Historical Politics of the Polish People’s Republic in the 1980s: Features of Transformation

The article examines the transformation of the historical politics of the Polish People’s Republic in the 1980s. The author proceeds from the position that the commemorative practices of the Polish socialist government experienced significant external influence from the “mnemonic actors” opposed to the state − the Solidarity trade union and the Polish Catholic Church. The purpose of the study is to analyze the transformations of commemorative practices in the conditions of confrontation between the Polish United Workers’ Party and opposition structures. The works of domestic and foreign authors on the problem of research are noted, in which experts analyzed historical politics through the involvement of didactic literature, paid attention to anniversaries and memorable dates of socialist Poland, and also used a semiotic approach. Relying on a wide array of narrative sources, the author traces the structural changes in the historical policy of V. Jaruzelski: the reform of history textbooks, the actualization of previously suppressed historical events, the institutionalization of the academic community of historians under the auspices of the Polish Historical Society. It is noted that the impulse to modify commemorative practices was the spread of alternative versions of the past by the opposition, which contributed to their actualization in the collective memory of Polish society. The author focuses on the role of the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, whose visit to socialist Poland in 1983 actualized the events related to the Holocaust and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. It is concluded that the anti-communist forces of the Polish People’s Republic influenced the transformation of the course of historical politics due to the popularity of institutions opposed to the state in the conditions of permanent socio-economic and political upheavals in the country in the 1980s.