The article aims to sketch the biography of a person who significantly contributed to the development of research on the history of the occupation in Poland, including the Holocaust, and who is wrongly marginalized in the Polish reflection on the evolution of this discipline. The text is based on the analysis of broadly understood historiographic sources. I focus primarily on the following problems: Dobroszycki’s intellectual biography; theoretical frameworks of his scientific work; his input to research on World War II and the Holocaust; last but not least Dobroszycki’s role in Polish-Jewish scientific dialogue.

In March 1962, Paweł Jasienica, known chiefly for his books on the history of Poland, published an article entitled ‘Polska anarchia’ (‘Polish anarchy’). The article, which appeared in the weekly Przegląd Kulturalny, sparked off a heated debate on the sources of the anarchy into which the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth began to descend in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Among those who contributed to the debate were some of the leading historians of the day. Encouraged by the response to his article, Jasienica decided to expand it into a full-length book (completed in the spring of 1963).

The author first presents the views expounded in the article from Przegląd Kulturalny, and then he reconstructs the debate and examines how Jasienica referred to it in his work on the anarchy. Since Jasienica’s account of the anarchy covers the period with which he was also concerned in Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów (published in English as The Commonwealth of Both Nations) – the third part of his series on the history of Poland for which he is most acclaimed – the author also attempts to compare the interpretations advanced in one work with those advanced in the other.

As regards the anarchy, Jasienica traced its origin back to the reign of the last two kings of the Jagiellonian dynasty . In compliance with their commitment to securing the support of the great magnates on whom they chose to base their power, Sigismund I the Old (1467–1548) and Sigismund II Augustus (1520–1572) refused to endorse political arrangements advocated by the representatives of the Lower House of Parliament. The failure to reform the country along the lines suggested by the latter group led, in the long term, to political chaos. Unlike Jasienica, according to whom the Commonwealth degenerated into anarchy because of the errors committed almost exclusively by the rulers, the academic historians, whose views were inspired by Marxism, linked the state’s political impotence with the policy pursued by the whole nobility as a class. However, as the author shows, in Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów Jasienica radically changed his views. In his later work, all responsibility for the future anarchy was shifted onto Sigismund III Vasa (1566–1632) and his Catholic fanaticism. In revising his interpretation of what is known as the nobles’ anarchy, Jasienica drew, at least to some extent, on works by Jarema Maciszewski and Władysław Czapliński, historians who also represented the official historiography of the Polish People’s Republic.

Hayden White and Jacques Rancière used Erich Auerbach’s approach to the history of realistic European literature to construct their own theoretical discussions of historical and literary writing. White thus formulated the concepts of a figural relationship, modernist and figural realism, while Rancière critically commented on the undemocratic historiography of the Annales school and sought egalitarian writings in Western literature. White’s and Rancière’s readings of Auerbach will be used to compare their two theoretical approaches. The purpose of this analysis will be, first, to critically compare some of their contributions, and second, to incorporate Rancière’s claims into the English-language debate on the theory of history. I will try to answer the following question: how in their commentaries on the works of Auerbach White and Rancière defined the relationship between politics and historical and literary writing; how they articulate the politics of historical writing (White) and the politics of literature (Rancière).

There have been several canonical studies on the historiography of the political history of the systemic transformation in Poland still constitute a point of reference for researchers today. At the same time, however, the dynamic growth of the source base and the increasing popularity of post-structuralist scientific trends resulted in the fact that the research perspective characteristic of this canon is aging rapidly. The analysis and comments formulated in this text are an attempt at balancing the strengths and weaknesses of the historiography of the political history of the systemic transformation to date and an attempt to indicate how it potentially could develop further.

The article is devoted to Jerzy Targalski (1929–1977), a historian of the workers’ movement and the beginnings of socialist organizations in Poland. Targalski’s intellectual biography draws attention to the previously neglected area of studies on the history of historical science, such as the party structures of science, namely the Institute for Education of Scientific Staff/ Institute of Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party and the Department of Party History at the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party. What seems to be an important theme is the development of Targalski’s research interests and the evolution of his critical approach to both the historiography and the reality of the Polish People’s Republic.

The subject of the article oscillates around selected topics of science and technology studies in relation to the university space of institutionalization of science. The present proposition to extend metascience so that it comprises studies on the university and the anthropocene discourse is combined with an attempt to present these studies in the perspective of deep humanities, through consilience and the outline of the socio-cultural history of the university. Hence, I present here the view of social epistemology in the science in context discourse (in the style of Alvin Goldman rather than Thomas Kuhn), understood as a science about the social dimensions of knowledge, with an emphasis on epistemic processes and practices that provide space for the main factors influencing our beliefs, especially acts of communication and institutional structures. In this respect, this text can also be treated as a gloss to the contemporary dispute about the university and a reminder that this dispute should also be a reference point for the theory of social knowledge, taking into account the different contexts of interactions and their institutional complexity in which scientific facts (and most cognitive acts) are made.

The Department for Studies on the Origins of the Polish State was an institution established in 1949 by the Ministry of Culture and Art to carry out interdisciplinary research (which began a year earlier) on the genesis and functioning of the state of the First Piasts, undertaken in connection with the 1000th anniversary of the foundation of the Polish state and its baptism (1966). Although the Department’s main goal was to identify the main centers of the early Piast state, it also had its merits in the field of monument protection – archaeologists, taking advantage of the unique situation of destruction and demolition, entered the historic downtowns and began their research. The scale of the necessary interventions was becoming embarrassing, especially since the so-called great buildings of socialism and the reconstruction of cities led to numerous discoveries. However, the most challenging situation was at the construction site of Nowa Huta, which was located for political reasons, without considering that the selected areas were covered with fertile soil used by the population since the Neolithic. This article aims to present the history of rescue excavations in the area of Nowa Huta (now a district of Krakow, established in the late 1940s), the first stage of which was carried out as part of the Department activities.

The article discusses how the people of science and scholars made their living in occupied Poland (1939–1945). The problem is shown on the example of the wartime fate of an outstanding historian, Stefan Kieniewicz (1907–1992), whose diaries, juxtaposed with a variety of source material (including the materials from the German Archive Office [Archivamt]), allow for a relatively detailed analysis of the topic. The story stemming from these documents shows a survival strategy that seemed an obvious choice for a representative of the landed gentry intelligentsia. It was based on the use of education and family connections. Education allowed Kieniewicz to take up intellectual jobs, which he kept simultaneously in the Treasury Archive (Archiwum Skarbowe, Finanzarchiv) taken over by the Germans and in the apparatus of the Underground State (Information and Propaganda Office of the Home Army Headquarters). It also made him eligible for the support provided to the authors by the Warsaw bookseller, M. Arct. The income from these jobs was usually not enough for Kieniewicz to support his family in Warsaw. Up to a point, the deficit was covered by selling off valuable movable property and giving up the gentry lifestyle. Ultimately, the family used the hospitality of their relatives and moved to the estates in Ruszcza and Topola. The Warsaw Uprising deprived the Kieniewiczs of the remains of their possessions, and the agrarian reform deprived their more affluent relatives of property. These events concluded the transformation of Kieniewicz’s social status into the ‘academic intelligentsia’.