The course is intended to provide students with basic knowledge of Polish history in the period after the beginning of the post-communist political and economic transformation at the turn of 1989 and 1990. The course shows the reasons the post-communist change had to be started together with conditions and challenges rooted not only in the communist times, but also in the whole history of the Polish nation. It also discusses the then the main directions of political, economic and social change, as well as their driving forces and main results.