II. The political, social, economic, cultural and institutional transformations taking place at that time, both in the territory of the former Soviet republics and those formally independent of the USSR, but in fact completely dominated by it, constituted a conglomerate of various factors, conditioning in most cases a bloodless revolution. The systemic transformation, however, did not go everywhere in the direction expected by society and the new political class. In many countries, the quality of overall structural transformations left much to be desired. Not everywhere was it possible to fill the institutional void left by the liquidated organs of government and the security apparatus. The lively assessment of the new, democratic political system, formulated in statu nascendi, was shared by the opinion-forming circles that had so far operated in the underground and had a strong influence on the social mood of individual countries. One of the independent magazines devoted to the problems of neighboring countries was the underground periodical “Obóz”.

The participation of the Catholic Church in the systemic changes in Poland is unquestionable. The significant role of church hierarchs, middle- and lower-level pastors in accelerating the erosion of the communist dictatorship in Poland over the years, and especially in the last decade of the Polish People’s Republic, is unquestionable. Analogous processes of political, social, economic and cultural changes taking place in neighboring countries where Catholicism was the dominant religion were also stimulated to a large extent by representatives of the clergy. However, the issue of the importance of the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union for the systemic changes at the end of the 1980s remains slightly more complicated. Therefore, the article compares two powerful Churches, Catholic and Orthodox, from the point of view of analogy and diff erences in the role, influence and importance of these institutions for the collapse of both authoritarian systems.

This paper aims to shed light on the propaganda tool Russia has chosen to promote its imperial desire – the reconstruction of the Soviet Union. The research takes the Putin era, from the year 2000 to the present, as a timeframe. The data in this research was primarily a library-based study using primary research resources. The study uses a systemic method by approaching the post- Cold War era as a system impacted by Russia’s policies in the decision-making sphere. The primary research question: Is propaganda a tool for rebuilding the Soviet Union? The hypothesis: Russian propaganda serves as a strategic tool for fostering sentiments of unity and potential efforts to revive the appearance of the Soviet Union. A detailed description of the following questions helps provide tremendous insight into implementing the main question: What is Russia’s propaganda strategy? How does Russia’s disinformation and propaganda strategy operate in post-Soviet countries?