Since the official statement of Dr Karol Nawrocki, the head of the Polish National Remembrance Institute in March 2022, Polish local government units dismantled 41 communist monuments. The last monument was the “Brotherhood of Arms” statue in Nowogard, near Szczecin in Western Pomerania. 

The monument under the name ‘Brotherhood of Arms’ was unveiled on 7 November 1972, during the celebrations of the 55th anniversary of the outbreak of the Russian October Revolution. The statue presents two medieval knights and soldiers of the Red Army and the Polish Peoples Army.

In 1992 the monument was renovated and renamed in 1995 to the “Monument to the Veterans of the Third Polish Republic”. The symbols of the Soviet army were removed from the monument at that time. 

“It is high time to catch up in this area (…) Let it be heard clearly: there is no place in Polish public space for any commemoration of the totalitarian communist regime and the people who served it,” Dr Nawrocki said in a statement on 4 March 2022.

The dismantling of the monuments is an implementation of the Act of 1 April 2016 on the prohibition of the propagation of communism or another totalitarian system in names of government units, auxiliary units of the municipalities, buildings, objects and equipment of public utility and monuments. 

Both the law and the dismantling action faced attacks from Putin’s Russian authorities and media, who perceived such acts as an attack on the “legacy of the Red Army”.

Photos: x/@NawrockiKn, @ipngovpl

Tomasz Modrzejewski