Abstract
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.
The end of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe physically manifested itself in the de-communization of public space, that is, in the renaming of streets and removal of monuments commemorating histories and ideologies of the communist era. This remaking of public space fitted into a general pattern of de-commemoration which is characteristic of periods of regime change, revolutionary transformations and postcolonial nation-building. 1 After all, the symbolic remaking of public space plays a central role in the construction of the new collective identity and the affirmation of specific notions of national and local histories. It reflects new power relations, indicates ideological positions of a given time and is employed to exercise control over political opponents. At the same time, the recent literature on the topic suggests that the de-communization of public space in Eastern Europe has been more contested and more protracted than had been anticipated although the region strove to reorient itself towards the West and prioritized membership of NATO and the EU. 2 Whilst the process varied across the region and has been place-specific, everywhere the implementation of street renaming has been uneven and often contested. In some places, such as in Slovakia, the revision of street names was implemented half-heartedly; in others, like Romania, it affected only the more glaring cases. 3 In Hungary many street names were changed after Viktor Orban's Fidesz party's landslide election of 2010, which allowed the parliament to pass legislation that authorized the renaming of streets commemorating ‘the socialist dictatorship’. 4
This protracted de-communization has been explained by two sets of factors. The socio-economic causes are as follows: the economic upheaval of the 1990s, communist nostalgia and ordinary citizens’ resistance to the remaking of their everyday space. 5 The geopolitical causes are the following: the contentious histories of the Second World War, foreign policy considerations and relations with Russia. 6 So far, however, there has been little discussion about the proponents of the symbolic remaking of public space and the nature of their responses to the slow pace of change. What practices and discursive strategies have been employed to remove the material traces of communist dictatorship? Have they altered over time? How effective have these strategies been in bringing about change and which modes of action and discourse have been counterproductive? To probe these questions, I consider the case of Poland, the country of the Solidarity movement, which played a major role in the fall of communism in the region. The proponents of the de-communization of public space in Poland included a range of nationalist, right-wing, and national-conservative forces. 7 They all held strong anti-communist convictions and will be described here as right-wing nationalists or shorthanded as ‘anti-communists’. The two-decade-long history of the ‘anti-communists’’ 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. I analyse draft legislation, documents produced for legislative scrutiny and minutes from parliamentary committee and plenary session debates. I also draw on official reports from consultations on street renaming conducted by local authorities.
Overall, this paper seeks to explain the development of Poland's right-wing nationalists’ strategies to achieve the de-communization of public space and contribute to a deeper understanding of Poland's responses to the material heritage of communist dictatorship. I argue that these responses have been driven to a large extent by Poland's transitional legacies and different approaches to transitional justice among the successors of the Solidarity movement. Our understanding of the protracted nature of the de-communization of public space in the region will remain limited until we better account for this legacy. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part considers the initial response to the material heritage of communist dictatorship in Poland. Next, I deal with the right-wing nationalists’ de-commemorative strategies in the context of transition legacies and discuss the 2016 memory law. I then trace the 2016 law's origins back to the 1990s and look more closely at debates on transitional justices that shaped attitudes to the material heritage of communist dictatorship. Finally, I investigate the official justifications behind the 2016 law to demonstrate how street renaming became intertwined with debates on the ‘true essence’ of Polishness and how opposition to a radical de-communization of public space became inadmissible.
In Poland, intentional acts destroying the material heritage of communist dictatorship mostly took place in the early 1990s. In Warsaw, the first statue to be toppled, in November 1989, was that of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, Bolshevik leader and head of the first Soviet secret police organization. 8 A month later, in Nowa Huta, the colossal social realist district in Kraków, another well-known statue was removed, that of Lenin. 9 Further demolitions followed, but nothing as spectacular as these, for the simple reason that there were no other major monuments of Lenin or Dzerzhinsky. There were, however, many Red Army monuments commemorating the contentious liberation of Poland by the Red Army in 1944–45. Most of these had been erected in the wake of the Second World War following a nationwide campaign initiated by the Soviet military administration and later adopted by the Polish communist authorities. Statistics for the removal of the Red Army monuments have been compiled and give some indication of the pace of the process. In 1989 there were 476 Red Army monuments in Poland; 130 of them were gone by 1993. 10 In 2016, over 20 years later, around 100 of these monuments remained. 11
The renaming of streets, although less spectacular, has also been an important indication of the rejection of communist-era values and a public endorsement of new hegemonic discourses. As Maoz Azaryahu, the leading scholar researching the politics of street naming, notes: ‘(f)rom the perspective of those in charge of molding the symbolic infrastructure of society, the main merit of commemorative street names is that they introduce an authorized version of history into ordinary settings of everyday life’. 12 It is precisely this intersection of the ‘mundane spheres of human experience’ and ‘particular conceptions of history and national identity’ that makes place naming such a powerful mechanism for expressing authority and power relations in society. 13 By the end of 1988, the street renaming process in Poland had already started; it peaked in 1990 and after 1993 noticeably began to slow down. Geographically, the process was uneven, not following any centrally devised policy. 14 Kwiryna Handke's research shows that out of 4300 street names in Warsaw 64 commemorative names were changed in the period 1989–94. This equates to only 1.48 per cent of the capital's streets having their names changed. 15 After all, many street names were semantically neutral, and others were not necessarily recognized as relics of communist propaganda. 16 But, overall, the number of streets renamed was mostly down to local councils’ approaches to de-communization.
According to Polish legislation regulating the functioning of local governments, the decision-making process concerning local commemorative landscapes lay in the hands of local councils. Consequently, whether or not a street name was removed from public space depended to a large extent on the political composition of councils and the number of post-communist councillors who usually voted against any street renaming resolutions. An additional obstacle to street renaming was the ‘electorate’ itself as councils were wary of making changes without consulting local residents. 17 The initial fall in living standards during the rapid transformation from a communist command economy to a capitalist market economy made street renaming a low priority for many Poles. They simply did not want to shoulder the cost of it. Resistance to renaming also stemmed from communist nostalgia and even open contestation of new interpretations of national and especially local histories. 18 The latter was very much the case in the pre-war provinces of Germany, the so-called ‘Western Lands’, which were incorporated into Poland in 1945. Here street names (and monuments) commemorating the Red Army victory over Germany were not necessarily associated with the imposition of communist rule. Instead, they were linked to the beginning of the post-war Polish settlement in the western provinces and with a historical legitimization of a Polish presence in these lands. 19 Moreover, the commemorative meaning of street names had been lost to many Poles. Research conducted in other post-Soviet countries shows that ‘street names often become empty signifiers to many urban residents who use them as spatial identifiers on a daily basis but may not know, or care, who or what has been commemorated in a street name’. 20
Results from Polish surveys support these findings. For example, 65 per cent of respondents said it did not matter to them who a street was named after (it mattered to 30 per cent of respondents) in a major survey conducted by Poland's Public Opinion Research Centre in 2007, and 40 per cent of respondents declared that street names commemorating the communist dictatorship had never existed in their localities. 21 And yet such street names did exist throughout Poland before 1989, and as we know many survived the initial early 1990s renaming drive. In 2016 there were still around 1200–1400 street and square names that ‘symbolized communism’ according to official estimates. 22 The results from this survey not only point to the limited commemorative capacity of some street names but also confirm Azaryahu's argument about the ‘appearance of naturalness’ of history when propagated via street names. He notes: ‘The merit of street names is their ability to incorporate an official version of history into such spheres of human activity that seem to be entirely devoid of direct political manipulation. This transforms history into a feature of the “natural order of things” and conceals its contrived character’. 23 Thus, the challenge for proponents of the de-communization of public space was to convince those opposed to street renaming that sites disseminating communist propaganda still existed in Poland and their continued presence put into question the sovereignty of the nation. What's more, they needed to convince Poles that the slow pace of change meant that it would be necessary to restrict the right of local authorities to mould their communities’ material heritage and warranted a top-down legislative intervention. To achieve this, however, they needed the backing of the wider political establishment, and that was difficult to achieve.
In Poland the de-communization of public space was a particularly challenging task because of the nature of the transition to democratic politics which had been shaped by two major developments. First, the former communist party refashioned itself as a Western social democratic party – the Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, SLD) that favoured a free-market economy and constitutional law. Although the former communists were accused of profiting financially from the collapse of communism, they still won two parliamentary elections, in 1993 and 2001, and their candidate secured Poland's presidency twice. Second, the parties that originated from the Solidarity movement immediately turned into political opponents after the fall of communism. One of the major points of disagreement was how to deal with the legacies of the communist dictatorship and the extent to which the former communist regime functionaries and secret service agents should be punished. The right-wing nationalists advocated stringent transitional justice measures, whereas the liberals opted for a more forgiving approach and promoted societal reconciliation. With respect to the material heritage of the communist dictatorship, the post-Solidarity elite agreed that street names commemorating the communist regime should disappear from Poland's streetscapes. However, two distinct approaches emerged on how this should be achieved. The first approach defended the autonomy of local councils to make decisions about their own sites of memory and advocated the right of local communities to choose which street names should be altered. This position was backed by the liberal successors of the Solidarity movement, the centrist Freedom Union (Unia Wolności, UW), and in the later transition period the centre-right, Citizen Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO). 24 The second approach entailed a policy of mandatory de-communization of public space and favoured a centralist decision-making process and top-down solutions. This position was advanced by the right wing of the Solidarity camp, the Solidarity Electoral Action (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność, AWS), and in the later transition period the national-conservative Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS). 25 Consequently, the wide-ranging de-communization of public space was contingent on the ‘anti-communists’’ electoral success. The AWS won elections in 1997 and PiS in 2005 but remained in power only for 2 years (neither had a parliamentary majority). It would be another 10 years before PiS could form a government again.
In the long term, PiS had become the main political force pursuing an anti-communist agenda, keeping the issue of street renaming in the public eye and mobilizing support for it among a range of right-wing voters. PiS adopted a two-fold measure to achieve the de-communization: legislative and educational. As the former required cross-party support or a majority of seats in the Sejm, the latter was prioritized when PiS was not in government. The main institutional support for PiS's educational campaign came from the Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN). The Institute, created in 1998 to investigate crimes committed by both the Nazi and communist totalitarian regimes, was Poland's main state-sponsored centre for historical research, public history and commemoration. It also had judicial and archival departments and administered the lustration process (vetting public officials to determine whether they had collaborated with the communist security services). The extent of the Institute's politicization fluctuated over time, but, overall, the IPN was seen by many sections of Polish society as a partisan institution following a radical nationalist agenda. 26 The IPN's de-communization campaign took off during Janusz Kurtyka's presidency of the Institute (2005–10) when a special coordinator for street renaming and monument removal was appointed. Support took the form of public education, memory initiatives, developing practical resources for street renaming and direct engagement with local councils. 27 For example, between 2007 and 2009, the IPN sent letters to local councils listing street names that, according to the IPN, ‘glorified communism’. 28 These letters set out to explain the ‘true meaning’ of these street names and requested their renaming. They were worded to exert maximum pressure on councils. It was intimated that it was unlawful to allow the ‘communist street names’ to remain in public space. The appeal evoked Article 13 of the Polish Constitution which prohibits the existence of political parties or other organizations ‘whose programmes are based upon totalitarian methods and the modes of activity of Nazism, fascism and communism’ and Article 256 of the Penal Code that penalizes ‘anyone who publicly propagates fascist or other totalitarian state systems’. 29
It was unclear how these articles were relevant to street names and to what extent the IPN had the legal right to issue any directives to local councils, but the tone of the letters did not bode well for building the trust needed for the de-communization operation. Ultimately, these appeals had little effect (only 2 out of almost 150 councils that were sent a letter acted upon the appeal). 30 Many local councils did not even respond to the IPN appeal (less than one-third replied), and others sent results from consultations with residents. These concluded with the predictable result: those opposed to any changes massively outnumbered those who accepted the need for new names. Ultimately, the Institute's attempt to establish itself as the sole authority on ‘historical truth’ met with resistance, and its claim to an exclusive right to assign symbolic value to street names was challenged from below. Unable to secure credibility via an ‘educational’ campaign, the IPN was left with insufficient modes of action and discourse to complete the revision of Poland's streetscape. As we will see below, its ability to bring about change increased only once the legislative measure could be put into effect. In the end, it was a memory law that made the local authorities act.
The de-communization law was passed by the Polish parliament in 2016, nearly 30 years after the fall of communism. This was made possible by PiS, led by Jarosław Kaczyński, winning a majority of seats in the parliamentary elections of 2015 and the party's candidate securing Poland's presidency. The law obliged local authorities to rename public spaces (streets, bridges, squares), buildings and objects that commemorated people, organizations, events and dates ‘symbolising the repressive, authoritarian and non-sovereign system of power in Poland in the years 1944–1989’. 31 If local governments did not make the required changes, province governors – who in Poland are appointed by the national government – were mandated to issue administrative decisions that implemented the law (i.e. to themselves rename the ‘communist streets’ in their provinces). In 2017 the de-communization law was amended to also include the removal of monuments. 32 By the end of that year, further amendments followed. The right of local governments to appeal against the governor's decision within an administrative court was curtailed (this was because the courts handling these appeals tended to side with local councils). Also, any council's subsequent renaming of a street that had been given a new name by the governor was subject to authorization by the governor and the IPN. 33 The IPN was assigned a key role in the renaming process. Governors were required to consult with the IPN before making any decisions on de-communization, and the Institute prepared in advance a list consisting over a hundred names that the law applied to. 34
The implementation of the 2016 law suggests that there has been considerable resistance to it at the level of local councils and residents. 35 Public consultations, for example, in Warsaw, Katowice and Łódź, indicate strong dissatisfaction with the law. 36 First of all, the majority of respondents rejected any changes. Some were angry about the perceived arbitrariness of the choice of names to be changed or the very premises of the de-communization law. But the most frequently raised issues were the costs renaming entails. As one resident in the Katowice consultations explained: ‘for us, this change is nothing but trouble and additional expenses’, and another observed: ‘the money that is needed to pay for the whims of the current government can be spent more sensibly’. 37 And this is why local governments which implemented the required changes within the period stipulated by the law dissociated themselves from the legislation by pointing out its mandatory character and its provenance ‘from above’ 38 or turned to ingenious ways of implementing the law. 39 It has been estimated that by the end of 2017 between 60 and 70 per cent of street names affected by the law had been changed without the intervention of a governor. 40 Other councils waited for the governor's decision, and then some appealed against it to the administrative courts. The best-known case is that of Warsaw where the local government won its 50 appeals. 41
Overall, the right-wing nationalists were accused of advancing binary interpretations of the recent past and favouring centralist decision-making over building consensus and a national dialogue. In some cases, governors used the law to impose names on local communities that promoted the ‘anti-communists’’ own political agendas. This was especially the case with naming streets after the late President Lech Kaczyński who died in the 2010 Smolensk plane crash. But the opposition to the renaming from local councils that appealed to administrative courts was not so much about the replacement names (which as a rule commemorated the struggle for Poland's independence and victims of the communist regime) but rather about the ‘banned’ names. 42 What turned out to be the most controversial and momentous part of the bill were the mechanisms for identifying ‘symbols of communist dictatorship’. The IPN list not only included street names that were clearly recognized as relics of former propaganda such as the names of top communist leaders directly involved in the establishment and consolidation of the communist dictatorship in Poland. It also banned street names commemorating communists who had fought against Nazi Germany and military organizations and armed forces which – although sponsored and controlled by the Soviets – contributed to the allied effort of ending the Second World War. 43 The consequence of expunging this ‘difficult heritage’ from Polish collective memory did not just mean erasing this part of Polish history but passing a clear-cut verdict on the many-faceted war past: still very painful and personal to many Poles. This was the very point made by Polish historian Piotr Osęka in the recommendation he prepared for the Supreme Administrative Court that was dealing with Warsaw City Council's appeal against the governor's renamings in the capital. Osęka explained: ‘We should be aware that removing a given name from public space does not return it to a neutral state – it is not the same thing as not being commemorated. This is a much more powerful and far-reaching procedure. We are dealing […] with an act of deprecation, disgrace, the imposition of infamy’. 44 Osęka's recommendation was also clear about the negative consequences that the IPN's one-sided interpretation of the recent past has had on Polish democracy. He argued that dictating from above who should be de-commemorated and, in the process, disregarding the opinions and feelings of local communities leads to a loss of trust in state institutions. Also, weaponizing history to legitimize present-day political projects poses a threat to the stability of democratic institutions since it rouses strong emotions and polarizes the political scene: ‘the hostility between party elites becomes stronger than the sense of responsibility for the state’. 45
The 2016 law attracted a lot of academic attention. Other scholars drew similar conclusions to Osęka, warning that the 2016 law undermines local democracy and the decision-making procedures dealing with de-communization do not bode well for Poland's democratic future and respect for a pluralism of values.
46
In her study of commemorative lawmaking in Poland since PiS came to power in 2015, Marta Bucholc points out the critical relationship between the party's legislative activity, its politics of memory and the ‘democratic backsliding’ in Poland.
47
Uladzislau Belavusau and Anna Wójcik identify in particular the 2017 amendments as an ‘alarming development’. In their words: ‘In a democratic state, citizens have a right to remember, including the right to mourn and commemorate, but they are not obliged to comply with a duty to remember something imposed by the state. Citizens should not be forced to mourn or commemorate against their will’.
48
However, to fully account for the implications of the 2016 law, whilst at the same time understanding why these measures were proposed in the first place, it is important to trace the origins of this law. Narrowing investigation of the 2016 bill on the de-communization of public space solely to the process of commemorative lawmaking carried out by PiS since 2015 occludes from view the earlier discourses and practices that produced a lasting impact on right-wing nationalists’ attitude to street renaming. What's more, Kornelia Kończał argues that Poland's approach to the material heritage of communist dictatorship has changed since PiS assumed power, contending: Since 2015, a new type of anti-communist fervour can be observed. In contrast to the early 1990s, the recent attempts at de-communizing Poland's public space have been initiated not from below, but from above. In other words, during the last 30 years, Poland's de-communization project has undergone a major transformation: from a popular need expressed in a variety of decentred initiatives to a political programme revolving around one centrally organized idea.
49
To trace the roots of this radical response to the protracted de-communization of public space, we need to examine the genealogy of the 2016 law. The 2016 bill was just one of many memory bills on the mandatory de-communization of public space proposed by the right-wing nationalists during the preceding two decades. The issue was tackled either as part of wider legislation relating to the protection of national heritage 50 or in bills dealing with street renaming and monument removal. 51 However, these bills at best reached a Second Reading in the Sejm, as ‘anti-communist’ deputies failed to build the required cross-party support for their initiatives. This policy ineffectiveness together with an unwillingness to reach a compromise can best be illustrated by the 2016 bill. It began its legislative journey in 2009 as a petition drawn up by the city council of Jastrzębie Zdrój, a town in southern Poland. The petition was lodged in the Senate, the upper house of the Polish parliament in the wake of the IPN's appeal to councils. It asked senators to instigate a legislative initiative regarding the renaming of public space, as local authorities were prevented from renaming streets due to financial constraints. It suggested that the Treasury should finance the operation. In 2010, the Senate agreed to proceed but work on the draft bill did not advance beyond the stage of consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny during two terms of Senate, the seventh (2007–11) and eighth (2011–15). 52 PiS senators and deputies – the main sponsors of this bill – were unable to gather support for the project. Whilst the ruling PO, although in principle agreeing that there was a problem with material ‘remains’ of the communist period, was reluctant to support the bill considering it divisive and expensive for the Treasury. 53 It was only in the ninth term of Senate, after the PiS 2015 election victory, that legislative proceedings accelerated, and the bill was pushed through the Sejm. What stands out here is PiS deputies’ inflexibility. They were unwilling to modify their approach to street renaming and compromise on the main point of contention to get the bill passed (the process for identifying ‘symbols of communism’). In fact, as the analysis below will show, throughout the transition period the legislative initiatives continued to reproduce the same set of ideas formed back in the 1990s despite their lack of progress. 54
The initial ‘anti-communists’’ response to the material remains of communism had been formulated in a bill ‘On de-communization of public life in Poland’ that dealt with the wider legacies of the communist dictatorship and as part of Poland's transitional justice processes. If implemented, the bill would have achieved an almost total eradication of the material heritage of the communist dictatorship in the first decade after the fall of communism. This bill was proposed by deputies from the right-wing AWS in 1998 and debated in a plenary session in the Sejm in 1999. 55 It primarily dealt with setting out regulations for banning from public office former communist dignitaries, military commanders, secret service functionaries and other officials connected with the communist system of power. The communist dictatorship was defined as the regime that had exercised power in Poland between 21 July 1944 and 1 July 1989. The second part of the bill dealt with the removal of the material ‘leftovers’ associated with the communist dictatorship, such as names of streets, parks, public institutions and organizations as well as monuments, plaques, sculptures and works of fine arts displayed in public spaces. Cemeteries were exempt from these regulations, but state and municipal museums were not. Local councils were mandated to make the required changes; they had 3 months to rename the streets. If councils did not act, the governor was obligated to intervene and implement the law. Crucially, the bill drew up a detailed list of what was to be understood as a ‘symbol associated with communist dictatorship’. Essentially, this was any name, event or date that commemorated (a) the Polish or international communist movement, (b) the establishment and consolidation of the communist dictatorship in Poland and (c) the presence of the Red Army on Poland's territory. The bill also established a commission for the de-communization of public life which was tasked with determining – if in doubt – whether a particular street name should be considered a ‘symbol associated with communist dictatorship’. The 12 members of the commission were to be appointed and dismissed by the prime minister. The bill was rejected at the First Reading in the Sejm not so much because of the mandatory renaming (after all, this was a secondary issue) but because of its retributive justice measures. Many deputies disagreed with collective punishment, maintaining that the bill had been put forward to eliminate electoral competition by preventing some post-communists from standing for election and would fuel mistrust. It was also argued that the bill was unconstitutional and would undermine the norms of liberal democracy as the proposed procedures for punishing former communists were unlawful. 56
The part of the 1998 bill that addressed the de-communization of public space became the right-wing nationalists’ blueprint for future legislative initiatives on street renaming. Subsequent draft bills proposed in the 2000s merely redrafted and amended what was proposed in 1998. 57 The 2016 law – as is evident from the previous section – also largely replicated the 1998 proposal although it did not ban ‘symbols of communism’ from museums and did not provide a detailed categorization of ‘symbols associated with the communist dictatorship’ but rather a more general definition. 58 The special commission appointed by the prime minister was replaced by the IPN with its role remaining the same. Also, the IPN's list of street names requiring change mirrored the 1998 categorization. Thus, the history of the 2016 memory law suggests that the strategy on how to deal with the material heritage of the communist dictatorship did not undergo a major transformation. It did not become more radical over time (if anything, the opposite might be argued) and did not alter in the wake of the IPN's failure to educate people about communist crimes. Back in the 1990s, proponents of the de-communization of public space considered a far-reaching form of state intervention in commemorative space and tried to override the autonomy of local councils. Likewise, the definition of what constitutes a ‘symbol of communism’ from the very beginning did not leave any room for compromise, and the process of renaming did not involve any local community consultation. It was accepted that local streetscapes could be ‘cleaned up’ by administrative decree through a top-down decision-making process. Back in 1998, opponents of the radical de-communization of public space had argued that these methods resembled methods used by communists in the Polish People's Republic. 59 Right-wing nationalists counterattacked arguing that coming to terms with the communist past requires in the first place knowing the truth about this past. As Maciej Korkuć, the chief coordinator of the IPN programme on the de-communization of public space, explained: ‘It is the state's responsibility to protect historical truth (…). The truth is determined and either this truth reaches society because society is properly educated in accordance with facts, with deference to truth and memory, or not’. 60
The 1998 bill is crucial to understanding this ‘truth revelation’ aspect of the de-communization of public space project. By including in one bill procedures for revising Poland's streetscape alongside procedures for punishing former communists, street renaming became part of the wider discourse on transitional justices and transnational justice procedures. The preamble to the 1998 bill evoked ‘principles of justice’, ‘respect for the truth’ and ‘building democracy based on moral order’. The bill was presented as a mechanism for telling the truth about the repressive regime and holding accountable those responsible for past repressions. Deputy Mariusz Kamiński of the right-wing AWS whilst introducing the bill to the Sejm during the First Reading explained: Discussion about de-communisation is in fact a discussion about decency in public life, about faithfulness and loyalty to one's own nation, about responsibility for one's actions. Let's call it what it really is, discussion about de-communisation is a discussion about collaboration. Today we are facing a historic chance to finally cut the umbilical cord connecting the Third Republic to the totalitarian, collaborating entity that the People's Republic of Poland was.
61
Supporters of the ‘thick line’ policy did not leave these attacks unanswered – their approach to transitional justice and the foundations of the Third Republic were at stake. Deputy Jerzy Wierchowicz of the Freedom Union (UW) fought back: Who is the de-communiser? A nation, a society that, in free, democratic, universal elections, chooses those whom it trusts and rejects those whom it does not trust. (…) For us, for the Freedom Union, de-communisation also means great economic change, a free market, no censorship, free media, open borders, civil control over the army, civil control over the secret services. We are proud that we achieved independence in 1989. De-communisation also means that, as Poles, we managed to solve our most important problems at the round table [talks].
66
A comparison of the 1998–9 parliamentary debate on the de-communization law with the 2016 debate shows that the same arguments about accountability, retribution and truth-seeking were made in both 1998–9 and 2016. 67 The enduring legacy of the bitter conflict in the post-Solidarity camp is also displayed in the impassioned language used by ‘anti-communist’ deputies and the derogatory remarks made about supporters of the ‘thick line’ policy who were blamed for the delayed street renaming. 68 Furthermore, the dispute also affected the new generation of politicians. A 27-year-old deputy asked: ‘I wonder why we waited twenty-five years for this law and why it [the de-communization of public space] was dealt with so reluctantly? […] Is this the beginning of the complete and true de-communization of Poland? I do not only mean street names but the economy and politics, too’. 69 The conflict over the approach to transitional justice fundamentally affected the ‘anti-communists’’ response to the material heritage of communist dictatorship. Negotiating a compromise on street renaming – that is, reconciling the strongly negative assessment of the communist dictatorship with alternative memories of the communist past – would also have meant reaching a more inclusive understanding of the post-communist transition. This was not an option since the ‘anti-communists’’ claim to legitimacy and their sense of identity were rooted in a radical and unequivocal condemnation of the communist past.
Finally, by 2016, the right-wing nationalists controlled the official discourse around the de-communization of public space and framed any dissenting voices as illegitimate. Memory laws not only sanction and promote a particular vision of the past but often also prohibit the expression of alternative interpretations of history and tightly control how the past is publicly remembered. 70 But it is not just the memory laws themselves that have the power to ban a particular vision of the past. The narratives underpinning them and justifying their existence in the first place also restrict free debate about the nation's past or even render it impossible. The 2016 law was passed unanimously with one abstention. PiS had a majority in both houses of the parliament, so the passing of the bill was a forgone conclusion, but the voting by opposition parties gave the law strong legitimization. This vote could appear puzzling given that the implementation of the law had so often been contested by local governments dominated by opposition parties and as the resistance to the law was typically understood as a conflict of power between the ruling party, PiS and the main opposition party in the parliament, PO. 71 Also, a national opinion poll conducted in 2018 on Poles’ attitude to the renaming of streets that ‘symbolize’ communism shows that Poles’ support for or rejection of renaming strongly correlated with political orientation. 72 And yet, during the 2016 parliamentary debate, no significant challenge to the bill was mounted. PO qualified its support for the bill, ‘however changes should apply only to obvious patrons, and they can’t go too far’, but agreed that ‘the process of the de-communization of public space must be completed’. 73 Other opposition parties followed suit. 74 Ultimately, the opposition did not want to appear as a force blocking the removal of ‘communist street names’. The debates on the de-communization bills in parliamentary committees, plenary sessions and statements accompanying the introduction of memory bills clearly indicate how, over the course of time, the views of the opponents of the mandatory renaming of public space were made inadmissible.
First, the bills were always introduced as self-evident, not even requiring discussion or scrutiny. For instance, Jan Żaryn, an influential PiS senator opened his statement on the 2016 bill in the following way: ‘what we are enacting today is undoubtedly a matter so obvious that it is likely that the entire Senate will unanimously adopt this law. If someone abstains, then … We can guess who’. 75 The intimidating phrase, ‘We can guess who …’ was left unanswered as it was supposedly self-evident: crypto-communists, apologists for the ‘thick line policy’ and unpatriotic leftists. Second, matters were frameworked in such a way that it proved extremely difficult for the bill to be challenged. For example, the banning of symbols of communism was justified by evoking Article 13 of the Polish Constitution and Article 256 of the Penal Code. The preamble to the Polish constitution was also cited as evidence that the material heritage of communist dictatorship contradicted the fundamental values on which the new political order was built. 76 Moreover, it was argued that the 1998 resolution ‘On the condemnation of communist totalitarianism’ gave a clear judgement of the communist past: the communist dictatorship was imposed on Poland by Stalin, and Polish communists were serving foreign interests. 77 The totalitarian nature of Poland's communist dictatorship was claimed to be self-evident. To underscore the comparability of communist and Nazi crimes, ‘anti-communist’ deputies frequently explained de-communization by analogy with de-Nazification. 78 This reasoning appeared to be a convincing justification for the de-communization of public space since no deputy would defend street names associated with symbols of totalitarianism. The crux of the matter was, though, which street names qualified for being such ‘symbols of totalitarianism’. And more importantly, whether the Polish People's Republic had been a totalitarian state throughout its existence until 1989? Did the Soviet occupation last until 1989? These issues have been debated by Polish historians even if Polish historiography has been ‘far from free of politicization’. 79 But somehow, they were hardly ever openly considered either in committees or plenary sessions devoted to de-communization legislation. Instead, ‘anti-communist’ deputies demanded that streets named after Dzerzhinsky be removed. 80
There had been no Dzerzhinsky monument in Poland since 1989, and in 2016 there remained one Dzerzhinsky Street (in the village of Wójcin in rural Poland). But the rhetorical power of Dzerzhinsky as a symbol of totalitarian crimes was too compelling to be missed; it effectively framed the entire de-communization operation as unquestionable. Not only was the name clearly associated with Stalinist oppression, but it also stained with communist crimes any other street names that were mentioned alongside it. Whether this strategy has been productive is difficult to say. On the one hand, it drew attention to problematic renaming: Victory Square (Victory Day over Nazi Germany), Dąbrowszczaków Street (the Dąbrowski Brigade fought as part of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War) and 23 Lutego Street (23 of February Street, the date of the liberation of Poznań from Nazi occupation). 81 These are just some of the street names which had to be removed according to the IPN despite the fact they were not considered to be ‘symbols of communism’ by many Poles, even those who agreed that the Red Army did not liberate Poland in 1945. 82 But on the other hand, this approach fit in with the wider memory conflict over the equivalence of Nazi and communist crimes that had been fought not only in the Polish parliament but more widely in Eastern Europe. 83 Tomasz Rawski, for example, in his analysis of disagreements over the national holiday of 9 May 1945 (Victory Day), shows how the right-wing of the post-Solidarity camp managed to marginalize the antifascist narrative in official memory ‘replacing it with a primarily anti-communist narrative about “two totalitarianisms”’. 84 PiS's politics of memory that centred on the Soviet occupation and crimes of communism focused in particular on the immediate post-war struggle for freedom against communists. The street renaming was an opportunity for claiming the symbolic landscape for new heroes, the so-called cursed soldiers of the anti-communist underground. Their canonical position in the sphere of public memory could be endorsed in Poland's streetscapes. And the mandatory de-communization of public space could be presented as a form of symbolic reparation.
Possibly the most powerful justification for the de-communization of public space centred on symbolic justice: the duty to pay respect to the memory of victims of communist oppression and the need to help those still alive find closure. 85 The renaming of street names that were associated with the communist dictatorship gave back dignity to victims and was also an act of rejection of the propaganda that distorted historical record and erased memory of communist crimes. However, the discourse constructed by right-wing nationalists around symbolic justice was both divisive and intimidating. This was evident, for example, in the IPN's appeal discussed earlier in this article. In the letters it sent to local authorities, the IPN claimed that keeping ‘communist street names’ equated to disregarding the memory of victims of totalitarianism crimes, disrespecting people who fought for Poland's independence and glorifying Stalinist crimes. 86 Many local councils found such claims simply offensive. In response, those opposing the de-communization of public space were accused of being traitors of the Polish nation or as one senator during the debate on the 2016 bill exclaimed: ‘anti-Poles’. 87 These discursive strategies were well aligned with PiS's wider narration of communism. As Kate Korycki shows in her analysis of PiS’ political identity ‘(t)he most salient point of [this] narration is to make communism essentially anti-Polish’. 88 Communism is evil because it is inherently anti-Polish. This narration cannot be questioned or debated as it ‘is the party's foundational belief and a source of its enduring political identity’. 89 Thus, given that ‘communism is existentially anti-Polish’, the defence of street names propagating symbols of communism becomes inadmissible.
In conclusion, the paper has shown that the de-communization of public space in Poland has been just as contested and protracted as has been the case in other Eastern European states. After the initial wave of street renaming in the early 1990s, the de-commemoration notably slowed down. Eventually, it was the 2016 memory law that made de-communization of public space mandatory. The same sets of factors behind the slow pace of change can be seen in Poland as in other post-communist countries: most importantly ordinary citizens’ resistance to the remaking of their everyday space due to socio-economic causes, the initial popularity of post-communists in local and national elections and the contentious histories of the Second World War. However, my study set out to examine specifically the proponents of the symbolic remaking of public space and explore the nature of their responses to the material heritage of communist dictatorship and to the slow pace of change. The most obvious finding to emerge from this study is that the right-wing successors of the Solidarity movement were the major force that fought relentlessly for the de-communization of public space. Their de-commemorative strategies favoured a centralist decision-making process, top-down solutions and legislative measures that eventually led them to override the right of local authorities to mould their communities’ material heritage. Interestingly, these strategies did not alter over time (despite being ineffective for almost two decades). From the late 1990s (when it became clear that the local councils were not initiating a comprehensive renaming programme) onwards, right-wing nationalists’ de-communization policy remained the same. The 1998 bill and subsequent legislative initiatives show that from the very outset mandatory street renaming was the ‘anti-communists’’ preferred option for achieving the elimination of the material heritage of the communist dictatorship.
Likewise, the historical assessment of the communist past that underpinned the selection of banned street names did not become more radical over time. The 1998 resolution ‘On the condemnation of communist totalitarianism’ is the best evidence of that. The blueprint for the subsequent legislative initiatives, the 1998 bill, was to hold the former supporters of the communist regime to account and to achieve symbolic reparations and symbolic justice for victims of communism. By tackling in one bill former communist officials’ access to public office together with the de-communization of public space, the renaming of streets became part of the debate about the foundational narrative for Poland's young democracy and about transitional justice. As a result, the street renaming and more generally the policy on how to deal with the material heritage of communist dictatorship became hostage to a protracted and bitter conflict over the post-communist transition. Consequently, over the next 20 years, the response to the material heritage of communist dictatorship became strongly linked with political identities and party membership. In many ways winning the argument over street renaming meant winning in the conflict over the transitional justice measures and being right about Poland's founding events of 1989. Overall, one of more significant findings of this study is how much the protracted nature of the de-communization of public space was caused by transitional legacies and divergent approaches to transitional justice among the successors of the Solidarity movement.
The right-wing nationalists tried to defeat their opponents by controlling the discourse on patriotism and framing the de-communization of public space as the search for justice and historical truth. They systematically delegitimized any narratives that did not unequivocally condemn the Polish People's Republic past as essentially ‘anti-Polish’. Their response to the material heritage of communist dictatorship was part of the nationalists’ wider politics of memory that promoted victimhood-based national identity and defined Poland's recent past through the experience of two totalitarianisms: communist and Nazi. How effective have these strategies been in bringing about change? The democratic transition, which had included administrative decentralization, meant that local authorities and diverse communities of memory insisted on more pluralistic understandings of power relations. Prescribing one interpretation of the national past, politicizing it and using centralist-decision-making processes to curb any counter-memories did not sit well with many sections of Polish society. But ultimately, the 2016 de-communization law has been, mostly, implemented.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Julie Fedor, Mischa Gabowitsch, Iryna Sklokina, Anna Glew, Dmitrijs Andrejevs and Antony Kalashnikov for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper that were presented at an annual conference of the Memory Studies Association in Warsaw (2021) and in Madrid (2019) and at a workshop on War & Memory at the University of Melbourne (2017). The workshop was funded by the Manchester-Melbourne Research Fund. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments on the text.
