Criminal offences as an element of anti-state activities in the eastern lands of the Second Polish Republic from 1921-1925

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to illustrate the phenomenon of common crime in the eastern areas of Poland from 1921-1925. In the text, the author gives examples of this and its cause and effect on the functioning of the young Polish state. The timeline of the study covers the period from the signing of the Riga Treaty ending the Polish-Soviet War in 1921, to 1925 when the Bolsheviks temporarily gave up their aggressive attempts to spread communism in Europe. The author of the study focused on the most important type of crimes characteristic of the borderland such as robbery and smuggling, using the literature on the subject, source publications, and archival resources, mainly from the Central Military Archives, the Border Guard Archives in Szczecin, and Ukrainian archives in Lviv and Tarnopol. The research aims to show the characteristic types of common crimes, their connection with anti-Polish activities on the part of the USSR and Lithuania, and the intertwining of political crime with criminal offences. In the work, the author uses the critical analysis of sources, literary analysis, and the comparative method.