The aim of this article is to illustrate the specificity of the functioning of power mechanisms in non-democratic systems, with particular emphasis on the relations between entities of a cratic structure, i.e., the person exercising the highest power in the hierarchy of a socio-political system vs the ruling elite, the ruling elite vs the ruling class, and the ruling class vs social masses. Moreover, based on current research in the area of governance in authoritarian and totalitarian systems, conceptualisation was performed on anti-transformational leadership, which is a theoretical category reflecting in the fullest possible way the essence of relations of domination and subordination between the ruling and the ruled in regimes with a permanent deficit of legitimation, whose constitutive feature consists in the desire to ensure absolute obedience of particular subjects of the socio-political hierarchy. Furthermore, an exemplification of the indicated relationship was provided by reference to the erosion of totalitarian leadership in the political system of the Polish People’s Republic.

W pracy podjęto się zagadnienia analizy propagandowego ujęcia postaci Edwarda Gierka na łamach dziennika „Trybuna Ludu”. Na podstawie analizy przekazów prasowych „Trybuny Ludu” z okresu rządów I Sekretarza Komitetu Centralnego Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej w latach 1970–1980 r. dokonano analizy treści dotyczącej kształtowania propagandowego wizerunku E. Gierka na płaszczyźnie działań na rzecz m.in. polityki gospodarczej Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej oraz ewolucji na polu polityki wizerunkowej na tle innych I Sekretarzy KC PZPR. Problemem badawczym przyjętym na potrzeby niniejszego artykułu były pytania: jakimi metodami propagowano postać Edwarda Gierka na łamach „Trybuny Ludu”? W jaki sposób kreowano postać Edwarda Gierka jako I sekretarza KC PZPR? Ponadto autor zaprezentował krótką charakterystykę Edwarda Gierka oraz jego działalność polityczną w PRL w latach 70. XX w. W niniejszym artykule zastosowano metodę analizy treści, którą autor uznał za najefektywniejszą metodę badawczą do podjętej tematyki, w tym zwłaszcza przedstawienia mechanizmów propagandy oraz działalności politycznej Edwarda Gierka jako I Sekretarza KC PZPR w latach 70. XX w.

Opposition activity and socio-political concepts of Jan Lityński

The purpose of this article is to introduce Jan Lityński, Polish oppositionist active from late ‘60s to 1989 and to describe his beliefs and opinions about politics, society and his environment. Lityński became an oppositionist against communist government as a student at University of Warsaw and was involved in events known as “March 1968” which led to his imprisonment and made continuing his education impossible. But despite this, Lityński remained in the opposition until the collapse of the communist regime in Poland. He collaborated with the most prominent members of the opposition and wrote texts on political and social issues for various periodicals published in the illegal circulation. As a member of KOR and “Solidarność”, he lost his freedom many times but never let himself be broken or to betray his beliefs. In 1989 he took part in Polish Round Table Agreements that led to the change of the political system. This article was written based on Lityński’s publications from the 1980s and things he wrote and said years after those events. Other sources of information were interviews conducted with Lityński and statements made about him by associates from the opposition period.

The Mothers of democracy. The involvement of women in the fight for a free Poland in the 1980s

The purpose of this article is to present a cross-section of the 1980s in Poland from the perspective of female protagonists and to describe the role they played in the process of democratic changes, their involvement in the active opposition, strikes and later the Solidarity underground. The aim is to describe how they coped with everyday struggles, what roles they took on in life and highlight their contribution to the gradual liberation from the communist regime. Women took an active part in the struggle for Poland’s independence. Women described in this article manifested their opinions on politics, labor and civil rights. In presenting the activities of women’s resistance, the authors took into account gender and cultural perspectives. The article was written based on historical publications, interviews with witnesses of the aforementioned events and opposition activists themselves, as well as articles on the subject.

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.

Recruitment by the Security Service as around-up – the Case Study

This essay sheds light on the dark sides of the recent history of Poland, in which the secret police of the People’s Republic of Poland stood guard over the socialist system. The most effective means of totalitarian control of society was to recruit secret collaborators in the so-called hostile environment. This task in the following decades required more and more “creativity” on the part of secret police officers, because on the one hand there was an increasing pressure of management for greater efficiency, and on the other hand, knowledge about the methods of operation of security organs became more common in society and at the same time its resistance to the regime increased totalitarian. A representative example is the person of Tadeusz Wielgórski, the secret police officer in Siedlce, who resorted to “creative action and bureaucracy” while working with three secret collaborators.