Trudna rocznica. Cenzura wobec pamięci o powstaniu warszawskim w 1984 roku

Abstract

1984 marked the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, important because of the number and the time when the Polish People’s Republic was falling into decline. The communist authorities set great store by it and tried to link it with the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Polish People’s Republic. The comparison of different sources – newspaper articles, official documents and archives of the censorship – shows that the celebration of the anniversary of the uprising became an area of confrontation between the authorities and society each trying to win the battle for the memory of the August insurgence. It turns out that the image of the rising as a crushing defeat made up by the rulers of the Polish People’s Republic played to the hands of the Communists and acted as a negative founding myth. Such a vision was all the more telling after the martial law was introduced in Poland. The generals presented themselves as those who prevented the tragedy of a comparable magnitude to the Warsaw Uprising from happening. The nation, in turn, perceived the rising as an act of heroism deeply rooted in the tradition of the struggle for independence revived by “Solidarity” in August 1980.