The Constitutional Aspect of the Evolution of the Border Protection Forces 1945–1965 Cover Image

Конституционный аспект эволюции пограничных войск в 1945–1965 гг.
The Constitutional Aspect of the Evolution of the Border Protection Forces 1945–1965

Author(s): Paweł Zawadzki
Subject(s): History of Law, Constitutional Law, Political history, Social history, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Sociology of Law, Administrative Law
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku
Keywords: Border Force; Polish Constitution; law; security;

Summary/Abstract: Before I proceed to further detailed and developed arguments, I would like to present the main research problem involving the following question: how did the Border Protection Forces evolve in the years 1945–1965 from the perspective of the legal system and the constitutional law in particular. The constitution referred to above is not the basic law “as such”, in common parlance, but it is the constitution present in the course of the evolution of the legal status of the Frontier Protection Forces. This article is mainly focused on this constitution, although, apart from that, it contains the spectrum of legal and constitutional schemes adopted in different periods of the functioning of the Border Guard Forces in their constitutions. It is therefore immanent to present the process of the functioning of the Border Guard Forces – the origin and evolution of legal norms in the light of the constitution and the whole system of law, as well as the changes taking place in the system of law in the time-space between 1945 and 1965. Taking into account the defined objectives, it turned out to be necessary to present the work from a historical perspective. The chronology of facts is important for the discussed subject matter, as it helps to systematize the deliberations. The structure of the work has been adapted to the above principles of this publication. It begins with a legal-historical part introducing the subject of the tradition of constitutionalism in Poland. It presents the reasons for the creation and the process of subordination of border formations to various institutional solutions, and systematizes the legal and organizational transformation of the Border Protection Forces created in 1945 as a separate type of troops by the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Internal Affairs as part of the People's Army of Poland. The Border Protection Forces repeatedly revised its structural- -bureaucratic subordination from the Ministry of National Defence through the Ministry of Public Security to the Ministry of the Interior and vice versa. The general research method became a legal-historical method to reconstruct the past state of affairs, the evolution of the legal status of the Border Protection Forces.

  • Issue Year: 22/2023
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 247-264
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: Russian
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