Policja II Rzeczypospolitej – pomiędzy negacją a gloryfikacją. Historiografia i postulaty badawcze. Cz. 2 – Stan badań od 1990 roku

The present article is part two of the discussion attempting to assess the state of research on the history of the police in the Second Republic of Poland in historiography. This time I focus on the publications since 1990. I am interested in the literature concerning both the State Police and the Police of the Silesian Voivodeship, two independent organisations. The subsequent part deals with works published since 1990, and the last part is focused on the fate of police officers after September 1, 1939. This section also contains more complete summaries and research postulates. Obviously, the 1989/1990 timeline is not accidental, as it had a significant impact on the way historiography dealing with public security organs in the interwar period was conducted. The turn of the 1980s and 1990s was extremely fruitful for Polish historiography, including research on the history of the pre‑war police. On the one hand, access to archival materials became free and easy, thus opening new perspectives for researchers. This unrestricted possibility of using documents from the family archives of police officers and their family members was of great importance for gaining information about the everyday service of police officers. On the other hand, in some publications we notice a prevailing tendency to over‑heroise and sometimes even mythologise the pre‑war police, and this unfortunately is still happening today. All this coincided with the fact that there were an increasing number of authors dealing with the history of the police in the Second Republic, and consequently, the scope of research I was interested in had to expand.