This paper models income distribution in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic) in 1990s and 2000s using parametric models of income distribution. In particular, we use the generalized beta distribution of the second kind (GB2), which has been found in the previous literature to give an excellent fit to income distributions across time and countries. We have found that for Poland and Hungary, the GB2 model fits the data better than its nested alternatives (the Dagum and Singh-Maddala distributions). However, for Czech Republic and Slovak Republic the Dagum model is as good as the GB2 and may be preferred due to its simpler functional form. The paper also found that the tails of parametric income distribution in the Czech Republic, Poland and the Slovak Republic have become fatter in the course of transformation to market economy, which provides evidence for growing income bi-polarization in these societies. Statistical inference on changes in income inequality based on parametric Lorenz dominance suggests that, independently of inequality index used, income inequality in the Czech Republic, Poland and the Slovak Republic has increased during transformation. For Hungary, there is no Lorenz dominance and conclusions about the direction of changes in income inequality depend on the cardinal inequality measure used.

This article deals with Makryna, a forgotten drama in five acts and a prologue pub-lished in 1929 by Antoni Waśkowski. The analysis focuses on the drama’s intertextual dialogue with the history, literature and mythology of Polish Romanticism and the mod-ernist reception of those issues in Stanisław Wyspiański’s Legion (1901). The article takes to task the critical consensus that sees Waśkowski as a second-rank epigone of Romanti-cism and the Young Poland movement. In fact, it argues, Makryna challenges the re-ceived historiosophic vision of Poland’s history embodied in the work of, among others, Stanisław Wyspiański, Waśkowski’s literary master. The author of Makryna is uncom-promising in his denunciation of the 19th-century revolutionary movements and some aspects of the Polish Romantic culture, especially the messianic commitment of ‘national prophets’ like Makryna Mieczysławska, Juliusz Słowacki (the poem Rozmowa z Matką Makryną Mieczysławską [ A Conversation with Mother Makryna Mieczysławska]), Adam Mickiewicz, Andrzej Towiański.