Oldal 372 [372]
OCR
370 Dominika Czarnecka the invader triggered extremely strong emotions among the Polish community.‘ According to Tazbir’s report, German historians claimed that, it is “our [Polish] history that provides an extreme example of national identification with (...) monuments. In no other country was there such a unique sphere of struggle surrounding them, a sphere within which patriotic sentiments had to battle against the brutal violence of the partitioners” (Tazbir 2000: 20). A sacred national space was taking shape around monuments (for example Sigismund’s Column in Warsaw). Demonstrations were organised near them and the speeches delivered during such rallies became something like sermons which helped maintain belief in regaining national independence. The monuments erected by the invaders, recognised by the Poles as memorials of “national shame and derision”, were spat upon and jeered at as the symbols of the Polish nation’s enslavement and of Russian imperialism.> After WWI, the monuments became an important element of communist propaganda, both in the Soviet Union itself, and in all the countries of the Eastern Bloc. In the 1940s, as a result of ineffective policy of the Allied Forces towards Poland and adverse actions on the part of Stalin, Poland was subordinated to the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union took over more than a half of Poland’s pre-war eastern territories. Hostile attitudes towards the USSR presented by a part of Polish society deepened as a result of the economic exploitation of the country, the ban on the return of the legal Polish authority from war exile, terror against members of the Polish Underground State, and unauthorised stationing of a foreign army on Polish territory. In effect, until the 1950s, when the communists finally managed to establish influence, Poland witnesses a period of certain diarchy. The communists, and those who stood behind them, functioned on the basis of an alliance with the Soviet Union, using the support of the Soviet army and secret service, spreading terror among the opposition and those who were deemed enemies of the Polish People’s state. On the other side of the barricade were those in Polish society who did not accept the post-war status quo and which accepted as legal the Polish authorities remaining on emigration in London. They condemned the communists’ policy, treated the Soviet Union as a hostile country and the Red Army as an occupying force. After the WWII, the Soviets initiated in Poland a nationwide monument campaign, the aim of which was to erect several hundred monuments glorifying the Red Army. Its executors, apart from Red Army soldiers, were the communist authorities. The costs were charged to the Polish state without asking for consent. No ‘The Partitions of Poland took place at the end of the 18" century (1772, 1793, 1795). They ended the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the suspension of sovereign Poland for 123 years. Three partitions were conducted by the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and Habsburg Austria. > In 1832 the Russian tsar issued a strict ban on erecting public monuments. The ban was a consequence of the November Uprising. After the ban, monuments were solely erected after authorisation from the partitioner.
