Czechoslovakia was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland became part of Nazi Germany, while the country lost further territories to Hungary and Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, the state ceased to exist, as Slovakia proclaimed its independence and Carpathian Ruthenia became part of Hungary, while the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed in the remainder of the Czech Lands. In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, former Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš formed a government-in-exile and sought recognition from the Allies.
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish state research institute in charge of education and archives which also includes two public prosecution service components exercising investigative, prosecution and lustration powers. The IPN was established by the Polish parliament by the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance of 18 December 1998 through reforming and expanding the earlier Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation of 1991, which itself had replaced a body on Nazi crimes established in 1945.
Bronisław Wildstein is a former Polish dissident, a journalist, freelance author and, from 11 May 2006 to 28 February 2007, was the chief executive officer of Telewizja Polska. Wildstein rose to nationwide prominence in Poland in January and February 2005, after he smuggled files on informers and victims of the former communist secret police from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) and distributed them to fellow journalists. The files are commonly referred to as "Wildstein's list".
Czesław Jan Kiszczak was a Polish general, communist-era interior minister (1981–1990) and prime minister (1989).
This article covers the history of Polish Intelligence services dating back to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The 1956 Poznań protests, also known as Poznań June, were the first of several massive protests against the communist government of the Polish People's Republic. Demonstrations by workers demanding better working conditions began on 28 June 1956 at Poznań's Cegielski Factories and were met with violent repression.
The Ministry of Public Security, was the secret police, intelligence and counter-espionage agency operating in the Polish People's Republic. From 1945 to 1954 it was known as the Security Office, and from 1956 to 1990 as the Security Service.
Robert Leszek Moczulski was a Polish historian and politician, a member of various organizations, first supporting then supposedly opposing the communist regime in the People's Republic of Poland while dividing the opposition movement.
State Security, or StB / ŠtB, was the secret police force in communist Czechoslovakia from 1945 to its dissolution in 1990. Serving as an intelligence and counter-intelligence agency, it dealt with any activity that was considered opposition to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the state.
Freedom and Independence Association was a Polish underground anticommunist organisation founded on September 2, 1945, and active until 1952.
Communist crimes is a legal definition used in the Polish Penal Code. The concept of a communist crime is also used more broadly internationally, and is employed by human rights non-governmental organizations as well as government agencies such as the Unitas Foundation, the Institute for Information on the Crimes of Communism, the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania, and the Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism.
Lustration in Poland is the policy of limiting the participation of former communists – especially of informants of the communist secret police – during 1944–1990, in successor governments or even in civil-service positions.
Decommunization in former communist states is the process of purging former communist high officials and eliminating communist symbols.
The anti-communist resistance in Poland, also referred to as the Polish anti-communist insurrection fought between 1944 and 1953, was an anti communist and anti-Soviet armed struggle by the Polish Underground against the Soviet domination of Poland by the Soviet-installed People's Republic of Poland, since the end of World War II in Europe. The guerrilla warfare conducted by the resistance movement formed during the war, included an array of military attacks launched against communist prisons, state security offices, detention facilities for political prisoners, and prison camps set up across the country by the Stalinist authorities.
Eastern Bloc politics followed the Red Army's occupation of much of Central and Eastern Europe at the end of World War II and the Soviet Union's installation of Soviet-controlled Marxist–Leninist governments in the region that would be later called the Eastern Bloc through a process of bloc politics and repression. These governments contained apparent elements of representative democracy to conceal the process initially.
The Amnesty of 1947 in Poland was an amnesty directed at soldiers and activists of the Polish anti-communist underground, issued by the authorities of People's Republic of Poland. The law on amnesty was passed by the Polish Sejm on 22 February 1947. The actual purpose of the amnesty was the liquidation of coordinated resistance to the newly-established communist regime. The promise of amnesty was not kept. Information collected during questioning of the "cursed soldiers" who had revealed themselves led to a later round of arrests and repression, including of those who stayed in hiding.
Clerical collaboration with communist secret services occurred in some Eastern European countries during the Cold War. There were multiple reasons why certain clergy members chose to take this course of action. Some hoped to provide services to the government in exchange for a reversal of policies persecuting Christians. Others wished to buy favors from the authorities in order to advance their own careers, since the authorities could influence promotions within the Church hierarchies. Finally, there are claims that some clergy members were secret service agents from the beginning, working undercover.
Lech Wałęsa is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democratically elected president of Poland since 1926 and the first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote. A shipyard electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.
The Volunteer Reserve of the Citizens' Militia was a paramilitary reserve organization of the Citizen's Militia (MO), the police force of the Polish People's Republic.
Fałszywka is a Polish socio-political term describing counterfeit top secret files and fake police reports produced by the Ministry of Public Security in the People's Republic of Poland. Their purpose was to undermine the popularity of prominent opponents of Polish United Workers' Party, mainly by attempting to ruin their good name as private individuals. Fałszywka were used from the beginning of the People's Republic against opponents of the Communist system. These included seemingly stolen or declassified revelations about opposition members working as alleged police informants under the Soviet system. Most notably, some have argued that an entire forged file of this sort was produced in the 1980s and then disseminated by the communist establishment about the leading dissident and future President of Poland Lech Wałęsa when he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Some politicians claim it was fabricated and then "leaked" to the media in an attempt to prevent Wałęsa from being awarded the Prize.
