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SHORT NOTES

the goodwill of State organs and public opinion. Evcn though the landowners presented the ZZRR as an organization acting against the interests of the Polish State, their efforts to weaken the influence of the trade unions failed to produce the dcsired results.

The author prcsents the events from the landowners’ point of view. He appraizes the activity of the Landowners’ Union and the influence it exerted on relations between employers and workers. The book is based on documcnts referring to the Landowners’ Union activity in Warsaw, kept in the State Archives in Kielce and in the Library of Lublin’s Catholic University. (OL)

Zbigniew Karpus, Grzegorz Radomski and Witold Wojdyła (eds.), Zamach stanu Józefa Piłsudskiego i jego konsekwencje w interpretacjach polskiej myśli politycznej XX wieku [Józef Pilsudski’s Coup d’Etat and its Conseąuences in the Interpreta-tions of Polish 20th Century Political Thought], Toruń 2008, Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 376 pp.

This volume, devoted to a momentous event in the history of the reborn Polish State, contains papers which were read at a conference organized by the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń in 2006. The volume is divided into four parts. The texts in the first part depict the new political situation and the functioning of the State after 1926. The next two parts deal with the attitude of the Pilsudski’s camp and other political parties to the coup; the last part contains publicists’ comments on the coup and the views of public opinion.

It is worth drawing attention to Henryk Skladanowski’s article (in the second part of the book) entitled ‘Józef Pilsudski’s May Coup d’Etat in the School History Textbooks\ It discusses the tasks set State schools and their gradual ideologiza-tion. The author analyzes the content of textbooks (the choice of matcrials, the language, the interpretation of events, the cult of State dignitaries), the new curricula in the first years of the Pilsudskiitc camp’s rule and during the Sanacja period. Very interesting is also Ewa Maj’s article ‘The Attempt to Demythologize the May Coup in the Political Concepts of the National Democratic Party’, which presents the methods and propaganda mcasures used to demythologize the Pilsudskiites and discredit them in the eyes of public opinion. The author analyzes the language and symbols used by the National Democrats to enhance the political image of their party in its rivalry with other political groupings. Unfortunately, the book does not provide information on the authors and origin of the texts. It is only from the tcxts themselves that the reader can learn that the papers were read at a conference. (OL)