Academic activities of the Institute of National Remembrance Archives

The Institute of National Remembrance Review Archives except for its statutory archival tasks perform also the academic and educational activities. The unit of the Archive tasked with academic activity is Wydział Badań i Edukacji Archiwalnej – the Division of Archival Research and Education, several Archive employees in other divisions as well as in local units are also doing archival and historical research.

The important part of the academic activity of the IPN Archives is publishing the documents concerning various aspects of the recent Polish history. The several multi-volume editions – among several dozen of other publications – could be noted: three-volume edition of the documents concerning Stanisław Mikołajczyk, a wartime and post-war outstanding Polish politician, three-volume edition of the documents concerning the mass protests of March 1968, two-volume edition of the documents concerning the surveillance, abduction and murder of priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, as well as one-volume editions of the normative acts of the Communist security police: „Instrukcje i przepisy wywiadu cywilnego PRL z lat 1953–1990” (“Instructions and regulations of the civilian foreign intelligence of People’s Polish Republic 1953–1990”) and „Normatywy Departamentu III oraz Departamentu Ochrony Konstytucyjnego Porządku Państwa MSW (1956–1990)” (“Normative acts of the Department III and Department for the Protection of the State’s Constitutional Order of the Ministry of internal Affairs 1956–1990”).

The editions of the documents kept in IPN Archives were also prepared by the archivists working in the local branches of the Institute. The books mentioned concerned i.a. the forming and beginnings of the activity of the Communist security apparatus in Poland’s various regions, the Security Service dealings targeting democratic opposition and “Solidarity” trade union movement, and operations during the John Paul II visits in Poland.

The IPN Archives cooperate with the archives abroad. Among the results of the cooperation with Special Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine is i.a. publishing of 10 volumes of the document edition series „Polska i Ukraina w latach trzydziestych–czterdziestych XX wieku. Nieznane dokumenty z archiwów służb specjalnych” („Poland and Ukraine in 1930s–1940s. Unknown documents from the special services’ archives”). The volumes were published in Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, one of the volumes was published in English („Holodomor. The Great Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933”, Warsaw-Kyiv, 2009). The selection of the most valuable documents from the first 8 volumes of the series was published in English in 2012 („Poland and Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s. Documents from the Archives of the Secret Services”). The individual volumes of the series were presented in the events held at the academic centres worldwide ((Harvard University, Toronto University, Monash University, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine).

Since 2008 the IPN Archives publish the academic periodical „Przegląd Archiwalny Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej” („Archival Review of the Institute of National Remembrance”). Up to 2021 fourteen volumes of the periodical were issued. The tables of contents and the abstracts of the articles are published also in English. The subsequent volumes of the periodical are available online in PDF format. For more about the periodical, see the separate text.

The other form of the academic activity of the IPN Archives are the conferences and symposiums, i.a. also the conferences organised by the IPN Archives concerning various aspects of the IPN’s archival activity and the character of the collections kept in the IPN. The results of the research concerning the archival theory, methods and archival scholarship were presented there. Since 2008 – due to the establishment of the UNESCO World Day for Audio-visual Heritage – the IPN Archives (the Section of the Audio-visual Documentation in the Division of the Digital Resources) organise the annual academic conference concerning the problems of the visual and audio archival records. The conference held in 2014 had an international character. The last 11th meeting took place in October 2019, the next one is scheduled for October 2021. Since 2013 the IPN Archives in the cooperation with the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and Warmia-Mazury University in Olsztyn organise the academic workshops on the archival theory and methods. The lectures delivered during those workshops are published in the series “Symposia Archivistica” (six volumes of the series were already published, and the seventh is in the process of edition). The abstracts of the papers in the series are published in English.

The employees of the IPN Archives are also participating in the research projects led by the IPN’s Bureau for the Historical Research, and its academic conferences. Many of them lead their own research projects, resulting in preparation of their PhD theses, research monographies and papers as well as source documents editions. One of such books is widely acclaimed and awarded two-volume monograph penned by Witold Bagieński „Wywiad cywilny Polski Ludowej w latach 1945–1961” (“The civilian foreign intelligence service of the People’s Poland 1945–1961”) (2017).