Dear all,
The next PUNO history seminar will take place on 16th April starting at 6.30pm (UK time). See below for details.
Best wishes,
Michael
16 April 2025 Prof Piotr Osęka (Institute of Political Studies of Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)
„You were not supposed to ask that question”. Autobiographical memory of agents of the communist security apparatus in Poland.
Oral history has in recent years become one of the basic tools in the study of social history or the history of the anti-communist opposition. At the same time, this methodology is practically absent in the narrative on the functioning of the security apparatus. The presentation will be aimed at filling this gap. I’m going to present findings from anonymous biographical interviews with former secret police agents. I have conducted several dozens of interviews with former high-ranking officers of the Security Service; the political police in communist Poland. These were hours-long talks, focused on their career paths; I asked about the motives that drove them to join the service; the investigative method they employed; their daily routine, and details of the police job. Almost all my interviewees were involved in cracking down on the dissident movement in the ’70s and ’80s, the policing activity usually associated with intimidations, blackmails, beatings, and even assassinations. The paper will focus on presenting the main narrative strategies used by former officers in making sense of their biographies – professionalization, determinism, and denial.
Piotr Osęka is a historian, professor at the Institute of Political Studies of Polish Academy of Sciences. He has published several books and numerous articles on the history of communist Poland, totalitarian propaganda, proposopography, and the anthropology of secret police– both in academic journals and Polish broadsheets. His recent publications include ‘“Secret Services Are Meant To Serve”: State Violence in the Autobiographic Memory of Secret Police Officers in Communist Poland’ in East European Politics and Societies (online) and ‘The Elites of Solidarity: Prosopography of Delegates for the First National Congress of Solidarity’ in East European Politics and Societies, 35(4), 1195–1216.
To register / join the seminar go to: