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Abstract
This article delves into the post-war urban planning of Racibórz (Ger. Ratibor), a mid-size city in Poland, shedding light on the socialist city's historical roots and its adherence to socialist urbanism models. Using planning maps and other archival documents, it examines the reconstruction process that aimed at creating green spaces and quality housing, while at the same time revealing its medieval past. The article also investigates the city's deviation from known recovery patterns and highlights a lesser known approach to creating a city with a national form and socialist content. Overall, this research offers a comprehensive exploration of a reconstruction process in a mid-size city, enriching the understanding of European post-war urban history.

Celem autora artykułu było poddanie analizie możliwości zmian w zakresie polityki podatkowej, która miała miejsce w latach 2020-2022. W związku z dynamicznymi zmianami cen, a przede wszystkim cen w zakresie paliw, wywołanych m.in. pandemią COVID-19, polska władza ustawodawcza i wykonawcza podjęły próby zahamowania wyraźnej inflacji. Interwencja obejmowała przede wszystkim podatki pośrednie, tj. podatek od towarów i usług i akcyzę. To właśnie zmiany w zakresie podatku akcyzowego stały się kanwą do niniejszego opracowania. Celem było zbadanie dopuszczalności zmian legislacyjnych i ich skonfrontowanie z obowiązującymi normami prawa unijnego. W pierwszej części autor podjął próbę usytuowania podatku akcyzowego w sferze unormowań obowiązujących na terenie Unii Europejskiej, oraz scharakteryzował pojęcie harmonizacji. W dalszej części opisano ewolucję unormowań w zakresie podatku akcyzowego i przyczyny harmonizacji w zakresie tego podatku. W ostatniej części dokonano dogłębnej analizy algorytmów wyznaczających progi dla podatku akcyzowego i porównano je ze zmianami w krajowych aktach prawnych. Pozwoliło to na wyciągnięcie wniosków, rozstrzygnięcie zagadnienia i wyciągnięcie konkluzji w przedmiocie prawidłowości postępowania w procesie legislacyjnym, braku uchybień i naruszeń prawa unijnego w omawianym zakresie.

The aim of the article is a sociological analysis of the way young visitors (post-millennials) perceive art museums in the context of their expectations in a mobile communications era. This problem is very interesting because young visitors, members of the post-millennial generation, participate in social and cultural life in a quite different way than previous generations. This problem is also very important because just post-millennials will decide the fate of this kind of institution in the not too distant future. The analysis of the perception of museum institutions is based on the results of an empirical study carried out among high school students (16–20 years old). The main areas of interest in this study were their preferences in the style of visiting museum exhibitions, their opinions about the exhibition being visited, and their expectations regarding changes in the formula of presenting art in the museum space.

AbstractA pictorial postcard condenses a cityscape into one iconic image, which claims to summarize the place, usually in a highly aestheticized version. If that is the case, how does one present an industrial city: with factories and worker housing or rather with churches and the palaces of industrial tycoons? Using four digitalized collections (over 700 postcards) this article analyses images of industrialized cities from the late nineteenth century until the end of the Cold War. The main argument is that this idealized depiction does not focus on industry, but rather taps into the imagination of the European city.

Violence Hates Games? Revolting (against) Violence
in Michael Haneke's Funny Games U.S.
Abstract: This article aims at exploring Haneke's Funny Games U.S. as a protest against violence employed in the mainstream cinema. Satisfying compensatory needs of the spectators, constructing their identities, and even contributing to the biopolitics of neoliberalism, proliferating bloodthirsty fantasies put scholars in a suspicious position of treating them as either purely aesthetical phenomena or exclusively ethical ones. Haneke's film seems to resist such a clear-cut binary; what is more, it contributes immensely to the criticism of mainstream cinematic violence. Misleading with its initial setting of a conventional thriller, Haneke employs absurd brutality in order to overload violence itself. The scenes of ruthless tortures are entangled in the ongoing masquerade, during which swapping roles, theatrical gestures, and temporary identities destabilize seemingly fixed positions of perpetrators and their victims, and tamper with the motives behind the carnage. As I would argue, by confronting its spectators with unbearable cruelty devoid of closing catharsis, Funny Games deconstructs their bloodthirsty desire of retaliation and unmasks them as the very reason for the violence on screen. Following, among others, Jean-Luc Nancy and Henry A. Giroux, I would like to demonstrate how Haneke exhausts the norm of acceptable violence to reinstate such a limit anew.

One of the most important contemporary experiences of European societies is undoubtedly the migration crisis. The resulting social fears of 'strangers,' which have been activated, show how important the archetypical 'other-stranger' pattern still is, and that it can be treated as an example of an 'anthropological constant.' The aim of the article is to try to look at the painting "The Wayfarer" by Hieronymus Bosch as an illustration of the archetypical 'other-stranger' pattern. It seems that such a reading of this work, rich in symbolic content, on the one hand perfectly justifies the thesis of the archetypical sources of contemporary attitudes towards 'strangers' and, on the other hand, allows one to better understand and explain the current reactions and behaviors of Europeans. This becomes particularly evident when juxtaposing the image of Hieronymus Bosch with the contemporary media images of migrants.

In the broadest possible terms, this paper aims at exploring the relation between death and insects in Samuel Beckett with a special emphasis put on the fact that it is insects that form one of the most repetitive and complex animal figures in his oeuvre. Surprisingly, his otherwise desolate and bleak spaces – despite the inherent anthropocentric framework they are founded on – are inhabited by the plethora of nonhuman species. Insects are here no exception; Beckett's writings are abundant in references to flies, bees, hornets, wasps, or ants. The paper begins with confronting Alain Badiou's take on Beckett with Rosi Braidotti's and Giorgio Agamben's theories, including the anthropological machine. It is argued that, contrary to the human figures condemned to ceaseless agony and torment deprived of the ultimate horizon of death, insects belong entirely to the realm of death in Beckett; in other words, they struggle to breach through the wall of life. In order to prove that, I discuss the unclear ontological status of Worm in The Unnamable. Moreover, the paper reconstructs Moran's relation to his bees, depicted in Molloy, including his insightful study of the waggle dance and the discovery of their cadavers. Finally, the paper focuses on the logic of a swarm, which Beckett seems to be fascinated with, and the metonymies of insect tropes and technology, whose Thanatic aspects disclose the unsettling connections between humans and nonhumans in Beckett's works.

This paper examines the debates that surrounded the renovation of the royal castle in Krakow during the last decade before World War I. When the Galician crownland took over the castle in 1905, it bore little resemblance to a royal seat, having been used as military barracks since 1846. The debate that followed focused on what should be preserved, what demolished, and what recreated. In this discourse the "meaning" of a historical monument was examined and different interpretations within the circles of architects, preservationists, and artists were propagated. The debate conducted during the meeting of the Central Commission for Research and Conservation of Historic Buildings revealed that the division was not along national lines, but rather among different philosophies of preservation of built heritage. The point made by the paper is that the discourse conducted 100 years ago allows us today to draw conclusions about the role of historical buildings in a national(istic) worldview and examine its inherent contradictions. That is because, I argue, the past as such matters little in the national(istic) understanding, despite its ostentatious interest in history. What matters is the usefulness of historic symbols in the present.

Celem artykułu jest socjologiczna analiza współczesnej młodzieży, tworzącej nowe pokolenie zwane millenialsami lub też pokoleniem Y. Współcześni młodzi ludzie różnią się bowiem w dosyć istotny sposób pod względem mentalnym oraz prezentowanych postaw społecznych od przedstawicieli pokoleń starszych. Autor artykułu w oparciu o dostępne polskie i światowe wyniki badań empirycznych omawia najistotniejsze cechy swoiste dla współczesnej młodzieży, wskazuje również na pewne różnice między millenialsami w Polsce i na świecie.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń, located near Konin in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, provides a unique insight into a nationalistic discourse in contemporary Poland. It was created not only as a Catholic shrine but also as a place of patriotic indoctrination. This paper examines not only the architecture and design of the Church and the surrounding Sanctuary, but also the ideas of Rev. Eugeniusz Makulski, the site's founder, and Barbara Bielecka, its architect, in order to understand one of the important currents in a debate on the Polish post-Communist identity. A close analysis of this religious shrine is intended not only to understand this particular site but also to examine how national identity is (re)defined in architecture. As this paper shows, the employment of symbolic devices allows the creation of a coherent story of the Polish nation as a religious community with a history intrinsically linked to the Catholic Church. However, the annexation of the lay sphere (nation) by the sacred one (religion) leads to problematic results when it comes to the universality of the religion and the "nationalization" of the Catholic Church itself.

Aim: The article is devoted to the problem of financial abuses and frauds that undermines the public finances of EU and public interest.Motivation: The problem is not new and it is known for several years. There is no doubt that investments funded by the EU are common. A huge amount of EU money is also a huge temptation and purpose of economic crimes. Over the years, the EU and the Member States already took some action to prevent from embezzlement of the EU budget. Until now, the main institution that coordinated the fight against these phenomena was the European Commission and its structure, especially the European Anti-Fraud Office. Fighting against economic crimes violating the interests of the EU is difficult for the procedural reasons. European investigators have no prosecuting power. Investigative role is limited to gathering evidence and transferring it to the national prosecuting authorities. After that European investigators lose the control over conducted case. The Treaty on the functioning of the European Union gives us another tool to fight the frauds. It seems that the solution is to establish the European Public Prosecutor Office (EPPO) with full procedural rights to prosecute violators. That's why the general thesis is that EPPO should be established as soon as it is possible to help prevent EU citizens money in more effective way than it is today. However this could be a contribution for the next article concerning the economic analysis of the law and the impact of new regulations on security funds entrusted to the EU.Results: The idea of establishing an EPPO has almost 10 years and was initiated in the connection with the latest financial crisis. Unfortunately, despite declarations and attempts to start it in January 2015 it is still not known if and when it will actually work. The article also takes the issue of commitment and various visions of the Member States of achieving the EU budget safety and other problems on this ground.