The Legacies of Transition, Street Renaming and the Material Heritage of Communist Dictatorship in Poland

Bibliographic Data

ID10072707
AuthorsEwa Ochman (0000-0003-2596-7800, History Department, School of Arts, Languages & Cultures, The University of Manchester, UK, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume59
Issue1
Pages68-90
Publication date2023-06-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00220094231178691
OpenAlexW4379387021
LanguageEN
Citations received2

The fall of communism in Eastern Europe did not bring about a radical and immediate destruction of the material heritage of communist dictatorships in the region. In fact, the process of de-commemoration has been more contested and more protracted than had been anticipated. Thus, what warrants a closer consideration is why this is the case since on the whole public acceptance of the regime change has been very high. This paper considers the case of Poland, the country of the Solidarity movement, which played a major role in the fall of communism in the region. The two-decade-long history of the right-wing nationalists’ attempts to legislate street renaming culminating in the so-called de-communization law of 2016 will serve as a lens for investigating the responses that favoured the de-communization of public space. The paper argues that the protracted nature of the remaking of public landscape in Poland has been the result of the country's transitional legacies and different approaches to transitional justice among the former dissident opposition

Communism · Democracy · Dictatorship · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Solidarity · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History · Law · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies

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