Keywords: Polish philosophy
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Keywords: history of administration; interwar period; professionalization; interdisciplinary studies
In the article the author refers to the critical remarks of his book “Professionalization of governmental administration in Poland 1918–1939: social and cultural condition” placed in the article of Janusz Mierzwa in “Cracow Studies of Consittutional and Legal History” vol. 4. Author points out to the misunderstanding of his book and not taking into account the purpose of the research and purposefully selected sources. Author takes a stance against the objections and states that beliefs expressed by Mierzwa in his article, do not help the cooperation between historians and sociologists.
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Keywords: "Od liryki do retoryki"; J. Kotarska; E. Kotarski; J. Kadulska; R. Grześkowiak
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Keywords: Poland; petition; citizens’ rights; statute;
The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the right of petition and the need for regulation of this field by statute. The author examines the right of petition both in historical context and by way of reference to the existing regulations and views of legal theorists. She comes to an unequivocal conclusion that there is need for statutory regulation of the right of petition, that would lead to an elevation of the status of that right which, in practice, has been reduced to the right to make requests and complaints in the form that existed prior to the adoption of the Constitution. Moreover, a separate law devoted to the right of petition would encourage citizens to make use of this form of dialogue with the government and make it possible to comprehensively regulate the issue of petition and to ultimately solve many problems with establishing the mutual relations between petitions, complaints and requests.
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W ostatnich latach można zauważyć w Europie — zarówno w świecie akademickim, jak i w szerszej opinii publicznej — rosnące zainteresowanie osobami ratującymi Żydów. Widoczne jest ono w literaturze historycznej i popularnonaukowej, w tworzeniu ośrodków i realizacji projektów dokumentujących historie ratujących, w organizowaniu konferencji, wystaw muzealnych, a także tworzeniu przedstawień teatralnych, filmów dokumentalnych i fabularnych. Zainteresowanie to przyjmuje formy ponadnarodowe, w których ratujący stają się wzorem dla współczesnych młodych Europejczyków, oraz różnorodne formy lokalne osadzone w historii i historiografii poszczególnych narodów oraz specyficznej pamięci zbiorowej w danym kraju.
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The magazine “Samorząd Miejski” is one of the most interesting periodical of a municipal nature to be released in the Second Republic of Poland. Being a press body of Związek Miast Polskich, the magazine started its publishing cycle in 1921 and continued incessantly till 1939. It published the most outstanding and qualified theoreticians and practicioners of the interwar period connected with municipal issues. This unusual theoretical‑practical comparison made the magazine one of a kind, a very valuable and attractive source of knowledge on this subject-matter. Among many issues a special place was given to bibliography. The most interesting enterprise, next to a permanent bibliographic column, was an international municipal special bibliography, indexing 287 magazines all over the world, Tablettes Dokumentaires Municipales and the Automie Municipale (Tablice dokumentów miejskich), summing up the most important foreign publications co-created by Związek Miast Polskich and published in “Samorząd Miejski”. Apart from the already-mentioned, the editorial board of “Samorząd Miejski” prepared and published Bibliography of Polish towns, a monumental and well-prepared bibliographic work concerning Polish towns. Such a big interest, professionalism of approach and realization of bibliographic initiatives, is a special evidence of high reading culture of municipal activists of the Second Republic of Poland.
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Keywords: filial love; paternal love; patriotism; epistolography
The article discusses the motif of filial love of distinctive romantic poet, the author of Nie-Boska Komedia, Zygmunt Krasiński. The unusual fascination by the paternal will mainly shown in letters written by the son to his father, as Zygmunt Krasiński spent most of his life abroad and from there he maintained a continuous correspondence with his father, general Wincenty Krasiński, the deputy and then the chief warden of the Polish Kingdom. The poet’s father, the former Napoleonic general, chose the servicefor the new leader – the Russian tsar. That was something irreconcilable for the feeble son who kept using the services of bathing sanatoria and maintained epistolary discussion with the beloved father. The ideological conflict usually concluded in admitting the righteousness to the “beloved daddy” in particular matters. That, however, caused real ethical dilemmas for the sensitive condescending youth. The unusually rich correspondence of Zygmunt Krasiński is undoubtedly a precious contribution to nineteenthcentury thought, and also into family and existential aspects of the two uncommon men– Zygmunt and Wincenty Krasiński.
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Keywords: Polish United Workers’ Party; administration of justice;
The sessions of the 9th Extraordinary Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) was preceded by a profound public critique of both the structures and the activity of the judiciary and administration of justice. The corporations of lawyers demanded to strengthen the independence of the judiciary. They demanded to abolish the regulations on the so called “warranty” of socialist justice and to abolish the term of office in the Supreme Court. The Party, however, had no intention of changing and getting rid of legal regulations that allowed them to control the sphere of the judiciary. In the programme presented at the congress, the Central Committee of the PUWP emphasized the need to strengthen the existing structures of the socialist system of justice that in their opinion ensured the ‘independence’ of the judiciary. This approach of the PUWP towards the system of justice was rejected by a group of delegates who criticized the programme presented by the Central Committee at a meeting of a task group. They pointed out the need for tangible legal changes in the system administration of justice as postulated by the corporations of lawyers. These views were nonetheless found to be anti-socialist, and were not included in the final text of the congress resolution, which merely reiterated the theses set forth in the Central Committee’s programme statement.
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Keywords: ancient history; Hellenism; Homer; Illiad; Greek literature
The Illiad, traditionally attributed to Homer, is a multilayered story about the heroic past of the Achaean aristocracy. Though engaged in an unjust war and plunder, thus contaminated by guilt, ate, the Achaeans strive for the very model of virtue, arete – courage and wisdom paired with respect shown towards the defeted enemy. The glory of arete is compromised on both sides of the conflict, the Acheans (Achilles and Agamemnon) and the Trojans (Paris and Hector). Their guilt, born of temptation which they – as mortals – cannot resist, paradoxically makes them responsible for the evil they have no power to contain. Their punishment thus becomes their atonement for their wrongdoing and their chance to redeem their discredited heroism and virtue. All these ideas are conveyed by the metaphors employed by Homer throughout his complex masterpiece. His way of presenting the protagonists and narrating their stories creates a brilliant composition of meanings and harmony, which the European scholastics many centuries later described as the constituent elements of beauty: proportio, integritas and claritas. The Illiad marks an enormously important stage in the development of the ancient search of the true goodness and beauty, kalokagathia (Ancient Greek: nobility, goodness, from kalos: beautiful, kai: and, agathos: good).
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Keywords: Bułak-Bałachowicz; Piłsudski; Sawinkow; Polish-Soviet war; Belarus;
In 1919–1920, Józef Piłsudski, Polish Chief of State, made consistent political attempts at patching up the torn-apart territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. One significant impact on Piłsudski's plan was the adoption by the Allies, on the 6th of March 1920, of the so-called Millerand's note, which prohibited Poland from carrying out a self-proclamatory referendum in the area of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, announced in April 1919 in Vilnius and addressed to residents of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the spring of 1920, the nationalist side and Piłsudski had “swapped” their demands in regard to the eastern border so far. Piłsudski was believed to expect the return of the border from 1772, in order to retain territory for the establishment of at least both a Belarusian and Ukrainian state, while the National Democrats sought to spare Russia, and obtain areas which would give a chance to absorb ethnically Polish lands into the motherland. Nikolai Tchaikovsky and Boris Savinkov paid a visit to the Belweder Palace already in mid-January 1920. Piłsudski was well aware that the White Russians would want to use the idealist Savinkov to attempt to charge the Polish side with inconsiderable costs (both financial and moral) of the formation of the Russian Army in exile. General Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz, revered, fluent in all borderland languages, an excellent soldier, when he was a subordinate of Nikolai Yudenich had tried to rename the unit under his command to the “People's Army”, or in other words, the Territorial or National Army. Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz never saw politics as a weapon; he never paid great interest nor had a greater knowledge of it. The autumn of 1919 marks the beginning of the “Belarusian” episode in his life. He never tried to hide his outstanding aversion to the Bolsheviks, who constituted a foreground threat to his country. In the early spring of 1920, Bałachowicz knew the BPR's “potential” from the inside… and thus he chose an ally that seemed a promise of success. The territorial understanding of “Belarusness”, in conjunction with the nearly atavistic anti-bolshevism of Bałachowicz, were a great asset in Józef Piłsudski's new political combination. Piłsudski decided to benefit from Savinkov's idealistic approach for his own purpose. The Russian Political Committee, Bałachowicz's troops and the statements of Vyacheslav Adamovich (father) were to support the establishment of a Belarus for Belarusians. Not under Kaunas and Berlin, nor a Soviet one. A “Third Belarus”. A Belarus friendly towards Poland. Following discussions with Savinkov, the builder of the “Third Russia”, Piłsudski engaged himself after 6th of March 1920 in supporting (inter alia financially) the Russian Political Committee. Based on the agreement of the Polish Supreme Command with B. V. Savinkov, all Russian formations on the Polish territory were politically subordinated to Savinkov, and the amounts paid by the Polish Government since 1st of March 1920 were recognized as Russia's sovereign debt to the Polish Republic. In August 1920, on the orders of the Supreme Command, Bałachowicz entered a secret agreement with Savinkov. They both were also to seek convening the Constituent Assembly, providing land for the people and democracy, and to create a Union of Nations (i.e., a federation). Note 1. The issue of further strategic dependence of General Bałachowicz and other unit in the event of a single command of Russian troops formed on Polish territory and abroad was to be settled only when such a situation would actually arise. Note 2. In the event of Bałachowicz's unit succeeding “deeper into Russian territory”, the local government and the administrative board were to be founded on his authority. This is how Bułak-Bałachowicz was to become the executor of the first phase of Piłsudski's new “concept for Belarus”. On 12th of October 1920 the Warsaw-based “Belarusian Political Committee” (Pavel Aleksiuk, Vyacheslav Adamovich father and others) reached an agreement with General Bałachowicz. The Belarusian Political Committee undertook to carry out the recruitment for the Belarusian army to be formed under Bałachowicz's leadership, while the latter would cede civil authority in the gradually conquered, ethnically Belarusian territories to the Belarusian Political Committee. On 2nd of November 1920, a meeting of Polish and Belarusian politicians took place. The aim of the Slutsk Action was to achieve independence for Belarus. The indivisibility of Belarus was to be achieved by means of a federation with Poland and a closer cooperation with Central Lithuania, which was still going through its first 72 days. The Legislative Sejm of White Ruthenia was to be convened. A legitimate, i.e. not a self-proclaimed government – in a fixed composition of 50% of Belarusians, 40% of Poles and 10% of Jews – was to be appointed by the Supreme Council. In short, this planned statehood in “Piłsudski's plans according to Belarusian sources” was to be undoubtedly “Belarusian”. The conditions for Belarusian success were to be: a lack of internal frictions among the Belarusians, the foundation of authority on local governments and cooperation with Bułak-Bałachowicz. None of these was satisfied by the Belarusians. Not all Poles were aware of what was at stake. Even Polish General Staff officers showed confusion. Lis Błoński clearly writes about “serious misunderstandings” which occurred between him and Bałachowicz in the period preceding the Mozyr declaration (November 1920). Those of Bałachowicz's units that were composed of Belarusians only believed that the area which fell under their control was an integral part of the Republic of Belarus. These units also began to rearrange each possible village and municipality in their own way: the “Russian way”. Meanwhile, on 11th of November 1920, the Belarusian government of Vaclav Lastovski reached an agreement in Kaunas with the Lithuanian authorities reluctant towards Poland on political and economic cooperation. Lastovski, on behalf of the Belarusian People's Republic, withdrew the claims of Belarusians to Vilnius as their capital in favor of the Lithuanians. A joint Lithuanian-Belarusian front against Poland was declared. On the 14th of November 1920, the Belarusian Congress of Sluchchyna adopted an anti-Soviet resolution calling for the creation of a free Belarus within its ethnographic area and, at the same time, showing a cordial welcome to “our sister Poland”. On the 15th personal delegates of Bałachowicz (including his brother) arrived in Slutsk, however, the SRs, oriented towards the BPR in Kaunas, consistently reluctant Poland, had already taken over spiritual leadership. The three pro-Bałachowicz and pro-Polish organizers of this congress (Arseniusz Pawlukiewicz, Anton Baczko and Jan Macelli) were put on the defensive. The Belarusian Supreme Council (Rada), while supported by Piłsudski, refused any talks with Bałachowicz, despite the latter’s efforts. At the same time, delegates in Slutsk were already planning on how to “tear away” the troops forming under Bałachowicz from his influence. On the 16th of November 1920, Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz announced in Mozyr the creation of the Belarusian People's Republic (bis) headed by Vyacheslav Adamowicz (father), a participant of the First All-Belarusian Congress, as Prime Minister, while he proclaimed himself Commander-in-Chief of Belarus. The Congress of Sluchchyna responded negatively to this offer by rejecting cooperation with Bałachowicz and declaring their effective subordination to the consistently anti-Polish BPR government in Kaunas. Extremely characteristic of Boris Savinkov was his reaction to the contents of the Mozyr declaration, even though it was consistent with the agreement he had reached with Bałachowicz in August. In Bałachowicz's long, emotional letter to Boris Savinkov, we find that, back on the 16th of November in Mozyr, Savinkov had shouted in his face: “If I had known it was all about White Ruthenia, never in my life would I have gone!” Judging from Bułak-Bałachowicz's emotional letter to Savinkov, the latter had been taken in by Piłsudski, convinced that the sole objective of the Polish Head of State was, as expected by Wrangel, an anti-Bolshevik crusade and preventive establishment of a democratic Russia. It was only in Mozyr that Savinkov realized that he has almost been taken advantage of. Lis-Błoński expressly blamed Savinkov for the failure of the Mozyr effort. Savinkov, of course, never intended to disintegrate the future Third Russia through the establishment of some independent Belarus. However, it was not his fault. Bułak-Bałachowicz's was rejected, despite strong internal opposition, by the Belarusians themselves. Why did it fail? Reasons were manyfold. 1. Bułak-Bałachowicz enjoyed authority among the local crowd of his politically and nationally unstructured countrymen, and not, let us face it, the elite group of professional Belarusian politicians. Those in Kaunas had no knowledge, as they could not have any, of Bułak-Bałachowicz's political statements before Mozyr. While the one from Mozyr constituted a threat to their political and physical existence. 2. The Supreme Council, backed by Piłsudski since the 13th of December 1919, refused to take Bałachowicz's side. 3. The signing of the agreement between the Russian Political Committee and the Belarusian Committee of Vyacheslav A. Adamovich on the 16th of November 1920 in Mozyr was just a symbolic move forced on the Russians by the circumstances. Savinkov, given his own situation on the Belarusian political scene, in 1920 had absolutely no intention of establishing a Belarusian state. Moreover, it was him who, in April 1921, did unleash on international level a campaign of blaming Bałachowicz for all the shameful anti-Jewish pogroms that took place from the Baltic to the Black Sea in that period. 4. As a result of backroom intra-Belarusian intrigues, the executors of Piłsudski's pro-Belarusian policies based around Bałachowicz and signatories of the RussianBelarusian agreement, the pro-Polish activists Vyacheslav Adamovich and Pavel Aleksiuk found themselves on the margin of the Belarusian political scene. The breaking of the illusory agreement between the Russian Evacuation Committee and the Belarusian People's Republic occurred in June 1921 in the course of deliberations of the Representatives of Russian Political Evacuation Committee in Poland and a representative of the Belarusian Military and Political Centre. The Russian side alleviated the effects of this move by elaborating a “Political forecast for Belarus” as an undivisable political entity, drawn up by Savinkov's aide and Cheka agent A.A. Dikgof-Derental who acted on behalf of the Russian Political Evacuation Committee in Poland. One important question is whether Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz was actually aware in 1920 of his “position” in Piłsudski's planned new political combination. Could it be that the would-be Commander-in-Chief of the Belarusian Army had repressed the memory of the affront he met with in Mozyr from his countrymen? This hypothesis could be supported by the sudden change in Bałachowicz's orientation who, following his failure in Mozyr, “became” 100% Polish. In the new realities of Warsaw's political spheres and backrooms after the Treaty of Riga, Bałachowicz only as a Pole could guarantee the status and decent supplies for his troops and their families after the war. The end justifies the means. Especially that, in consequence of the sudden reshuffles in the spheres of influence, the status of these soldiers was disadvantageous.
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Keywords: folklore; recollective accounts; oral history;
This article includes information about the currently edited collection of wartime recollective accounts of the Holocaust. It is an authentic record of field research conducted in the southern part of the Świętokrzyskie Province. The author presents the subject matter of these narratives, emphasizing their folkloristic character. He lays most stress on the largely unnoticed though still important current of folk reckoning with the war and occupation.
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Keywords: Zygmunt Krasiński's correspondence; romantic subjectivity;sensuality;
The article is devoted to a reflection on sensuality and representations of mental experience in Zygmunt Krasiński’s correspondence. It depicts the themes related to the phenomena and presents a hierarchy of senses with a marked sight-centrism. The poet proves to be a figure that desensualises experience, and he strives to inward it. The vision of ideal subjectivity formulated by Krasiński admittedly sets up a synthesis of body and soul as the vision gives a spiritual character to what is sensual. Residual sensual experience is in the poet occupied by feeling love and – especially – facing disease and death.
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Keywords: Zbigniew Krasiński; Przedświt; Polish Romantic messianim; prophetism; Juliusz Słowacki; Adam Mickiewicz; August Cieszkowski; literature as an expression of the consciousness of the nation;
In his epic poem Przedświt [“Predawn”] Zygmunt Krasiński appears as a prophet announcing the Kingdom of God, “a new heaven and a new earth.” However, the poem does not merely express the ‘Adventist dreams’ of the Polish diaspora, since it is also a literary work advancing the ideas of the new prophetic and idealist “poetry of the third epoch.” Przedświt, the voice of the third Polish Romantic “seer,” is simultaneously the conclusion of the “discernment of its own being” by the “nation’s soul” deprived of a political body: the poem explains, in a possibly fullest manner, the meaning of the past and of the future of the Polish nation, pointing to the core of the nation’s mission in the world. Last but not least, Przedświt is also a love poem: while conveying the revelation of the final things, Krasiński also immortalized his Beatrice.
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Manchuria, an enormous geographic territory in eastern Asia, inhabited by peoples belonging to the Tungusic language family, has for hundreds of years been part of China. At present, in result of the conquest started in 1849, and treatises of 1858-1860 extracted by force from China, its northern part together with the Ussurian Country (Primorje), constitutes an integral part of the Russian state. This annexation triggered Polish history in these territories. The first Polish settlers in Manchuria were soldiers from the November uprising sent into exile to the Russian-Chinese border. Even before that those Poles who were convicted for their opposition against the Russian rule were put in border garrisons. After 1831, however, the influx of soldiers of Polish origin, including recruits, was so large that in the garrisons of the General Amurian Province every second soldier was Polish. They were used not only as armed forces, but also dealt with scientific research, administration and development of the occupied territories. Among them captain Jan Czerkawski was involved in the co n struction of almost all Russian posts on the Amur and was made the first commanding officer of Vladivostok, today a 650.000-harbour city.After the defeat of the January Uprising in Polish territories thousands of insurgents and civilians were sent into exile. Official data report ten thousand Poles exiled to East Siberia. From the 1880s onwards, when the Russian plan to colonize Manchuria and Primorje was put into effect, the exiles were sent only to Sakhalin. The most prominent of the Polish convicts on this island was Bronislaw Piłsudski, a brother of the future marshal and chief of the regenerated Poland. He was exiled there in 1886. His research on the language and culture of the natives of Sakhalin: the Ainu and the Gilac people brought him fame and earlier release from exile. Among the Polish convicts on the island there were numerous socialistic activists, and the last group of Polish political exiles in Far East consisted of the revolutionaries of 1905. They gained freedom as late as 1917, when the czar was overthrown. Historian s unanimously claim that at that time in the territory from the Urals to Manchuria the term "political exile" was synonymous to a Pole.Numerous Polish scholars conducted research in the territories of Russian Manchuria, among others, Benedykt Dybowski (1833-1930), an th ropologist Julian Talko Hrycewicz (1850- 1936), geologists Kazimierz Grochowski (1873-1937) and Emil Dunikowski (1855-1924), mining engineer Witold Sągajłlo (1871-1963), and botanist Karol Rothert (1863-1916). Manchuria was developed and settled by voluntary Polish emigrants, as a result of mass co n fisca tions o f Polish estates and the 1865 ban on land purchase. Poles could not purchase land in nine provinces of western Russia. Several thousand of workers and many Polish engineers worked at the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway, but only a few hundred of them settled in Manchuria. The same number of Poles served in the Russian armed forces in Far East. There were numerous Polish doctors and entrepreneurs. Until the outbreak of the Russian Revolution every twelfth inhabitant of Vladivostok was a Pole. According to the then observers and contemporary historians, the Poles played a considerab le role in promoting the elements o f European culture and civilization in those territories.The Polish community which numbered about 30.000 people started to establish their own organizational structures after 1863. Those structures were closely linked with the Roman- Catholic Church. The reason for this link was the fact that the czar authorities were willing to tolerate only religious difference. In the minds of the Poles, however, it was closely linked with the sense of national autonomy. Thus in the safe niche of the Church there were established Polish societies of self-help and Polish schools. The fall of the czar authorities in Russia and the regeneration of independent Poland entailed a wave of repatriation , the wave supported by the representatives of the Polish government in Russia. Until 1922 almost 20.000 Poles had left Russia, often in dramatic conditions. Repatriation of Polish orphans is a special episode of those years, the action was conducted by the Committee of Help to Children of Far East established in Harbin.The Stalin terror of the 1930s totally destructed the Polish community in Russian Manchuria. The church structures were abolished, and the majority of Poles sent to Soviet labour camps. It was only Germans’ attack on the Soviet Union (1941) that brought about the release of Poles from prisons and camps, so that they could form a Polish army in Soviet territories. Nevertheless, immediately after the war the relations between the Soviet authorities and the Polish government in London had been broken. The repatriation of 1944-1948 involved over 6.000 Poles from Eastern Siberia, but nobody returned from Russian Manchuria then. All in all, about 5.000 Poles had no opportunity to go back to their homeland.At the moment, together with the fall of the Soviet Union, the Polish community in Manchuria numbering a few hundred has regenerated. In Vladivostok and Khabarovsk churches were regained and Polish associations established. The origins of the Polish -Russian economic cooperation in this region hold promise that the account of wrongs and persecutions can ultimately be closed. There is a hope for mutual friendly relations between Poles and Russians, now as free nations.
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Keywords: National Armed Forces;
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Keywords: decisions of the Supreme Court; cases for rehabilitation;political offenders;
Analysed in the paper have been decisions of the Criminal and Military Departments of the Supreme Court in cases for rehabilitation of political offenders convicted in the years 1944–1988. The material under analysis consisted of 531cases examined due to extraordinary appeal which concerned the total of 1.276 persons, and 9 cases (of 33 persons) in which proceedings were reinstituted. On the whole, rehabilitation proceedings concerned 1.309 persons.Among the decisions appealed against in both the above modes, those passed in the years 1944–1956 form the largest group (56.7%); the second largest are decisions passed after December 13, 1981. The prevalence of cases from before 1956 is caused, amng other things, by the extreme repressiveness of penal policy of that period when state terror was lavishly applied and the fundamental principles of legality commonly infringed. The persons involved in rehabilitation proceedings before the Supreme Court are but a slight percentage of those convicted in the years 1944–1956. Also the penalties imposed in that period were extremely severe. Of the 702 persons now involved in rehabilitation proceedings (and formerly convicted in the years 1944–1956), as many as 86 were originally sentenced to death; 9 were sentenced to life, and 289 – to over 5 years impisonment.The most frequently quoted ground for extraordinary appeal was misapplication of substantial law (230 cases). It is also worth stressing that many a time, error as to the established facts also resulted in such misapplication of substantial law.Of the 540 rehabilitation proceedings, as few as two yielded negative results.The most frequent decision was acquittal or discontinuance of proceedings basing on Art. 11point 1 of the code of criminal procedure (i.e. for the reasons identical to those that lead to acquittal). Such decisions were passed with respect to over 90% of persons involved in rehabilitation preceedings. As many as 73 persons were rehalilitated posthumously (as the death penalty had been duly executed in their case).The most frequently quoted ground for acquittal in the mode of extraordinary appeal was absence of the statutory features of a prohibited act (272 cases) and of the factual ground for indictment (151 cases). Additionally, defendants had been convicted in 46 cases despite of the fact that their acts had not been punishable at the time of commission and, in 24 cases, despite of circumstances that excluded criminal responsibility. Therefore, as many as 493 cases ended with conviction despite of explicit grounds for acquittal (only the formal definition of an offence taken into account at that). In cases in which proceedings were reinstituted, the main ground for acquittal was non-punishability of the act at the time of its commission. Thus verifying the sued decisions that had actually infringed legal provisions, the Supreme Court acted mainly as defender of the law.In 52 cases, defendants were acquitted due to absence of social danger of the act. What should be stressed here is the crucial importance of such decisions where absence of social danger is quoted as the sole ground for acquittal. This removes the collision between a concrete provision of penal law and the basic human, values, and affords possibilities for a proper assessment of an act from the viewpoint of such fundamental rights and values (and not political or other criteria dictated by a current situation). The unjustly convicted could therefore be fully rehabilitated but their actual contribution to the act for which they had originally been convicted was not belittled.A characteristic tendency of the Supreme Court’s decisions in cases for rehabilitation was a full approval for non-violent struggle against violence: for peaceful means of opposing totalitarianism.As has been confirmed by the present analysis, penal law was a peculiar instrument of the totalitarian rule; the trials of that period aimed at disposing of the real or imagined political opponents. Owing to the rehabilitating decisions, many of those formerly convicted could now receive full moral satisfaction; additionally, those decisions rehabilitate the judicial system to some extent and speak up for law based on the basic human values.Attached to the paper is an appendix which contains data on persons once convicted to capital punishment and life imprisonment and rehabilitated by the Supreme Court, as well as lists of the judges who imposed such extremely severe penalties and of persons who decided on the execution of death penalties.
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