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Vol. 47 No. 2 (2019)

Recent history

Scouting in Exile at the End of the October ‘56 Thaw in the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association

DOI: https://doi.org/10.35757/STP.2019.47.2.5
Submitted: December 31, 2019
Published: June 28, 2019

Abstract

Since the establishment of courtesy relations between Warsaw and London in March 1957, through the exchange of correspondence between representatives of the authorities of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (ZHP) and the representatives of the ZHP Headquarters outside the country (ZHPpgK), these relations were twofold. Due to the caution of the ZHPpgK authorities, the offi cial relations never led to any formal cooperation (contract, resolution, etc.), and the unoffi cial relations are not well known yet. I have tried to describe the results of the research on this subject in a recently published book entitled Z tymi co zostali… Harcerskie relacje Warszawa – Londyn (1945–1990) [With Those Who Stayed... Scouting Relationships between Warsaw and London (1945–1990)] [Warsaw 2016], yet this article presents the arrangements made between 1957 and 1959 and is complementary. An important role in the period described was played by the then authorities of the global scouting, which tried to strengthen the ‘power’ of the arguments of the ZHPpgK authorities with their actions in 1957 and two years later. Invitation of the Polish delegation from ZHPpgK to two world scout jamborees was its actual confi rmation and probably an attempt to repair old decisions concerning scouts operating among Poles in exile. Finally, in April 1959, in the newly adopted statute of the national ZHP (during the Second General Assembly of the ZHP), a record appeared that the organisation developed its activities in the territory of the Polish People’s Republic and also ‘cooperated with Polish youth abroad’. This record was thoroughly different from the one that was passed in December 1956 during the so-called National Congress of Scout Activists, stating that ‘ZHP extends a fraternal hand to Polish scouts living outside the borders of our Homeland’. After two years of ‘coexistence’ under completely different conditions of two organisations of the same name, there was no mention either of the declared brotherhood or of the existence of an organisation that continued to be the rightful heir of the pre-war organisation on the ground of legalism. The changes that took place in the Polish ZHP at that time closed in a formal manner the next stage of the social thaw, which after October ‘56 also affected scouts in Poland. ZHP authorities operating outside the country (associated with the Polish government-in-exile), through their relentless attitude to events taking place in Poland, could have been satisfi ed that it was – as they often emphasised – a step towards the rebirth of ZHP, and in no case its reconstruction.

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