The celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the Third Polish Republic. The attempts to shape Polish society’s collective memory

Abstract

The paper tries to sum up the celebrations to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Third Republic in 1989 and to present them in the context of the ‘remembrance policy’,meaning the endeavors various circles are engaged in to shape Polish society’s collective memory. The authors analyze the celebrations in terms of several selected aspects. The first one concerns the academic field: conferences, seminars and resulting publications. Another aspect refers to the official celebrations organized by state institutions. The third is about the response and debates taking place in newspapers at that time. The review of different ways of commemorating the anniversary results in the conclusion that they were all strongly politicized and used for the purposes of the current political struggle. This was particularly clear during the official celebrations, divided into those organized by the government and president respectively, yet even the events organized under academic auspices were not free from political manipulation. Therefore, the celebrations corroborated the fact that 1989 has not strongly registered in Poles’ awareness as a generational experience that positively organizes the collective memory; the celebrations did not stimulate a nationwide reflection on the achieve- ments of the era commenced with the events of 1989. They did not make a contribution to creating in the collective memory a ‘national consensus of pride’ at the regained statehood reminiscent of that of the Second Republic.