The legacy of communism in Poland: memories, nostalgia and indifference

Abstract

The Polish case, studied by Carla Tonini, is a particularly interesting example of “negotiated transition” from communism to democracy. Such a transition was possible thanks to the refusal to consider the recent past as a disputed terrain. Dealing with the communist past was not, in 1989 or in the immediate successive years, the main concern of the new political elites, nor of the Poles in general, precisely the Polish society had developed a long-standing decommunism process. Later, under the impulse of more conservative sectors, several initiatives and policies of memory were developed to mark a clear break with the communist past. The accent was placed on the representation of the Poles as victims and heroes of the struggle for freedom: a figure, now classical, and which in turn the communist power used in its own way. Events previously ignored, such as the Warsaw insurrection of 1944, or figures of martyrs of the resistance to communism, such as Father Popieluzko, were celebrated. More than on the experience of communism, the public debate was focused, explains Tonini, “on the relations of the Poles, during the Second World War and in the first postwar period, with the national minorities: the Jews, the Germans and the Ukrainians”