Unrealized PO–PiS coalition in a selected press publications

The article contains issues connected with unsuccessful attempt to form a government of the Civic Platform and Law and Justice after the parliamentary elections in 2005. The basis of the article content analysis includes selected texts related to coalition formation appearing in two daily press titles: “Gazeta Wyborcza” and “Rzeczpospolita” in the period from September 1, 2005 to October 31, 2005. Considerations focused on identifying the most important topics constituting differences between the two parties. The aim of the article was to analyse the press discourse and, as a consequence, answer the question of how the main reasons for not creating the PO–PiS coalition were presented in the pages of two newspapers.

Looking in the mirror of Czech culture, or contemporary Polish research into the socio-cultural history of Bohemia and Slovakia in the 19th and 20th centuries

The paper presents current Polish research on modern Czech and Slovak social and cultural history. Using a spectrum of examples, it advocates for developing comparative, microhistorical, source-based studies on modern social and cultural history.

Historians talks about difficult neighbourhood

Topic of the article, which consists of two parts, is the picture of Polish-Russian relations in the latest historiography. In the first part, the author discusses the works of Polish scholars concerning the war expeditions of the Republic of Poland to Moscow (the so-called “Dymitriady”) at the beginning of the 17th century, which left in Russian historical memory permanent negative traces, as well as the invasions of the Eastern neighbor on the Polish lands in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in times of partitions. The second part, a much more extensive, contains an analysis of the fundamental work by Adam Rotfeld and Anatolij Torkunow under the title Białe plamy – czarne plamy. Sprawy trudne w relacjach polsko-rosyjskich (1918–2008) [White patches – black spots. The difficult cases in Polish-Russian relations (1918–2008)], Warsaw 2010, p. 907. It is composed of 16 chapters, each of which contains two articles on the same subject, one by Polish researcher, the second is Russian. They cover the interwar period, World War II and the time after 1945, among others, the Katyn massacre, the Polish October of 1956 and martial law. The author particularly carefully treats issues causing controversy and comes to the conclusion that this valuable work is a huge contribution to the description of topics overlooked, ignored or deformed by propaganda. Draws attention to the objectivity of Russian authors to Polish affaires and a deep understanding of those matters. It can be showed mainly on the example of their relation to the events in Poland in the years 1980–1981. The work was published simultaneously in two languages-Russian and Polish.