“It is important to protect Lenin”: commemoration of the images of the Russian revolutionary in the Polish People's Republic

Abstract

The article examines the Polish socialist government's commemorative practices in relation to the figure of Vladimir Lenin. In both domestic and foreign historiography, the authors' research optics have focused on analyzing post-socialist historical narratives and the dismantling of Lenin's monuments in the countries of Central-Eastern Europe. Drawing on a wide array of written sources, the author traces the discursive and monumental practices of adapting the figure of the Russian revolutionary in the mnemonic landscape of the Polish People's Republic. Attention is focused on the semantic content of the concept of "historical politics", the use of which requires the researcher to consider in parallel two interrelated dimensions of the instrumentalization of the past: domestic and foreign policy. The author analyses the topographical forms of memory of Lenin, the construction of monuments and the representation of the figure of the “leader of the revolution” in school history textbooks.The author argues that Lenin commemorations served as a means of enhancing the prestige of the incumbent government, as well as demonstrating Poland's dependence on the Soviet Union. It is concluded that at the turn of 1960-1970 a performative shift in the attitude towards the memory of Lenin took place, resulting in the securitization of historical narratives about the "leader of the revolution". In the course of this process, images of Lenin become, on the one hand, the object of attack by the anti-communist opposition and, on the other hand, the main memorial requiring protection by the state. In the last decade of the existence of the Polish People's Republic, Lenin's images gradually disappeared from the mnemonic space of the state, but commemorative trends maintained the memory of the “leader of the revolution” until the collapse of the socialist regime.