The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish state research institute in charge of education and archives which also includes two public prosecution service components exercising investigative, prosecution and lustration powers. The IPN was established by the Polish parliament by the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance of 18 December 1998 through reforming and expanding the earlier Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation of 1991, which itself had replaced a body on Nazi crimes established in 1945.

Aleksander Kwaśniewski is a Polish politician and journalist. He served as the president of Poland from 1995 to 2005. His tenure as President was marked by modernization of Poland, rapid economic growth, the drafting of a new Polish Constitution (1997), and the accession of Poland to NATO (1999) and the European Union (2004). In 2004, he brokered a pro-democratic agreement during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.