The PISM Archives consist of three parts:
- Documents pertaining to the Polish Government (the Chancellery of the President of the Republic, the Council of Ministers, the National Council, individual ministries, embassies, legations, commissions);
- Documents relating to the Polish Armed Forces;
- Personal and Subjects Collections which contain the papers of individuals and institutions.
These archival materials are essential and indispensable for any research on the Polish war effort during World War II, history of specific army units, the Government in Exile, and political, social, and cultural life of Polish émigrés. Of the particular value for the research on cultural resistance against Communism are collections of personal papers of Polish politicians, soldiers, artists, academics, journalists, leaders of the Polish exile community in Great Britain. Some of them took part in the struggle against the Soviet-sponsored regime as members of the Government in Exile, which symbolized the continuity of Polish statehood and sovereignty. Others participated in various international and pan-European anti-communist organizations of exiles.
Numerous émigrés actively supported the democratic opposition in Poland through publishing and book exchanges that not only served the needs of the exile community, but also sought to influence the situation in Poland by breaking the communist state’s monopoly on information and confronting censorship. Aniela Mieczysławska Raczyńska (1910-1998) was one of four Lilpop sisters of a very well known Polish family of Jewish descent. She was married to a Polish diplomat, Tadeusz Mieczysławski, from whom she separated during the Second World War. After the war she lived in New York until 1961 when she moved to London. She was the longtime partner and third wife of Count Edward Raczyński (1891-1993), former Polish Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Great Britain, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and President of Poland in exile from 1979 to 1986. From the late 1940s to the 1970s, Mieczysławska was a close collaborator, friend and fundraiser of Jerzy Giedroyc, chief editor of the France-based Kultura review and founder of the Literary Institute in Paris. She also befriended painter, soldier, and writer Józef Czapski, another towering figure of the Kultura milieu. She made significant contributions to the work carried by PISM.
The collection of Mieczysławska’s personal papers includes extensive correspondence with luminaries of Polish politics, literature, music and arts, including Jerzy Giedroyc, Józef Czapski, Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, Kazimierz Wierzyński, Andrzej Bobkowski, Józef Wittlin, Witold Lutosławski and Zygmunt Mycielski. Mieczysławska bequeathed her personal papers to the Archives of the PISM, which acquired them in 1998, upon Mieczysławska's death. The collection consists of 355 files and is one of the larger collections kept in the PISM. It was processed and described by Wacław Milewski, Keeper of Archives from 1980 to 1989 and later a volunteer worker. He prepared the collection’s finding aid, which is available for use in the reading room of the Archives. The collection was frequently used in research projects and journalistic publications on Polish history, culture, literature, émigrés, and Kultura review. It provided a source base for two edited volumes of correspondence between Aniela Mieczysławska and writer Andrzej Bobkowski.
