Summary

Volume 4 of the Augustow and Suwalki Yearbook consists of two parts.

The first part contains papers presented during the session titled “15 Years of Wigry National Park”, organised between 15-16 October 2004 in the building of the State Archives in Suwałki. The participants of the session were representatives of state institutions, local governments, protected areas, organisations, foundations and societies cooperating with the WNP, scientific institutions, teachers, representatives of local community and the media – the press, radio and television. The participants of the session listened to lectures summing up the Park’s activities and the results of research carried out in its area. The second part of the Yearbook contains sketches and articles, announcements, materials, reviews and a chronicle.

The papers devoted to the Wigry National Park have been provided with separate summaries in English.

The second part of the Yearbook begins with an excellently documented historic studies by Slawomir Brzozecki OP titled ithuanian Dominican Province. In it the author describes the history and activities of this preaching order in Lithuania from the moment the first Dominican missionaries appeared in this area in the second half of the 13th century to the end of the 19th century, when the Dominicans were removed from Lithuania.

In his article Kazimierz Leończyk presented the history of Lanowicze, a gentry village and estate near Suwalki. On the basis of this text, which is based on archival sources, it is possible to follow through the changes which economy was undergoing over a significant period of time (from the 16th century to the year 1945). It is also a valuable contribution to deliberations on the fate of people and families.

Tomasz Naruszewicz described a situation in the borderland between Prussia and Poland before the outbreak of the Second World War. He presented moods and attitudes of people living at that time in three borderland towns: Raczki, Bakalarzewo and Filipow. He also showed the course of military action in September 1939 in and around these towns.

Two announcements prepared by Sławomir Filipowicz and Marek Sidor, employees of the State Archives in Suwałki, were devoted to Count Karol Brzostowski, a well-known Polish reformer of economy and society in the first half of the 19th century, the creator of the Republic of Sztabin. The first of the articles deals with K. Brzostowski’s participation in and attitude to the November Uprising., in the other its author reviewed archival sources stored in the Suwałki archives and concerning the Count and his estate.

An interesting picture of trading relations in the borderland between Prussia, Lithuania and Poland at the beginning of the second half of the 18th century emerges from the files of the Customs Office in Augustow, prepared and provided with a commentary by Jaroslaw Szlaszyński.

The content of the Yearbook is complemented by two reviews (of the books by Krzysztof Sklodowski – about the Colonel Jan Kozietulski 3rd Regiment of Krechowicki Uhlans, and by Stanislaw Buchowski - about Polish and Lithuanian relationships and the Sejnenskie Uprising) and a chronicle of activities conducted in 2003 by the Augustowsko-Suwalkie Scientific Society, the Regional Museum and the State Archive in Suwalki.

Translated by Elżbieta Rzemieniewska