Bulletin of the Maritime and Colonial League of May 1939 (from the collection of the State Archives of Іvano-Frankіvsk Oblast)

Archival materials regarding the history of the Maritime and Colonial League (M&CL) have not been fully preserved for any of the pre-war districts of this organisation. The most conspicuous gap in archival records was left by war damage. When, in the early 1980s, Tadeusz Białas attempted to present the entirety of the M&CL’s activities in interwar Poland, he based his investigation on an extensive search of preserved archival materials, which, for obvious reasons, he had to limit to Polish national archives1. At that time, access to archives located on the territory of the then USSR was severely restricted, and obtaining permission to access archival materials related to the history of the second largest social organisation with a strong paramilitary character in the Second Polish Republic verged on the impossible. The situation changed after the collapse of the communist camp and, ultimately, the USSR itself. It was then that Lithuania, Belarus and the Ukraine, all opened their archives to Polish historians. As an effect of work undertaken in 2016 in the State Archives of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (Державныiї Архів Івано-Франківскоі Області) in Ivano-Frankivsk (prewar Stanisławów), unique archival material related to the activities of the M&CL in the former Stanisławów Voivodeship was obtained. Fonds 414 contained the organisation’s2 statute, reports on the League’s collections for the Maritime Defence Fund