Wywiad z prof. Markiem Cichockim. Długie pożegnanie z kanclerz Angelą Merkel
Rozmowa z prof. Markiem Cichockim
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Rozmowa z prof. Markiem Cichockim
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A Polish minister presents his views on the EU crisis and potential ways of dealing with the current problems.
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A leading Polish scholar offers a new look at the legendary U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and his more than realistic vision of the future of Europe.
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The Harmel Report constituted a genuine breakthrough in NATO’s strategic position on the Soviet Union and Prof. Robert Kupiecki presents its history as well as consequences.
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Polish analyst Ryszarda Formuszewicz offers a synthetic but vital picture of the political situation in Germany following the last elections. Could “the grand coalition” work? And how would it impact on the international position of the country?
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Tomasz Krawczyk presents his original vision of Polish-German relations—from idealism to hard realism.
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Łukasz Jurczyszyn looks at Emmanuel Macron’s presidency as a political fact and a social phenomenon, pointing to its pluses and problems.
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Sovereign Bealurus is a important factor of Polish Foreign Policy. Potential unification of this country with Russia is a horrible worsening of Polish Political situation.
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Issues related to engagement appear more and more often in the literature related to human resource management, as well as by people who deal with voluntary work and activity on various levels of social life, or in a broader sense - public life. Three forms of engagement: educational, professional and political, as defined by Tischner, show a broad spectrum of the problem, especially in terms of ethics. Engagement does not only concern the performance of assigned tasks, whether in connection with the assumed social or professional roles. Tischner’s thinking about all human action and activity focuses on the choice of values and building one’s own authentic or inauthentic identity, also with the use of such a tool as dialogue. The aim of the article is to present the most important thoughts of Józef Tischner on the subject of socio-political commitment in the ethical (axiological) aspect.
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Biographers usually focus on the analysis of a person’s life fortunes. According to recognised sociologists, philosophers and scientists – experts on history psychology, rarely do they analyse a selected aspect of interpersonal relations based on available historical resources. What was the essence of the bond between Piłsudski and his close companions? What was characteristic for those relations and what were their determining aspects in various periods of Piłsudski’s activity? Those are the questions that are being answered in this article. The author undertakes to reconstruct the evolution of relations between Józef Piłsudski and his companions based on numerous memoirs by his associates. His assets in competition for the leadership position, his features of character and even physical appearance are being analyzed. Objective factors, like war success, which helped him reach for authoritarian rules in Poland are pointed out. Some important questions are being answered: Who were the people that recognized his authority? Who was able to oppose him? A strong sense of historic mission to rebuild the country within Piłsudski’s circle, originating from common values shaped by national culture, has been pointed out. It is characteristic that despite the changes Piłsudski’s relations underwent, they consistently preserved the commanding character between the leader and his agents. These were formed by numerous factors, but undoubtedly the strong will of Piłsudski remained crucial. He was extremely successful in consistent building relations based on his own authority, which still resonates among his countrymen.
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Józef Karol Potocki vel Marian Bohusz (1854–1898) was very important and influential although forgotten thinker. His ideas of evolutionary socialism and ethnic nationalism were fundamental for both main Polish political formations of the 1st half of 20th century: Polish Socialist Party (and broader Piłsudski’s camp) and National Democracy. The very fundament of Potocki’s world-view was idea of any “cosmic energy” as prime mover of evolution. The evolution leads towards broader and broader, deeper and deeper integration, towards more complex societies. In opinion of Potocki socialism (as a system based on cooperation) would be natural result of this evolution. Historical and cultural heritage transform society into nation – community bonded by biological ancestry, economic cooperation and culture. This ethnic meaning of the Polish nation excluded Jewish minority. On the other hand, the real nation are the working people (especially peasants), not ruling classes. Nation needs an independent state as instrument of autonomous development, therefore Potocki was bitterly anti-Russian. Potocki tried to propagate the idea of a common front of socialists and nationalists for independence. Polarization of Polish public opinion in the end of 19th century made his efforts unsuccessful.
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Witold Bieńkowski (1906–1965) was a Polish Catholic activist, entangled in the dilemmas of the era in which he lived. Before the war, he was associated with Catholic youth movements, during the war, he was an activist of the Front for the Rebirth of Poland. Ge devotedly worked to save Jews in the Council to Aid Jews „Żegota” and in the Jewish section of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Government Delegation for Poland. However, as early as 1944 he was accused of the murder of Ludwik Widerszal and Jerzy Makowiecki, officials from the Information and Propaganda Bureau of the Home Army Headquarters. On the eve of the Warsaw Uprising, he found himself in territories occupied by the Soviet army, where he attempted to act as a government representative for the lands free from Germany. He then made contact with Bolesław Piasecki, but soon he was arrested by the Soviets, with whom he probably held secret political talks. Released by the underground branch in May 1945, at the turn of summer and autumn 1945 legalized thanks to Piasecki, soon assuming the position of editor-in-chief of the „Today and Tomorrow” magazine, and two years later he was appointed a member of the Legislative Sejm. He was a spokesman for the recognition of People’s Poland not only for geopolitical but also ideological reasons, proclaiming the need for radical socio-economic transformations, encouraging Catholics to support them. To gain the authority of this concept, he demanded that the communists should represent Catholics politically, but not in the form of a traditional Christian Democrat party, but with time he came to the conclusion that an informal political environment, even the most influential, meant less than a legal party. Therefore, he became a spokesman for the radical left-wing Catholic party, and when this vision failed, he persuaded Piasecki to formalize their movement ideologically and politically. This is documented by the quoted letter from Bieńkowski to the leader of „Today and Tomorrow” of December 1947, in which he noted that the environment may disintegrate if it is not bound by a specific form serving to implement the program. Bieńkowski quarreled with Piasecki in 1948, later becoming the press clerk of Primate Stefan Wyszyński, and briefly associated with the Christian Social Association. He died, forgotten in 1965, charged with suspicions of the murder of BIP officials. Regardless of this, Piasecki largely took up his concept, creating the „PAX” Association, grading, as Bieńkowski wanted, his leadership and giving it a clear, ambitious program of „overcoming the winner” through „multi-worldview socialism.”
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The article presents the last years of the life of Ludomił German (1851–1921), a Galician teacher and school inspector, playwright, translator and politician. He was an activist of the Democratic-National Party and Polish Democratic Party, membor of the Austrian parliament in Vienna (1907–1918) and the National Parliament in Lviv (1912–1914), vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies and vice-president of the Polish Circle. During the World War I, he kept a diary in which he described his activities in the Supreme National Commitee (established on August 16th, 1914), the Polish Circle and the parliament, as well as the history of the Polish Legions, the struggle for their leadership and the efforts undertaken by the leaders of Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland to unificate the Polish lands and create a more or less independent Polish state. As a supporter of the trialist option (replacing the dualistic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with the trialistic Austro-Hungary-Poland, created as a result of the joining of the Russian Kingdom of Poland to Galicia), he saw the place of Poles at the side of the Habsburgs almost until the end of the war. He spent the end of his life in Lviv, where he also died. His diary, divided into two parts, is kept in the collections of manuscripts of the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow, Poland (number 8537 I, „Notes from great times”, original) and in the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv (Fond 5, number 6415, vol. I–III, „Memoirs of 1916–1918, copy).
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The author reads and interprets the work of Christian Graf von Crockow titled “The Hour of the Women”. She shows that in the process of (re)writing his sister’s story in various ways, the author strengthened the sense of her narrative – he became a “biography resonator”. The aim of the article is to analyze the aims and methods, as well as the effects of this “resonance”. It will be a look at a biographical and historical work from a literary studies, partly interdisciplinary perspective. The author argues that it is time to replace the rhetoric of the collective experience of Polish and German resettlement with an analysis of the record of an individual fate.
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The president has a peculiar, somewhat unclear function in the Polish legal system. Despite being elected by common vote, which should give him significant authority, the Polish president does not hold important prerogatives. The main goal of the article is the analysis of different head of the state models, best exemplified by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Italy, and a major aspect of the presidency — the significance vested in the fact of being elected. The analysis leads the author to postulate introducing gradual changes in regulations pertaining to the office of president in the Polish Constitution modelled on of the German Basic Law and Constitution of Italy.
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In the Nile basin, there has been a conflict between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan over the construction of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) by Ethiopia. Egypt and Sudan, relying on the alleged historical title to the waters of the entire Nile, are demanding that this project be abandoned, eventually threatening to take military action. For Ethiopia, the construction of this installation is an opportunity for development, as it will contribute to the country’s energy independence and improve the possibility of irrigating farmland. Since 2011, when the announced commencement of the implementation of the plans has been announced, talks between states, supported by third states (even great powers) and international organizations, have been ongoing. So far, no agreement has been reached, although the 2015 Declaration has offered some chance for a peaceful solution. Unfortunately, countries have moved away from it, preferring the less friendly ways of resolving this dispute.In fact, there may be several solutions to the present situation. The first of the most dangerous is an armed conflict; the second is finding an agreement that guarantees the rights of all riparian states; the third is to maintain the status quo, in which no one trusts anyone, states take action on their own, which in turn may lead to the degradation of the Nile. It is also worth noting that none of the conflict states takes into account the environmental effects of the work carried out, or the possible climate changes, leading to extreme phenomena such as periods of very high rainfall and subsequent long periods of drought. The interests and needs of all river basin states are equally important and they all have the right to use the river safely on equal terms, without infringing the rights of their neighbours.Ethiopia has the right to use the waters of the Blue Nile, but under international law, this should not lead to permanent damage to Egypt and Sudan. The question to which we do not know the answer is whether it is possible at all, having in mind the expectations of the lower basin states.
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Рано-вранці 24 лютого 2022 року росія розпочала свою широкомасштабну агресію проти України. І майже одразу розгорнулася співпраця соціологів України та Польщі, конкретно соціологів Львівського національного і Вроцлавського університетів, з метою осмислення нової соціальної реальності, яка утворилася з цього часу в їхніх країнах та у світі. Важливою части- ною цієї співпраці став випуск низки бюлетенів, які підготували представники кафедри соціології Франкового університету, а їхні колеги з університету Вроцлава переклали польською та англійською мовами і розмістили на сайті свого університету. Львівські соціологи поставили собі завдання інформувати широкий загал у Польщі та через неї – і в інших країнах про перебіг російсько-української війни в її «гарячій» фазі та про стан громадської думки в сучасній Україні, а також про теоретичні рефлексії, які виникають на ґрунті емпіричних досліджень цього часу. Одним з перших наших узагальнень стала теза: «Соціологія також зброя».
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In the early morning of February 24, 2022, Russia launched a wide-scale aggression on Ukraine. Nearly instantly, cooperation developed between the sociologist from Ukraine and Poland—from the National University of Lviv and the University of Wrocław—the aim of which was to understand the new social reality that has been shaping since that moment in these two countries and in the world. A significant part of this cooperation was the publication of bulletins prepared by the representatives of the Department of Sociology at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. Their colleagues from the University of Wrocław were translating the bulletins into Polish and English and were publishing them on the website of their university. The sociologists from Lviv aimed to inform the public in Poland and, through Poland, in other countries about the course of the Russo-Ukrainian war during its ‘hot’ time as well as about the state of the public opinion in Ukraine and about the theoretical reflections emerging from the current empirical studies. One of the first generalisations we arrived at was the thesis: “sociology is also a weapon.”
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The role and importance of rural areas for the overall socio-economic development of the European Union is underestimated, also often neglected. The widespread discussion of this perception in the last few years and the factors that determine it have catalyzed the process of finding flexible and innovative solutions to valorize the potential of these areas. The instrument for achieving this change is the Long-term vision for EU`s rural areas in the horizon 2040, which aims to model stronger, connected, sustainable and prosperous rural areas within the Community.
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This paper compares the development of geopolitical theories and divides them into three categories according to their characteristics: offensive, defensive, and normative. Time is a dimension that must be considered in any theory. This paper argues that geospatial characteristics and national development methods determine the changes in geopolitical competition, and force's effectiveness is an intervention variable. The three variables lead to the evolution of geopolitical theory from conflict to defence to institutional cooperation. The emergence of virtual spaces such as the Internet has changed the contradiction between limited geographical space and unlimited national development in geo-competition and provided an opportunity for geopolitical theory to break through power theory. The complexity of the geo-environment that countries face when participating in geo-competition determines the necessity of establishing a united geopolitical view. This paper divides a country's diplomatic environment into three categories: geo-environment, regional environment, and space environment. Distinguishing these three environments can help to think about the focus of a country's foreign strategy. The country must make a difference in the geo-environment, be active in the regional environment, and work hard in the space environment.
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