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 the General Commission for Research on Fascist Crimes, a body established in 1945 focused on investigating the crimes of the Nazi administration in Poland during World War II.
Post-communism is the period of political and economic transformation or transition in post-Soviet states and other formerly communist states located in Central-Eastern Europe and parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, in which new governments aimed to create free market-oriented capitalist economies. In 1989–1992, communist party governance collapsed in most communist party-governed states. After severe hardships communist parties retained control in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. SFR Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, which plunged the country into a long complex series of wars between ethnic groups and nation-states. Soviet-oriented communist movements collapsed in countries where they were not in control.
Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word nostalgia is a neoclassical compound derived from Greek, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), a Homeric word meaning "homecoming", and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain"; the word was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition—a form of melancholy—in the early modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state in which the totality of the power belongs to a party adhering to some form of Marxism–Leninism, a branch of the communist ideology. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Comintern after its Bolshevisation, and the communist states within the Comecon, the Eastern Bloc, and the Warsaw Pact. After the peak of Marxism–Leninism, when many communist states were established, the Revolutions of 1989 brought down most of the communist states; however, Communism remained the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Vietnam, and to a lesser extent, North Korea. During the later part of the 20th century, before the Revolutions of 1989, around one-third of the world's population lived in communist states.
The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million near the end of its existence, it was the second most-populous communist and Eastern Bloc country in Europe, and one of the main signatories of the Warsaw Pact alliance. The largest city and official capital since 1947 was Warsaw, followed by the industrial city of Łódź and cultural city of Kraków. The country was bordered by the Baltic Sea to the north, the Soviet Union to the east, Czechoslovakia to the south, and East Germany to the west.
In German culture, Ostalgie is nostalgia for aspects of life in Communist East Germany. It is a portmanteau of the German words Ost (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia). Its anglicised equivalent, ostalgia, is also sometimes used. Another term for the phenomenon is GDR nostalgia.
Wanda Wasilewska, also known by her Russian name Vanda Lvovna Vasilevskaya, was a Polish and Soviet novelist and journalist and a left-wing political activist.
Józef Adam Zygmunt Cyrankiewicz was a Polish Socialist (PPS) and after 1948 Communist politician. He served as premier of the Polish People's Republic between 1947 and 1952, and again for 16 years between 1954 and 1970. He also served as Chairman of the Polish Council of State from 1970 to 1972.
The Gdańsk Shipyard is a large Polish shipyard, located in the city of Gdańsk, northern Poland. The yard gained international fame when Polish trade union Solidarity was founded there in September 1980. It is situated on the western side of Martwa Wisła and on Ostrów Island.
Communism in Poland can trace its origins to the late 19th century: the Marxist First Proletariat party was founded in 1882. Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania party and the publicist Stanisław Brzozowski (1878–1911) were important early Polish Marxists.
Yugo-nostalgia is an emotional longing for the former country of Yugoslavia which is experienced by some people in its successor countries: the present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, and Slovenia. It is a political and cultural phenomenon that includes nostalgia for a time past when the splintered states were a part of one country, grief over the war that tore it apart, and a desire to again unite. Self-described Yugo-nostalgics may express grief at the failure of brotherly love, unity, and coexistence, and distress at division and nationalism, or they may express that their quality of life was better in Yugoslavia.
A bar mleczny is a Polish cafeteria which during the Communist era provided government-subsidized traditional Polish cuisine at low cost. The name comes from cheese cutlets, which were often sold when meat was unavailable.
Żydokomuna is an anti-communist and antisemitic canard, or a pejorative stereotype, suggesting that most Jews collaborated with the Soviet Union in importing communism into Poland, or that there was an exclusively Jewish conspiracy to do so. A Polish language term for "Jewish Bolshevism", or more literally "Jewish communism", Żydokomuna is related to the "Jewish world conspiracy" myth.
Censorship in Communist Poland was primarily performed by the Polish Main Office of Control of Press, Publications and Shows, a governmental institution created in 1946 by the pro-Soviet Provisional Government of National Unity with Stalin's approval and backing, and renamed in 1981 as the Główny Urząd Kontroli Publikacji i Widowisk (GUKPiW). The bureau was liquidated after the fall of communism in Poland, in April 1990.
A Polish passport is an international travel document issued to nationals of Poland, and may also serve as proof of Polish citizenship. Besides enabling the bearer to travel internationally and serving as indication of Polish citizenship, the passport facilitates the process of securing assistance from Polish consular officials abroad or other European Union member states in case a Polish consular is absent, if needed.
Kristen Rogheh Ghodsee is an American ethnographer and Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is primarily known for her ethnographic work on post-Communist Bulgaria as well as being a contributor to the field of postsocialist gender studies. She was critical of the role of Western feminist nongovernmental organizations doing work among East European women in the 1990s. She has also examined the shifting gender relations of Muslim minorities after Communist rule, the intersections of Islamic beliefs and practices with the ideological remains of Marxism–Leninism, communist nostalgia, the legacies of Marxist feminism, and the intellectual history of utopianism.
The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties, commonly known as Cominform (Коминформ), was a co-ordination body of Marxist–Leninist communist parties in Europe which existed from 1947 to 1956. Formed in the wake of the dissolution of the Communist International in 1943, it did not replace that body, but instead mainly served as an expression of solidarity and as a means of disseminating Stalinist propaganda. The Cominform initially included the communist parties of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, France, and Italy. The organization was dissolved in 1956, during de-Stalinization.
The social phenomenon of nostalgia for the Soviet Union, can include sentimental attitudes towards its politics, its society, its culture and cultural artifacts, its superpower status, or simply its aesthetics.
Communist nostalgia, also called communism nostalgia or socialist nostalgia, is the nostalgia in various post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia for the prior communist states.
The dissident movement in the Polish People's Republic was a political movement in the Polish People's Republic whose aim was to change the political system from unitary Marxist–Leninist government imposed by the USSR to democratic form of government.
