registration questionnaire (kwestionariusz ewidencyjny, KE)

A category of operational case conducted against people with previous convictions or suspected of “hostile activity”.

According to the glossary of the IPN Archival Inventory, a KE was opened on people who, at the time it was opened, were not engaged in “hostile activity” but had a record of anti-communist activity or earlier surveillance and could be regarded as a threat to the authorities. The SB's Divisions II (counterintelligence) also opened KEs on diplomats from Western Europe and the USA. The KE served for routine monitoring of people who had already been of interest to the SB or had been registered for “anti-state” remarks.¹

The KE already existed as a form of operational procedure in 1966. The files were archived in Bureau “C” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or in the “C” divisions of the regional units and registered in the archive register under the reference II, sometimes IV. In the armed forces a similar function was served by the WSW operational control file (WSW instruction of 1984, § 67).^1,2