Milieus of Polish Exile in the West and Catholic University of Lublin during the Cold War

Abstract

During the Cold War Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) belonged to a group of few universities in Europe subjugated by communism, which had intensive and important contacts with the Western world. The catholic character and strong ties with Catholic Church helped in this. But it doesn’t explain nor the whole phenomenon of those contacts either their strength. Since 1945 the important part of Catholic community in the West were Polish émigré. Almost all of them perceived Catholic in Poland as an anchor of traditional values which was under strong political pressure of the communist authorities. KUL symbolised specificity of this oppression – directed against catholic higher education as well as against independent research. Preservation of mentioned contacts was a hard task, but helped university to survive financially, to extend the library collections and even to become known in world science. All credit goes to individuals ready for sacrifice (like priest Antoni Banaszak), special societies of Friends of KUL all over the world as well as other milieus (among the Literary Institute in Paris), which saw in KUL’s independence a value worth support. This text is only an attempt to reconstruct the geography of places from which that support was received as well as diversity of types of that support: grants, money transfers, direct financial help, facilitation in contacts with Western researchers. This is also the reason why KUL was so extraordinary university of Cold War times.