Research Article Open Access Bartłomiej Różycki* Renaming urban toponomy as a mean of redefining local identity: the case of street decommunization in Poland 1 https://doi.org/10.1515/openps-2017-0004 received March 21, 2018; accepted April 4, 2018. Abstract: During and after democratic transition in Poland, the decommunization of urban toponomy became an important aspect of symbolic changes. Although the general course of street renaming was similar in the whole country, the pace of these changes as well as scope of tolerance towards the symbols of the past varied. In this article, the cases of three major Polish cities are analyzed. In Kraków, its long and rich history constituted a background of local identity and certain level of autonomy in defning the symbolic landscape. Warsaw on the other hand was a city whose extraordinary experiences related to the World War II resulted in commemoration of a whole new set of myths and fgures through the street names. What is more, its status of the country’s capital caused its identity to infuence the canon of Polish history as a whole. This afected the third analyzed case, Wrocław, whose long history of links with German culture resulted in very little symbolic capital which would be compatible with this new patriotic canon. As a result, Wrocław accepted in its urban toponomy a vast number of symbols unrelated to its own memory, in the same time suppressing symbols linked to its local identity. Accepting external heritage turned out to be a strategy of avoiding confict with the dominant narrative.1 Keywords: communist Poland; contemporary Poland; street names; symbols; local identity. Urban toponomy became a subject of interest for the memory investigators, especially as a result of growing infuence of the famous Pierre Nora’s term “lieux de mémoire”, although this general concept is so versatile and embraces so many diferent aspects of commemorating the past, that using it to describe a particular phenomenon may be misleading. Nonetheless, street names, together with other “places of memory”, physically visible in the public sphere, like monuments or archives, became an issue of undisputable importance for the researchers. Street names constitute a mean of enforcing certain attitudes. They designate a set of values, embo- died by particular events, dates, people and groups or by more general terms. These new names are usually established by the authorities.. Associating a street with a particular patron is a formal act which requi- res fulfilling certain procedures. Other political actors may nonetheless take part in the decision-making process and their capability to affect it depend on the existing political system. Eventually the decision still belongs to the authorities because, as Stefan Meyer stated: “street renaming is usually a political act, where the state manifests its authority and exclusive right to interpret its own history”2. The ability 1 The following paper is based on a research forming part of the project „Punishment, memory and politics: setting accounts with the past since the World War II“, funded by the grant from Polish National Centre of Science (Project: DEC-2013/10/M/ HS3/00577). 2 S. Meyer, “Dwie drogi do alei Stalina. Zmiany nazw ulic w Warszawie i Berlinie Wschodnim (1945-1950)”, in W połowie drogi. Warszawa między Paryżem a Kijowem, ed. Jerzy Kochanowski, 106 (Warszawa: Trio 2006), s. 106. *Corresponding author: Bartłomiej Różycki, Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, E-mail: bartek.rozycki@gmail.com Open Access. © 2018 Bartłomiej Różycki, published by De Gruyter. s 4.0 License. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. Open Political Science, 2018; 1: 20–31