La reconfiguration des récits postsocialistes de Nowa Huta (Pologne) et de Dunaújváros (Hongrie)

Abstract

In June 2014, for just a few days, a statue of Lenin returned to Nowa Huta, close to the spot where once a huge monument of Lenin used to stand, dominating this socialist city visually (but not only so). 1 The statue that 'returned' was small, less than half-a-meter tall and made of bright kitschy, greenish plastic: 2 it was peeing in the same manner as the Manneken-Pis in Brussels. And yet the installation of the statue which proved popular with passers-by, was enough for two members of the main opposition Party in Poland, the Law and Justice Party, 3 to file a complaint that this green 'pissing' Lenin 'promotes' Communism; and promoting Communism in post-1989 Poland is considered a crime. Even earlier, in 2008, representatives of the Law and Justice Party argued that 'any official commemoration of Nowa Huta's founding would be tantamount to proCommunist propaganda', 4 suggesting to what degree Nowa Huta's past was still a thorny issue for many Poles. How could the insignificant event during the summer festival of street art called ArtBoom 'awake the Polish demons' 5 and cause such a heated response? In some postsocialist countries that are troubled by their own Communist legacy (Russia being a separate case 6) references to the Communist past can prove popular, even attractive: suffice it to cite the example of the revival of a sausage in Lithuania named 'Soviet sausage' and promoted by large, Soviet-style advertisements. 7 Why not in Poland? And specifically, why not in Nowa Huta? This article investigates not only what such incidents suggest about the identity of postsocialist spaces 25 years after the collapse of Communism, but also, more importantly, what is necessary for a successful, i.e. generally acceptable and coherent,

Public perception of urban identity in post-Soviet city: the case of Vinnytsia, Ukraine

“…Urban identity building reflects also interaction between hierarchical levels of territorial identity, which often is well-accentuated in post-socialist societies. Jansen, S. (2001) and Zechenter, K. (2015) suggested that the symbolic success of post-socialist cities depends on aligning the city's identity with the general prevalent understanding of national identity. However, there is evidence that in post-socialist countries local urban identity, due to some reason, may run counter to the national identity, as it happened in Sevastopol before the annexation of Crimea (Qualls, K.D.…”