Public Responses to the Renaming of Commemorative Street Names in Post-communist Poland: Daily Lives, Experiences of Change and Sense of Place

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe did not bring about widespread destruction of the material heritage of communist dictatorships in the region. In fact, given that – on the whole – public acceptance of the regime change has been high, the process of de-commemoration has been more contested than anticipated. This paper focuses on the process of de-commemoration after the fall of communism in Poland. It examines urban residents’ responses to the renaming of streets, paying close attention to the practices and discursive strategies they adopted to resist change. Investigating these responses provides a means of understanding the multifaceted aspects of the contested nature of de-commemoration and sheds light on the ways in which the top-down remaking of urban streetscapes affected local residents. It also enables us to better understand the nature of the post-communist transition in the region and provides insights into the everyday conflicts that underlie symbolic change.