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Zanalizowawszy wnioski wyprowadzone z wojen Zachodu przeciw Rosji/ZSRR w XVII-XX w. i przyjrzawszy się im w świetle sytuacji w Rosji po 24 lutego 2022 r., autor dochodzi do następujących konkluzji: 1. fundamentalną lekcją historyczną Zachodu w jego polityce bezpieczeństwa w ogóle jest lekcja Monachium 1938, 2. mocarstwa Zachodu, rozpoczynając siedem z ośmiu wojen przeciwko Rosji, albo stosowały się do różnych lekcji wynikłych z poprzednich wojen, albo nie stosowały do żadnej, 3. z kryzysów integralności Rosji w latach 1917-21, 1941-45 i latach 90. XX w. oraz własnych reakcji na nie Zachód wyciągnął generalny wniosek, iż jej rozpad nie jest ani osiągalny, ani pożądany, 4. Cesarstwo Rosyjskie i ZSRR były w większym lub mniejszym stopniu imperiami kolonialnymi, natomiast współczesna Federacja Rosyjska pozostaje imperium, ale już w fazie pokolonialnej, 5. w ciągu roku od inwazji na Ukrainę nie wystąpiły poważne symptomy kryzysu integralności Rosji, 6. obecnie strategia Zachodu czynnie wspierająca rozpad terytorialny Federacji byłaby bezzasadna, bez względu na to, co pewne lekcje historyczne mogłyby "sugerować".

The author shows the contemporary political regime in Serbia, focusing on the role of the president and the party system. He traces Serbia's evolution in the last decade from non-consolidated democracy to hybrid regime or even non-consolidated authoritarianism from the historical experiences that shaped her political culture. He identifies the sources of autocratism and monism in her state, church and intellectual history. He compares Serbia with Croatia, which for twenty years is a non-consolidated democracy. The article shows that Serbian and Croatian historical pre-1991 cultural and political traditions influenced the perceptions of democracy and "strong leaders" rules of their contemporary inhabitants no less than experience from the transformation period.

This article contains a comparative analysis of presentations in selected Polish periodicals in November 2018 of the war between Poland and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic over Lviv and Eastern Galicia in the years 1918–1919. In an analysis of the media discourse the author takes into account factographic, axiological, teleological, ideological, and political dimensions. He distinguishes five conventions for the presentation of the events: national-dramatic, national-heroic, martyrological-defamatory, tragic, and tragi-comical. He argues that not all have been represented in the different models of memory policy functioning in the public debate in Poland under the governments of the Law and Justice party (2015–2019). He considers that there have been four such models: the nationalist-Catholic, conservative-nationalist, universalist-patriotic, and self-critical. He argues that the rightist political party (Law and Justice) has long aligned itself with the conservative-nationalist model, while centrist groups, and especially the leftist group, do not attach great importance to memory policy. The author points to the danger resulting from neglect of historical issues in the Polish media.

Croatia is the only modern country in Europe that gained independence (Independent State of Croatia, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) during World War II thanks to the cooperation of the Axis. It is now struggling with the burden of responsibility for the mass crimes committed against Serbian, Jewish, Roma and Croatian political opponents on its own initiative rather than the Third Reich's. On the other hand, the Croats were heavily repressed by the Yugoslav Army in 1945 (the remnants of the NDH forces were killed near Bleiburg during the so-called 'way of the cross'). The Croats were also persecuted for their independence and cultural activities in the period between 1945 and 1991 (e.g. the Croatian Spring of 1971).Since 1991, the political scene of Croatia has been dominated by two parties: the right-wing Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which refers to the whole tradition of the independence movement with the exception of the Ustaše and NDH, and the left-wing League of Communists of Croatia (SKH), the successor of the Communist Party of Croatia. The parties fight for the memory of activities conducted by the anti-communists and communists between 1941 and 1991. They also fight to include the patriotic war' of 1991–1995 to their symbolism and win the favour of veterans.The article examines the politics of memory pursued by the Croatian authorities in relation to the events of 1941–1991 and the main participants in the political scene in the period between 1991 and 2016. It takes account of the arguments of historians and intellectuals associated with the left and right side of the political scene. It examines the impact of international circumstances, such as Croatia's pursuit of membership of NATO and the EU, inducing the state's authorities to prosecute and condemn the perpetrators of crimes committed on its citizens in the years 1941–1945 and those responsible for the ethnic cleansing of 1991–1995. The author also points to the impact of individual orientations in the politics of memory on the process of Croatia's transformation from totalitarianism to democracy and the related modernization changes.

This article analyses the de-communization laws passed in Ukraine in May 2015 and the public debate they evoked. The author presents the circumstances in which the laws were passed and describes the thought processes of their drafters from the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. Three discourses are distinguished in the debate: the expert, the national-liberal, and the deconstructivist. With the exception of representatives of the national-liberal discourse, the debaters were critical of the laws and expected either their rejection by the president or their fundamental amendment. In the end, however, the laws passed into force in their first version. Drawing conclusions from this failure of the participants in the debate, the author analyses the relations between the intellectual field and the political field in Ukraine and also the internal relations of the former—between its participants within the country and abroad. In conclusion, the author ponders the strategy that should be adopted by Ukrainian intellectuals for the purpose of increasing their influence on the decision-making of politicians.

The author analyses the contemporary narrative of the Great Famine of 1932–1933 (Holodomor) in Ukraine in two contexts: the policy towards the state's memory after 1991 and academic historiography. The first part of the article points to the fact that the Great Famine has become a modern foundational myth of Ukraine. The myth is compared with the myth of Sweden, which also relates to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century history and the fight to ensure food self-sufficiency of the nation. However, the messages of these myths turn out to be different. While in Sweden it expresses the society's successful fight for the fruits of the earth, in Ukraine it has remarkably martyrological connotations – from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, the neighbouring nations and states have been playing the roles of perpetrators of poverty and misery of the Ukrainian people. The second part of this paper is devoted to the analysis of differences in the interpretations of the Great Famine made by two contemporary Ukrainian historians: Stanisław Kulczycki and Heorhiy Kasyanov. The former has eventually come to the conclusion that the Great Famine was caused by the genocidal policy of the Soviet authorities towards Ukrainians as a civic nation (2008). On the other hand, Kasyanov claims that the Great Famine was triggered unintentionally by the state authorities. In his opinion, it resulted from the chaos of forced collectivization policy, and then was used by Moscow to break the emancipatory aspirations of the Ukrainian elite. While the author admits that the second of these interpretations is more relevant, he does not fully agree with Kasyanov's postulates regarding the way of presenting the disaster to the public. The "antropologization" of the narrative would be convincing for academic historians, but others would find it hard to understand. According to the author, the Great Famine was the second largest disaster caused by man in the history of Europe, next to the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war and the population of the occupied territories of Eastern Europe by the Third Reich. As such, it marks the history of Ukraine in a special way. The author agrees with Kasyanov's criticism of presenting Holodomor as the genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by Russians.

In his article the Author examines the notion of remembrance policy, the importance of remembering the events of the period 1939–1953 for contemporary identity politics in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as the course of a conflict about the memory, which escalated between those countries and Russia particularly between 2005–2010. The Author introduces a term "remembrance policy model", which concerns the balance of powers among political actors in a given state, who influence the shape of this aspect of the state policy. He also analyses the state strategies of the remembrance policy in international relations within the region, with special attention to Lithuania and Ukraine. He examines reasons for the success of the policy of remembering the 1939–1953 events in Lithuania in 1991–2011 and a failure of such policy in Ukraine in 2005–2010. The sources of difference between the effects of these two policies lie, in his opinion, not only in far greater ethnic and identity homogeneity of the Lithuanian society, but also in the fact that the EU gave an early, clear and consistent support for economic, social and political transformation of that country, which was, unfortunately, not provided to Ukraine — either after its establishment in 1991, or after the Orange Revolution in 2004.