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“Autogangs”. Car Smuggle to Communist Poland in the 1980s

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Nawrocki K.

Studia Historiae Oeconomicae

2016

vol. 34

167-182

The article refers to the economic consequences of the post-war division of Europe into the capitalist West and communist East. One of the consequences of this division was the creation of peculiar crime phenomenon on the eastern side of the “iron curtain”, which consist on exploit the prices and goods availability differences between wealthy West and backward East of Europe. This being the case of illegal movement of goods, begun from the 1940s, between those two worlds. In article you can find the outline of characteristic for the whole Polish “People’s” Republic period smuggling conducts. The key subject of following text is first of all the problem of car smuggling in the 1980s, which wasn’t researched by polish historians before. In this interesting for us times in Western Europe (West Germany, Austria, France) and in Scandinavia at least few groups of organized crime were active in a areas of car stealing and smuggling a luxury goods into Poland. The essence of following article are the presentation of these groups, their bosses, criminal practices and techniques and indication of the cooperation between polish car smugglers and western countries citizens. Sources for this text are based first of all on operational and investigation records of former Security Service collected in archives of the Institute of National Remembrance.

Elbląskie inicjatywy antysystemowe w pierwszym roku stanu wojennego (13 grudnia 1981 – 12 stycznia 1983 roku)

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Nawrocki K.

Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość

2011

issue 1(17)

371-385

This article describes “Solidarity” circle of Elbląg, which after 13 December 1981 faced the necessity of changing hitherto methods of its activity. Since that time the most crucial assignment to be fulfilled by former members of the “Solidarity” movement (split after the introduction of martial law) was sustaining the idea of “Solidarity” through distribution of illegal publications and organizing patriotic demonstrations. An initial section of this article is a paragraph concerning “Solidarity” of Elbląg at the time of its legal activity. It focuses on the August 1980s events in Elbląg and on the scale of the public support for the “Solidarity” before the introduction of martial law. The main part of the text concentrates both on spontaneous, antiregime initiatives of the youth of Elbląg (Independent Poland Movement [Ruch Polski Niepodległej, RPN], Kalinscy brothers) and on coordinated actions of the first underground Edmund Krasowski’s group, taken after 13 December 1981. A large piece of the text refers to two patriotic demonstrations in Elbląg on 18 December 1981 and between 3 and 5 May 1982. The May manifestations are considered to have been the biggest social protest in Elbląg in the 1980s. Major initiatives with subsequent activities of the Elbląg underground are compared in the ending to this article. This comparison enabled to advance the thesis that all activities presented in this article were the best organized and particularly intense throughout the period after 13 December 1981 in Elbląg. This article is based on documents from the Institute of National Remembrance’s Archive in Gdańsk and from the State Archive in Łódź with the headquarters in Malbork. Numerous testimonies of witnesses such as Antoni Borowski, Edmund Krasowski, Waldemar Matejak as well as various publications on this topic were used as a complement to those archival documents. The article is an important step in historical research on the underground activity of “Solidarity” and other opposition groups of Elbląg in the 1980s.

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1 Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość

1 Studia Historiae Oeconomicae

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“Autogangs”. Car Smuggle to Communist Poland in the 1980s

Elbląskie inicjatywy antysystemowe w pierwszym roku stanu wojennego (13 grudnia 1981 – 12 stycznia 1983 roku)