Heroes of Various Epochs in the Collective Memory of the 20th Century Lublin

Abstract

The beginning of the 20^th century brought the world the First World War and the break-up of European powers. It also brought Poland independence, after more than one hundred and twenty years when it had been partitioned between three neighboring empires. A large increase in the number of Lublin's inhabitants, along with the development of the area of the city that followed the increase, caused an increase in the number of newly designed streets. The new lines of communication needed new names. Several, or even several dozen streets came into existence at one time, which favored giving them names connected with history. Additionally, the area of the town increased by absorbing the neighboring villages whose streets already had names. This caused overlapping of the names, which, in turn, made the town authorities solve the problem by giving one of the streets a new name. In the course of the 20^th century the political situation in Poland changed, and this influenced the life of Lublin. Each new authority tried to make a sign of its presence in the town by organizing places of collective memory. Names of streets are a special area in the topography of the town, in which historical memory has always been handed down to next generations.

The last period when Lublin belonged to the Polish Kingdom, which was part of the Russian Empire, comprises the years 1901-1915. In that time only two streets were given names commemorating important Poles: Frédéric Chopin and Wincenty Pol. Commemorative names started being given in Lublin when the Russian authorities were replaced by Austrian ones at the end of July 1915. The three years of Austrian rule in Lublin brought an increase in the area of the town and new names given to six communication lines. At that time five commemorative names were given in Lublin. In the twenty-year period between the World Wars the number of commemorative names increased from seven in 1918 to seventy-eight just before the outbreak of World War II. In 1919 a special commission was established in the town whose task was to prepare suggestions for changing street names in Lublin. After regaining independence the first changes in the names of Lublin streets were effected in August 1923. Forty-six streets were named or renamed then. In 1923 all the streets that had not had names received ones. The people after whom the streets were named in the period between the two World Wars may be divided into four groups: outstanding Poles, people connected with Lublin, poets and artists; a separate group was constituted by historical events. Among the groups the people who rendered service to the country are most numerous. Giving names to streets that could be ascribed to one of the five groups was especially frequent in the 1930s, when the village Dziesiąta was included into the town, and on both sides of Aleja Racławicka new streets were marked out for houses designed for military officers and civil servants. On the example of a few streets, like Narutowicza Street, Norwida Street or Staszica Street it is easy to see that the changes were also suggested by Lublin inhabitants.

After establishing the General Government the Germans gave new names to Lublin streets and squares. They mainly changed those streets names that were connected with the Poles' fight against Germans. During the occupation a total of thirty-three street names were changed, and the remaining ones were translated into German, or the German words Strasse or Gasse were added to the Polish names. New names were given to the streets in the center of the town. Lublin's main square – Plac Litewski – was given the name of the leader of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler. One of the obvious possibilities of erasing the Polish character of the town was changing the names of those streets that had been named after Poles. In this way the names of nine streets were changed, leaving only Chopin Street under the name of Chopin Strasse.

After Lublin was liberated from the German rule in July 1944 the new authorities started changing the names of streets that had been introduced by the German authorities. Between July and November almost all the streets in Lublin were given back their pre-war names. Only three streets were an exception to this rule: Bychawska, Spokojna and Zamojska were renamed to Kunickiego, 22 Lipca and Buczka, respectively. The next changes were to take place in October 1945.

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of establishing the Polish Committee of National Liberation a common meeting was held of the Provincial National Council and the Town National Council. It was then that four socialist activists: Stanisław Dubois, Georgi Dimitrov, Małgorzata Fornalska, Marceli Nowotko, and the hero of socialist labor Wincenty Pstrowski were commemorated.

In December 1949, on the occasion of Joseph Stalin's 70^th birthday, the Club of Councilmen of the Polish United Workers' Party put forward a proposal concerning commemorating “the Leader of Humanity” by giving the name of Comrade Stalin to Lublin's main square, Plac Litewski.

During the extensive change of names effected in March 1951 as many as twenty-one street names connected with the Church were changed. Among the new street names four commemorated heroes of the new political system: Rosa Luxemburg, Hanka Sawicka, Lucjan Szenwald and Ludwik Waryński, and one concerned the Communist ideology: Heroes of Labor Street. In the Stalinist period, in the years 1944-1956, twenty commemorative names that the new system considered right were given to streets. Among them only two did not survive the test of time and disappeared from the town plans in the autumn of 1956. In the Stalinist period people connected with the struggle for independence during the First World War and the Polish-Bolshevik War disappeared from street names for the whole period of the Polish People's Republic.

During Władysław Gomułka's rule sixteen commemorative names connected with the workers' movement were given in Lublin. In the center of the town six streets received new names, including one that was newly marked out (Jana Hempla Street).

In the decade of Edward Gierek's rule thirteen names connected with the ideology of the Polish People's Republic were given. Most of them commemorated heroes of the Communist Party of Poland. In the first half of the 1970s the country prepared for celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the PPR. The new housing estate in Kalinowszczyzna was given the status of the Estate of the Thirty Years of the Polish People's Republic. During the last decade of the PPR only two streets were given names connected with the Communist ideology.

In 1989 party ideologists who gave new names to streets were replaced by experts. In the period of transformation from the socialist system to the democratic one a special team was established consisting of nine people headed by dr. Mieczysław Buczyński who in 1964 had written a master's dissertation at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University. The subject of the thesis was the etymology of Lublin street names, and later he also worked on the names of parts of Lublin, as well as on Slavonic geographical names.

Despite the systemic transformation and a lot of changes in the names of streets effected in the years 1989-1991, ten heroes of the Communist system have survived as patrons of Lublin streets. Analyzing the plan of Lublin of 2001 we can find thirteen names of streets that because of their ideological meaning would be more adequate for the previous epoch.