How Historians Got Involved in Memory Politics: Patterns of the Historiography of the Polish People’s Republic before and after 1989

Abstract

Memory politics in contemporary Poland has often been described as a limitation to historians’ freedom of research. Against this backdrop, this article explores how historians of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) have been contributing to memory politics in the context of the democratic transition. It argues that the dissidence of the 1980s has paved the way to the post-1989 historiographical renewal, by favoring the development of an anti-communist historiography that ultimately facilitated the advent of the historical policy (polityka historyczna) of the 2000s. After 1989, the Polish historiography of the PRL was extensively reshaped on the basis of the dissident historiography of the 1980s. The main protagonists of the 1990s were largely drawn from the ranks of dissent, and many of them saw their scholarship as an extension of their past anti-communist engagement. Additionally, political changes turned the legacy of the old regime into a central issue of post-communist politics. History was called upon as a policy tool at the service of the democratic transition, whether it involved criminalizing the communist regime or maintaining the collective memory of the dictatorship. This conception of history resulted in the creation of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) at the end of the 1990s, but also in the affirmation of a historical policy justified by the need to redress the wrongs of the memory politics conducted in communist Poland. Contemporary history in the post-1989 years was thus far from free of politicization, even if it took different forms.