Koniec przeobrażeń? Dekomunizacja przestrzeni publicznej w Polsce na Ziemiach Zachodnich i Północnych w latach 2016–2017 – wybrane przykłady

Abstract

In Poland since 2016 there has been a legally mandated process of decommunization of public space which is to serve as an instrument for a cleansing of sorts of cities, towns and villages, including the expunging of all forms of commemoration of the Red Army and the Brotherhood in Arms of Soviet and Polish soldiers who fought in the final phase of World War II. What is the result of this radical reinterpretation and devaluation of the events of 1945 in the Western and Northern Lands, where almost everything changed at that time? This article presents the attitudes of selected local communities towards the current prohibition on „promoting communism and other totalitarian regimes”. The selected communities are: Szczecin, Legnica, Drawsko Pomorskie, Stargard, Nowogard, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Kęszyca Leśna, Kołobrzeg and Pyrzyce. However, this is not a complete, academic study; rather, it represents the viewpoint of a reporter, an attempt at an examination in a wider context of the effects of the current politics concerning history. The aim of this article is to present various dimensions of the decommunization of the public space, the collation of activities connected with this process and earlier decommunization practices, and the processes of accepting or not accepting and then dismantling of monuments. Moreover, the article seeks to consider residents’ endeavours to save those monuments that are important to them.