Authors

Ewa Ochman¹;  ¹ The University of Manchester, UK

Discussion

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 two-decade-long history of the right-wing nationalists’ attempts to legislate street renaming culminating in the so-called de-communisation law of 2016 will serve as a lens for investigating the responses that favoured the de-communisation of public space. It argues that the protracted nature of the re-making 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.