The Hoover Institution Library & Archives have obtained an increment to the papers of Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014), first secretary of the Polish United Workers Party (1981–89), prime minister of Poland (1981–85), and head of state (1985–90). Jaruzelski was the last leader of the Polish People's Republic (PRL) before the first partially-free, democratic elections sounded the death knell of the Soviet Communist system in Poland. The Jaruzelski papers consist of notebooks, biographical materials, photographs, correspondence, reports, unpublished manuscripts, typescripts, and Jaruzelski’s handwritten annotations of various documents. The papers are an indispensable resource for biographers and for historians of the Polish People’s Republic and the Cold War.

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