POLISH ROAD TO FREEDOM.
ATLAS FOR THE BLIND AND PARTIALLY SIGHTED

Subsidised by the Museum of Polish History in Warsaw as part of the "Patriotism of Tomorrow" Programme.

Between 2016 and 2021, blind and partially sighted people received six historical atlases, i.e. 'Historical Atlas of Poland', 'Atlas Polskie Powstania Narodowe', 'Atlas. II Rzeczpospolita Polska 1918-1939', 'Poland during World War II', 'The World during World War II', 'Battles of the Polish Armed Forces' and now 'Poland's Road to Freedom'. In addition, in other programmes during this period, further atlas studies relating to history and national heritage were produced, i.e. "Gulag - repressions of the USSR against Poles and Polish citizens", "General Anders' Army", "Atlas of the Eastern Borderlands" and two city plans: "Vilnius, Old Town Plan", "Lviv. Plan Starego Miasta" and "Warszawa. Plan Starego i Nowe Miasta" - are a total of more than 100 topics related to Polish history, graphically uniform, tactilely and visually legible and coherent in terms of content - all in accordance with the principles of universal design.

In order to understand the processes and mechanisms of all the changes that have taken place in Polish history, it is necessary to learn about their causes, moving from the general information we have in the "Historical Atlas of Poland" to detailed events, i.e. liberation uprisings or telling a complex story about a specific time in our history, e.g. about the Second Republic 1918-1939, bringing closer the history of the struggle to regain independence and the formation of a new state on the map of Europe.

The new Atlas tells the story of the "famous Polish months" - June and October '56, March '68, December '70, June '76, August '80, December '81, showing the places of the revolts, their extent, as well as their background and consequences, but above all the resistance growing in time and space, the emerging opposition.

In non-democratic states, and Poland was such a country before 1989, conflicts were not resolved but suppressed by force. The authorities sent the militia and the army against defenceless people. But not all conflicts were politically motivated; food price rises, shortages of supplies, poverty... were the cause of demonstrations. Andrzej Paczkowski, writing about the events between 1945 and 1989, notes that: "their analysis seems important because, while the history of Poland and its place in the more recent history of Europe is generally marked by a series of insurrections from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries and a revolution-insurrection of 1905-1907, while in recent history - i.e. post-war history - it is defined primarily by the workers' strikes and revolts of 1956, 1970, 1976 and the Solidarity uprising, which is most often treated as the culmination of the previous uprisings."

The atlas consists of 13 charts and a publication in enlarged print and HTML format, which includes historical commentaries thematically related to the individual tifflomaps. This is complemented by a Braille booklet containing explanations of the Braille abbreviations used on the individual charts. The print run of the publication is 160 sets. Each is contained in a handy folder.

Below are the titles of the 13 Tiflomaps:

1. 1947-1991. Europe - the time of the Cold War

2. 1945-1951. Poland - changes of borders after WWII

3. 1944-1956 Polish Independence Underground

4. 1956 Poznań June. The first rebellion in the People's Republic of Poland

5. March 1968 - student protests

6. December 1970 Workers' protests on the coast 7 June 1976

7. June 1976 Workers' protests

8. June 1979 - the first visit of John Paul II to Poland

9. Spring and summer 1980, strikes and the August Agreements, 10.

10. 1981-1983 Martial law - strikes, demonstrations, casualties

11. 1981-1982 Martial law internment centres

12. spring-summer 1988: a wave of strikes and the Round Table talks

13. 1989-1991: Europe after the break-up of the USSR

We wish you good reading

For questions and orders, please send an e-mail to publikacje@trakt.org.pl or call +48 22 576 18 79 and +48 606 75 75 85.