Ochrona tajemnicy wojskowej w prawie karnym Polski Ludowej

Keeping a secret was considered to be one of the main duty of each citizen in the People’s Poland. It was conditioned by an international situation in which Poland and the remaining coun- tries of the communist bloc found themselves after the beginning of the “cold war”. One of the secrets the communist authorities took a special care of was a military secret. Its violation was regarded as a serious threat for the interests of the people’s country dealing with a capitalist encirclement. It constituted one of the reasons of creating a developed system of the regulations of the criminal law to provide protection of the military secret. A starting point was regulations of the criminal code of the Polish Army from 1944 which later on were supplemented with subsequent regulations. The publication of a decree on the protection of a state secret and confidential information from 26 October 1949 was a breaking point in a legal-criminal protec- tion of the military secret. Being a result of an exacerbating internal and external situation, it brought new regulations not only in the protection of the military secret. Based on the Soviet patterns, it predicted pun- ishment for revealing any information regarded to be secret. At the same time, it repealed the already existing regulations of the criminal code of the Polish Army, guaranteeing the protection of the military secret. Biding till the criminal code from 1969, a decree from 26 October 1949 was the basic legal act protecting information in a secret clause in the People’s Poland.