Wojna polsko-bolszewicka w nauczaniu historii w szkołach podstawowych i średnich w latach 1944–1989

The article is devoted to presenting the 1919–1921 Polish-Bolshevik conflict in history teaching at primary and secondary schools in the period between 1944 and 1989. It includes the times of the communist rule in Poland. It contains an analysis of school textbooks and curricula in terms of propaganda and hypocrisy used by the Communists. The article shows distinct periods in which presentation of the Polish conflict with Bolshevik Russia changed. The first period lasted from 1944 to 1948, when the Communists only strengthened their authority in Poland. It is characterized by a relatively small amount of political propaganda in textbooks and avoiding sensitive topics. The next period are the years of Stalinism (1948–1956) characterized by sharp comments about the Polish participants of the 1920 war, often called fascists. Some normalization of the situation occurs in 1956–1970. This is a period of negative presentation of the war against the Bolsheviks, but without aggressive vocabulary. The years 1970–1980 are the time when textbooks were enriched with facts, although a tendency to criticize the eastern policy of the Second Republic of Poland still remains. The last highlighted period includes the years between 1980 and 1989, in which the collapsing communist system enabled more objective teaching about the war of 1920. The article is an attempt to present the impact of authority on the teaching system at schools, an example of which may be the presentation of Polish-Bolshevik War in the People’s Republic of Poland.