Over the past three years, Polish AFOL Mihał Ch has been documenting his nation’s history in a series of LEGO vignettes. The minifig-scale scenes celebrate the heroes of art and culture, as well as recognizing atrocities, uprisings, and statecraft, with builds paired with a history lesson. Just in time for Halloween, as part of the third series of vignettes, Mihał remembers some of the darker chapters in Polish history. For example, dissidents being exiled to Siberia during the Russian occupation.

Here, Mihał pays tribute to the January Uprising of 1963-1964, when the escalation of “russification” and repression sparked a guerrilla war for independence that, despite early successes, was ultimately quashed.

Here we see Mihał’s depiction of the Galician slaughter when, in order to avert a Polish uprising for independence, the Austrian military incited the local serfdom against the Polish aristocracy in bloody revolt with promises of a better life, only to sweep in after the fact punish the peasants with more oppression.

Not all of Mihał’s scenes are quite so grim. Here he pays tribute to the composer Chopin and here to the writing of the Polish Constitution.