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SHORT NOTES

of the conference against the background of the Polish People’s Republic’s foreign policy, and discusses the diplomatic consultations within the communist bloc. The second and third parts present the diplomatic negotiations held on the eve of the Conference to fix a joint stand of the communist bloc. She is particularly interested in how this was achieved. In the fourth part Tomkiewicz describes the negotiations in Helsinki, and in the fifth part she evaluates the results of the Conference. Like other researchers, she emphasizes that the most important achievement was that the Conference had raised the rank of human rights, which meant that they could no longcr be regarded exclusively as an internal affair of individual countries. This created a chance to democratize the countries east of the iron curtain. The author comes to the conclusion that Polish diplomacy tried to work out its own concepts with regard to some ąuestions, but generally speaking ‘unanimity’ prevailed in relations between Moscow and Warsaw in the 1970s. Tomkiewicz has based her book mainly on the extensive Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party. She has supplemented her research work with interviews with Polish participants and organizers of the Conference. (KK)

Stanisław Jankowiak, Poznań i Wielkopolska w marcu 1968: ‘taka jest prawda i innej prawdy nie ma’ [Poznań and Greater Poland in March 1968: ‘This is the Only Truth’], Poznań 2008, Instytut Historii Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza, 237 pp., ills.

The protests staged by young people, especially students, in 1968 were among the most important events in recent Polish history (it should, however, be remembered that they differed substantially from the youth revolt in the West). They have been usually discussed in their national context. The most important monograph on this subject is Jerzy Eisler’s Polski rok 1968 [The Year 1968 in Poland), (2006). Jankowiak emphasizes that there is a need for a detailed regional research. In his book he focuses on events in Poznań. But he presents them against a wider background: against the socio-political situation which prevailed at that time in the country and in the region. He has madę use of documents issued at that time by the municipal authorities and the PZPR (Polish United Workers* Party) bodies in Poznań. He has also gained access to previously unknown shorthand records of the meetings of the Senate, of the faculty meetings and of the PZPR cells at Poznań University. He estimates that ca 2,000 persons, that is 15 per cent of the students (who predominated in the protests) took an active part in the demonstrations in Poznań in March 1968. The Poznań students did not create their own political programme. They organized the protest in order to express their solidarity with the students in Warsaw. According to Jankowiak, the 'March events’ in Poznań had serious conseąuences; they divided the academic milieu into a group which later created the democratic opposition, and into those members of the Staff who remained loyal to the party. Another result was that conformist attitudes intensified. (KK)