Półrocznik „Sowiniec” jest naukowym czasopismem historycznym, którego tematyka skupia się na ostatnich dwóch stuleciach historii Polski, w szczególności zaś na polskich zmaganiach niepodległościowych. Wieloletnia walka Polaków o odbudowę niepodległego Państwa Polskiego naznaczona była kilkoma powstaniami narodowymi oraz olbrzymim wysiłkiem w czasie dwóch wojen światowych. Za ostatni zryw wolnościowy zwykło się też uważać ruch skupiony wokół NSZZ „Solidarność”, który znacznie przyczynił się do erozji systemu komunistycznego w tej części Europy, otwierając drogę do niepodległości. Tytuł periodyku nawiązuje do kopca usypanego w Krakowie na wzgórzu Sowiniec w latach 30. XX wieku, ku czci Marszałka Józefa Piłsudskiego, twórcy odrodzonego w 1918 r. Państwa Polskiego.
Pomoc materialna społeczności Galicji Zachodniej Legionom w 1914 roku
Based on the source query conducted by thee team of the Supreme National Committee at the National Archives in Kraków, this paper discusses the organization and fi nancing aid for shooting troops and Polish Legions from the society of Western Galicia in 1914. Particular attention was paid to the organization of the aid and the sources of fundraising for the Legions in Kraków and counties and municipalities in Western Galicia.
Powstanie Legionów Polskich oraz Naczelnego Komitetu Narodowego w sierpniu 1914 roku
The aim of the article is to present the events of the end of July and the fi rst weeks of August 1914 which led to the creation of two parallel structures: the Polish Legions and the Supreme National Committee, providing political and organizational infrastructure to the former. This topic has already been repeatedly tackled by Polish historians. Most studies, however, focused on the person of Jozef Piłsudski, as well as on the military aspect of the history of Polish Legions. However, this article presents the political aspect of the events in question, including the attempts to answer two important questions about the genesis of the Polish Legions, ie. who and under what circumstances came up with the idea of creating the Legions as regular military units being a part of the armed forces of the Austro- -Hungarian Empire and at the same time having a national, Polish character.
the Commission of Confederated Independence Organizations
Prawa autorskie (c) 2014 Mateusz Drozdowski
Propozycje programowe nurtu socjaldemokratycznego opozycji politycznej w Polsce w latach osiemdziesiątych XX wieku
This paper presents programme proposals of the social democratic (socialist) fraction of political opposition in Poland in the 1980’s, and especially its organized part. This fraction’s programme was inspired by the ideas and traditions of Polish independence and democratic socialism, symbolized by the pre-war PPS. The paper discusses selected issues raised by the Polish socialists in order to briefl y show the programme proposals developed by this fraction of political opposition.
Major Leon Franciszek Ulatowski – legionista i oficer II Rzeczypospolitej
Leon Franciszek Ulatowski (1889-1973) was an officer of the Polish Army in the rank of major. He was a son of Jan, a farmer, and Maria (née Sokołowska). After he completed his education at a teachers’ college and then at the Business Academy [Akademia Handlowa] in Kraków, he studied agriculture in the Department of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University and also in the Szkoła Główna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego in Warsaw. Since 6 August 1914 he was a soldier of the Polish Legions which later became the 1st Infantry Regiment. He participated in the battle of Kostiuchnówka as the commander of the machinegun division of the VI battalion of the seventh infantry regiment. After the dissolution of the Legions he became the commanding officer of the Polish Military Organisation [Polska Organizacja Wojskowa] in the Borysław area. On 1 November 1918 he entered the Polish Army in Kraków by joining the 5th infantry regiment of the Legions. In 1919 he assumed command of the machinegun department of the 1st infantry regiment of the Legions in the rank of captain and the command of the 4th machinegun company. He participated in the Polish-Soviet war with the 1st infantry regiment in 1920. In 1929 he became the executive officer of the 36th infantry regiment of the Academic League. In the years 1930-1932 he worked as the director of the Office of Military Training and Physical Education [Urząd Przysposobienia Wojskowego i Wychowania Fizycznego] in the Command of the Area of Corpus No. IV in Łódź. From 1932 to 1937 he was a staff officer in the Ministry of Military Affairs in Warsaw. Then, until the outbreak of World War II, he was delegated to the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education [Ministerstwo Wyznań Religijnych i Oświecenia Publicznego]. In September 1939 he performed the function of the executive Quartermaster of the Defense of Warsaw. After the capitulation he was put into a POW camp in Murnau. In 1945 he returned to Poland and took employement in a dairy cooperative.
Prawa autorskie (c) 2013 Piotr Tadeusz Rafalski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The article is about Edward Kaleta, a lawyer and politician, who in 1933 became a member of the Peasants’ Party (Stronnictwo Ludowe – SL), a party of Polish farmers, active in the Second Polish Republic. During World War II, under the German occupation, he was the SL’s Silesian representative in the underground Political Consultative Committee at the Government Delegation for Poland (a secret structure of the Polish Government in Exile in London). Kaleta then served as head of the office of the Regional Delegation of the Government in Exile in Krakow. After the war, he became a member of the Supreme Executive Committee of the Polish Peasants’ Party, the only political group in opposition to the communist authorities installed in Poland by the Soviet Union, led by Stanisław Mikołajczyk. During this time, he was arrested several times by the communist security apparatus. In the 1970s, he supported the activities of the Student Solidarity Committee, an anti-regime organisation established after the death of Stanisław Pyjas. The article is based on, among other sources, archival materials collected at the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance in Krakow, the Archives of the Jagiellonian University, the Museum of the History of the Polish Peasant Movement, and the Wincenty Witos Museum in Wierzchosławice.
Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 Gaberiel Szuster https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Krótkie życie ruchu komitetów obywatelskich
Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 Janusz Baster https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Z dziejów Małopolskiego Komitetu Obywatelskiego „Solidarność”w Krakowie
The article presents the history of the Małopolska Citizens’ Committee in Krakow from April to June 1989 based on preserved archive materials, press, and literature. The Committee , which emerged as a result of the Round Table agreements, brought together various anti-communist opposition groups. Not only is its organisational structure presented, but also the variety of activities that took place during the election campaign, such as meetings between candidates and voters, leafleting, etc. Involvement in the Małopolska Citizens’ Committee had a significant influence on education in social and political life. In the following years, the Committee’s activists held prominent positions in administration, local governments, and the economy in the Third Republic of Poland.
Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 Tomasz Dudek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Prasa Komitetów Obywatelskich w Polsce 1989-1990
The article, consisting of three descriptive parts and the sources’ appendix with a list of 388 titles, is the first attempt to assemble press titles from the last phase of the phenomenon of the Polish Underground Press. The first part is a discussion of the historical role of Citizens’ Committees during the period of political transformation. The second part is the core of the paper , analysing issues such as the type and territorial range of committees that were publishing magazines, statistical data on the number of titles published in individual voivodeships (then and now), and in union regions. This part also includes information about the durability and printing techniques of these bibuła or underground periodicals. The third part is the conclusion collecting the most important results of the analysis.
Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 Jakub Krzysztonek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Agata Michałek-Budzicz (1964-2020), Przemysław Jerzy Witek (1947-2020), Ludomir Olkuśnik (1934-2020)
Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 Krzysztof Nowakowski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 Dariusz Warpas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Sprawozdanie z działalności Fundacji Centrum Dokumentacji Czynu Niepodległościowego w 2021 roku
Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 Adam Roliński https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
W służbie Polskiego Państwa Podziemnego na Kresach
Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 Zbigniew Zabokrzecki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Sprawozdanie z działalności Fundacji Centrum Dokumentacji Czynu Niepodległościowego w 2020 roku
Kampania podhalańska I Brygady Legionów Polskich (listopad-grudzień 1914)
THE PODHALE CAMPAIGN BY THE 1ST BRIGADE OF THE POLISH LEGIONS (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1914) The article describes an episode from the battles fought in the first year of World War I between the Russian army entering West Galicia and the Austro-Hungarian army defending Krakow. Polish military units organised by Józef Piłsudski within the Austro-Hungarian army, organised into the 1st Infantry Regiment, also took part in the battles conducted from 23 November to 12 December. The Legionnaires' task was to halt the Russian advance, which was approaching Kraków in the second half of November that year. The 1st Infantry Regiment of the Polish Legions was attached to the Hungarian corps commanded by General Gyul Nagy which was to attack the Russian troops heading for Kraków from the south-west. The legionnaires, who were then in the village of Zawoja in difficult terrain conditions, with no artillery of their own and limited supplies, not only managed to stop the Russian advance, but also began to drive the Russian troops out of the areas they had occupied. Of particular note were two major battles at Limanowa and Marcinkowice, which Józef Piłsudski's subordinates had to fight at the time. The campaign ended with the entry of legionary troops into Nowy Sącz on 12th December 1914.
the Podhale campaign of the Polish Legions
Zabici i zmarli z ran w walkach o Lwów we wrześniu 1939 roku
PERSONS KILLED AND DIED OF WOUNDS IN THE FIGHTS FOR LVIV IN SEPTEMBER 1939 RECORDED IN LIBER MORTUORUM OF ST.MARY MAGDALENE PARISH IN LVIV From the first day of World War 2, Lviv, one of the largest Polish cities, was the aim of German air force attacks. On 12 September 1939, German troops made the first attempt of capturing the city. Eventually, after ten days of defence, troops of the Red Army entered Lviv on 22 September 1939. Fights in defence of Lviv during the 1939 Polish September Campaign resulted in numerous victims, both among the soldiers of the Polish Army and among the civilian population. Most people died as a result of bombing raids and artillery shelling of the city by the Germans. In the publications to date, the number of deaths among the civilian population has been estimated at 4-5 thousand people (about 300 killed every day). Based on the available sources, mainly church registers of the dead (liber mortuorum) and cemetery registers of burials, the number of civilian victims of the September fights for Lviv was verified as roughly half that (2,000 killed, around 100 each day). The annex contains a list of those killed and died due to wounds in September 1939, recorded in the Book of the Dead in one of the Lviv parishes, St. Mary Magdalene Parish. Among 44 people, there are also names of officers, policemen, lecturers, architects, officials, as well as ordinary residents of Lviv, railroad workers, merchants, maids, students and even children.
THE ARMY AS INTERNMENT: FORMS OF THE REPRESSION DURING THE MARTIAL LAW IN THE YEARS 1982-1983 AGAINST ACTIVISTS OF THE ANTICOMMUNIST OPPOSITION PLACED IN MILITARY SPECIAL CAMPS (PART II) The work focuses its issues on one of the repression forms used in the martial law introduced on 13th December 1981 to pacify the society which tried to change the fossilised communist system through activity in the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity”. It was not a new solution in the Polish People’s Republic – just after the Second World War the communist authority drafted into “alternative military service” opponents of sovietisation of the country, directing them to forced labour in mines. Fearing a social rebellion before the second anniversary of the independent trade union registration, communist authorities interned in military special camps, functioning in Poland from 5 November 1982 to 3 February 1983, 1450 trade union activists and members of the political parties unaccepted by communists. 264 younger colleagues of these people were drafted into the basic military service lasting two years in three units intended for this purpose.
martial law in Poland in the years 1981-1983
Wspomnienie o Robercie Kulaku (1960-2019)
Sprawozdanie z działalności Fundacji Centrum Dokumentacji Czynu Niepodległościowego w 2019 roku
Sprawozdanie z działalności Fundacji Centrum Dokumentacji Czynu Niepodległościowego w 2018 roku
Małopolskie dziedzictwo Powstania Styczniowego
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the January Uprising there appeared the idea of the realisation of a project of collecting information about the war graves of the insurrectionists of the period 1863-1864 located within the boundaries of the present-day Małopolska voivodeship. During the course of the collection of the materials there appeared the necessity of locating in Poland the war graves of those who headed to join the uprising from the villages and towns of Małopolska. The resources kept by the voivodeship offices proved extremely helpful in the realisation of this endeavour. In Poland about 540 graves of insurrectionists (individual and collective graves) are protected by the state – i.e. graves of insurrectionists who perished, died due to the wounds they received, were killed as war prisoners or were executed according to the sentences of the Russian summary courts. In the area of the Małopolska voivodeship 29 structures of this type are preserved (23 collective graves and 6 individual graves). In other regions of the country the presence of one individual and 13 collective war graves in which those who perished originated from the Małopolska region was established. On the basis of the materials that were collected more than one hundred names of the insurrectionists who were buried there were established as well. The search is in progress; the present article describes the state of knowledge as of December 2015.
Prawa autorskie (c) 2015 Jolanta Mikołajczyk
Śledztwo i proces ppłk. Bolesława Michała Nieczui-Ostrowskiego
This is another article devoted to Lt. Col. Bolesław Michał Nieczuja-Ostrowski “Bolko”, “Tysiąc” (1907-2008) who during the Second World War was an officer of the Polish Army, then of the underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK), and since 1944 the commander of the great unit of the AK: the 106th Infantry Division. The article is associated with the investigations conducted against this man and with a trial as a result of which he was sentenced to death. The author used mainly the materials prepared by the functionaries of the Office of Public Security during the inquiry and the trial that were conducted. The information was compared and extended by the data contained in the publications of Lt. Col. Nieczuja-Ostrowski that appeared after 1989. Ostrowski was accused of participation in “illegal organisations” after 1945, and previously he was accused of the contacts that were maintained by the soldiers of the division that he commanded (the division operated on the areas of the AK “Maria” Regional Inspectorate) with the representatives of the German occupation authorities, as well as the supposed killings of Soviet soldiers, people of Jewish ethnicity and communist activists. In the years 1946-1956 he was arrested a number of times, he was repeatedly interrogated, imprisoned and as a result of this he was sentenced to death two times. After the amnesty his sentence was reduced to 12 years of prison (he spent a total of more than seven years in prison).
Prawa autorskie (c) 2015 Agnieszka Wątor https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Problematyka ekologiczna w prasie drugiego obiegu wydawniczego w latach osiemdziesiątych XX wieku
The text presents the basic statements concerning ecological issues published in the clandestine press that was functioning illegally in the People’s Republic of Poland in the 1980s. Initially such texts appeared relatively rarely but their frequency increased after the catastrophe in Chernobyl. The texts described the state of the natural environment – in fact, it was unanimously evaluated as very bad, one that borders on an ecological catastrophe, one that poses a threat to people’s lives and health. The blame for this state of affairs was put – also almost unanimously – on the existing system of the exercise of power and the activities of the authorities which realised an ideological project without taking into account people’s lives and health. Exerting pressure on the authorities was suggested above all as a possible remedy to the situation, although sometimes a statement was formulated that improvement requires the change of the existing system. One may claim the object of engaging ecological problems was not only to pursue the improvement of the state of the environment and to build ecological awareness but perhaps it was above all an expression of the criticism of the authorities, the criticism of the strategy of development that was embraced in the post-war period, the criticism of the activities that were engaged. The object of these texts was also to demonstrate that the existing system dismissed fundamental human rights and that it was in fact irreformable.
Prawa autorskie (c) 2015 Krzysztof Łabędź
Poles on the Brink of Independence Due to the final fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, its inhabitants were pushed for 123 years into three completely different and essentially hostile state organisms. In such diverse conditions, a few succeeding generations experienced deep and multilateral civilizational transformations occurring in the 19th century and in the version typical for this part of Europe. In other words, modernity formed here bygone inhabitants and citizens of the Republic in various ways. It was important for further existence of the Polishness and nationality without the state. In this context, the key question arises: who of them, successors of the First Republic tradition, in the time of the Polish state revival, felt still Polish, ready for the construction and defence of the state? In other words, what social capital had the reviving Polish state – the Second Polish Republic – at its disposal in the time of its beginnings? Based on source materials, and primarily on data from the last population censuses and their statistical studies before the First World War, the author tried to estimate the potential number of Poles on the brink of independence. The analysis was connected with an important assumption that primarily these people would be both the main beneficiaries of this radically changed statehood and persons ready to co-shape it actively. The obtained results fit into few similar estimations made until now, constituting material for further reflections.
Prawa autorskie (c) 2018 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0