‘Terrifyingly Normal’ Authoritarian Bureaucracies: Secret Police Administration and Surveillance in Socialist Poland

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Secret Police ◽  
Police Administration

The process of investigating Diocesan Curia in Lublin by the PRL’s apparatus of repression in the years 1946-1974

2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Kosobudzka
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Source Analysis ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Recorded Data ◽  
The Government ◽  
Operational Activities ◽  
Intensive Surveillance

SUMMARYThe article below focuses on the source analysis of the process of investigating Diocesan Curia in Lublin in the years 1946-1947, during the period when two Lublin ordinaries were in charge: Bishop Stefan Wyszyński (1946-1948) and Bishop Piotr Kałwa (1949-1974). Diocesan Curia, as the most important institution in the Church administrative hierarchy, was subject to intensive surveillance by PRL’s apparatus of repression.At the beginning, the process of investigating the management structure on the diocese level was not conducted by specially selected departments but was performed as a part of broadly conceived actions directed against Catholic clergy. In the years 1946-1948,when bishop Stefan Wyszyński was in charge, operational activities against the clergy and the bishops were led by 5th Section of 5th Department of Voivodeship Public Security Office (Sekcja V Wydziału V Wojewódzkiego Urzędu Bezpieczeństwa) in Lublin (until the February of 1953). It can be inferred from the recorded data that until 1949 the Diocesan Curia’s circle in Lublin was very poorly uncovered by Polish communist secret police and their activity amounted only to gathering and verifying data received from informants. The shortage of well-trained agents prevented taking more intensive actions against Bishop Wyszyński and Diocesan Curia in Lublin.In the years 1949-1974, when Bishop Piotr Kałwa was in charge, the 5th Section of the 5th Department of VPSO continued their operational activities aimed against the Lublin’s Curia. In 1953 a new department was created on the basis of 5th Section. The so-called 11th Department took over the entirety of cases pertaining to the Catholic Church. In 1955 the 11th Department was transformed into 6th Department of VPSO in Lublin. 3rd Department of VPSO in Lublin and 1st Section of 6th Department of Polish communist secret police of Voivodeship Polish Citizen Militia Headquarters in Lublin (referat Służby Bezpieczeństwa w Komendzie Wojewódzkiej Milicji Obywatelskiej), respectively, also conducted investigation activities concerning the bishops and Curia.As of 1949, the Diocesan Curia in Lublin was subject to intensive surveillance by the PRL’s security service apparatus. Its main aim at that point was to restrict the Curia’s activity so as to gain control over it. In order to achieve that, the activity of Curial employees and bishops was documented and revealed. Additionally, the conflicts between the bishops, Curial employees and KUL’s management were incited and deepened. What is more, the secret police attentively scrutinized bishops’ and Curial employees’ personal lives in order to gather compromising data, gained secret collaborators (47 secret agents were involved in the process) and limited Curia employees’ departures for studies abroad. Almost every type of operation activities was used against Bishop Piotr Kałwa. The secret police applied phone tapping, bugging, surveillance, reading mail and sending anonymous letters in order to undermine his authority. What is more, the secret police tried to set bishop Kałwa at variance with Primate Wyszyński. However, these actions did not change Bishops Kałwa’s stance who, until his death, unwaveringly defended the Catholic Church’s independence from the government.

The Western Connection: Western Support for the East German Opposition

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
The West ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
East German ◽  
Environmental Network ◽  
The Relationship

Without help from the west, the small East German opposition,such as it was, never would have achieved as much as it did. Themoney, moral support, media attention, and protection provided bywestern supporters may have made as much of a difference to theopposition as West German financial support made to the East Germanstate. Yet this help was often resented and rarely acknowledgedby eastern activists. Between 1988 and 1990, I worked withArche, an environmental network created in 1988 by East Germandissidents. During that time, the assistance provided by West Germans,émigré East Germans, and foreigners met with a level of distrustthat cannot entirely be blamed on secret police intrigue.Outsiders who tried to help faced a barrage of allegations and criticismof their work and motives. Dissidents who elected to remain inEast Germany distrusted those who emigrated, and vice versa,reflecting an unfortunate tendency, even among dissidents, to internalizeelements of East German propaganda. Yet neither the helpand support the East German opposition received from outside northe mentalities that stood in its way have been much discussed. Thisessay offers a description and analysis of the relationship betweenthe opposition and its outside supporters, based largely on one person’sfirst-hand experience.

The Promotion Exams

1966 ◽  
Vol 39 (11) ◽  
pp. 568-574
Author(s):  
J. Daniel Devlin
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Police Administration

This is the fifth of a series of articles of special interest to candidates for the Promotion Exams. The articles all deal with aspects of police administration and organization, which is one of the subjects in Part II of the syllabus, and of those sections of Part I of the syllabus which deal with police procedure. Mr. Devlin is Author of Police Procedure, Administration and Organization

The (W)hole in the Archive

Paragraph ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie Ring
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
East German ◽  
Stark Contrast

This article turns its attention to the accounts that Foucault and Derrida made following their encounters with archives, and it relates these accounts to the files of the former East German secret police. Derrida and Foucault located differing qualities of authority in the archives that they consulted, yet they are shown here to converge around a problem of non-integrity in the structuration of the archive as supposed guarantor of epistemological sovereignty. A terminology of sovereign integrity dominates the Stasi's files, so that they sit in stark contrast with the literary and cinematic texts that grapple with the Stasi's legacy — texts that are beset with images of inconsistency and perforation. When read in dialogue with the poststructuralist accounts of the archive, these spy files and the cultural works that emerged after their opening enable new reflection on the ethics of visiting archives, as an act of doing justice that nonetheless risks collapsing the fragments of complex pasts into the narrative wholes of the political present.

scholarly journals Presidential Address: The Empire Strikes Back: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Canadian Secret Service

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Gregory S. Kealey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Lower Canada ◽  
Secret Service ◽  
American Nationalism ◽  
Permanent Home ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Rural Police

Abstract While the history of the RCMP security service is becoming better known, study of its nineteenth-century predecessors is just beginning. From experiments with a rural police force established in Lower Canada in the aftermath of the 1837 Rebellions, the United Provinces of Canada created two secret police forces in 1864 to protect the border from American invasion. With the end of the Civil War, these forces turned to protecting the Canadas from Fenian activities. The Dominion Police, established in 1868, provided a permanent home for the secret service. The NWMP followed in 1873. Unlike the English, whose Victorian liberalism was suspicious of political and secret police, Canadians appear to have been much more accepting of such organisations and did not challenge John A. Macdonald's creation or control of a secret police. Republicanism, whether in the guise of Quebec, Irish or American nationalism, was seen as antithetical to the new nation of Canada, and a secret police was deemed necessary to protect the nation against it.

The Russian Secret Police

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Hingley
Keyword(s):  
Secret Police
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