Abstract

In the fonds of the Ministry of Justice located in the resources of the Archives of Modern Records, materials have been compiled which concern the cooperation between the Ministry of Justice in People’s Poland and the justice departments of socialist countries. Among them, we can find reports (accounts) of trips and visits of delegations, correspondence containing information about the functioning of individual institutions of the judicature, and other files. The retained documents allow for looking into some aspects of the functioning of justice departments from the internal perspective and from the point of view of some separateness of units subor- dinated to them within ideologically and politically uniform Eastern Block. After the important visit of the Soviet justice department in Poland in 1955 and the return visit of the Polish delega- tion in the USSR in 1956, the cooperation between these departments ceased. The renewal of the contacts of the Polish justice department with the USSR in 1959 gave rise to regular visits of Polish delegation both in the USSR (1962, 1965, 1966), as well as in the countries of people’s de- mocracy (Czechoslovakia, gDR, Bulgaria, and Hungary). Obviously, the intensification of these contacts was characteristic to the changing political climate and a some uncertainty caused by, among others, the evolving practice of the judicature of the USSR, which preceded formal acts.