The article aims to present the culture-forming role of the Catholic Church, which emerges from selected communications of the Polish Embassy at the Vatican, in opposition to the sovietisation of Polish culture developed by the communist authorities of the People's Republic of Poland in the years 1956-1968. Materials from the Archive of the Józef Piłsudski Institute in America and available literature constituted the basis for the analysis. The undertaken research considering the sources fills a significant gap in the knowledge about the Catholic Church's opposition to the process of sovietisation of Polish culture during the Cold War. It should be emphasised that in the postwar period the Church was the institution that shaped Christian values and a kind of "bastion" of resistance to the authorities whose one of the goals was to sovietise Polish culture. It continued the discourse on the ground of the expression of the inability to reconcile the communist ideology with Christian values in European, including Polish, culture. It also acted as a correspondent for the affairs of oppressed nations subjected to the course of sovietisation. The undertaken research is an answer for lack of knowledge on the Catholic Church opposition towards the process of sovietising Polish culture during the Cold War. All the above allows the hypothesis that the Catholic Church during this period was the only one successful opposition to the PRL authorities which were against the Polish culture and society.

The objective of the article is to establish the grounds for trading in cultural property within the territory of the EU single internal market and to investigate the trading dynamics in importing and exporting such property in the years 2008-2015. The analysis is based on the EU legal acts, statistical data published by Eurostat and a critical review of the literature. The thesis has been formulated that trading in cultural property repre-sents an important element of taking care of the protection of cultural security and potential and demonstrates endeavours for the cultural expansion of the respective EU member states, whose share in the structure of import and export of cultural property on the European Union market is far from being even. The share of a given state in the international exchange of cultural property presents an important aspect of creating not only economic, but also cultural security. In the years 2008-2015, a few European states were able to gain dominance in trading in cultural property in the European Union. Potentially, it poses a threat of cultural uniformity and standardisation, being the phenomenon which adversely affects the protection of unique systems of cultural security in Europe.

The aim of this article is to identify and characterize selected sources of national antagonisms of the Second Polish Republic through Ukrainian activities in Eastern Lesser Poland. The considerations are based on archival material and critical analysis of scientific literature. A thesis was put forward that the actions taken to materialize the Ukrainian case and interests in Eastern Lesser Poland were a source of national antagonisms in the Second Polish Republic and one of the factors weakening the security of the Polish state. The presented arguments show that the so-called Ukrainian case in Eastern Lesser Poland was connected to the security of the Second Polish Republic, and the Ukrainian actions in this region, unfavourable towards Poland, weakened Poland’s security. The actions taken by the Ukrainians were a source of national antagonisms in Poland in the interwar period. Nationalism, terrorism, neglect of duties related to military service, anti-Polish propaganda and defamation of Poland in the Ukrainian press and diplomacy in the international arena, threatened Poland’s security in relation to the development of the sociopolitical situation in Eastern Lesser Poland.