ABSTRACT
Two decades after the collapse of communism, some local communities appeared to accept their towns’ historical topography, which included Soviet monuments and street names evoking PRL propaganda. Attitudes towards communist sites of memory were a reflection of Poles’ attitudes towards the PRL itself: ambiguous and subject to change over time. Many Poles did not see any need to reopen the General Jaruzelski trial or to subject public figures to widespread lustration. 1 This perplexing attitude towards Poland’s material heritage on one hand and an apparent collective amnesia about the reality of life under the communist regime on the other alarmed the Polish right, and specifically the PiS. The party believed that direct state intervention in the fabric of collective memory and an obligatory reshaping of the memorial landscape should be the way forward. The historical topography of local communities was to be ‘corrected’ through state administrative measures and specific legislation. 2 Those who pushed for the de-communisation of public space were trying to eliminate any contradictions or challenges to the independence and martyrdom narratives that had been recognised as fundamental to post-1989 Poland.
