Cosmopolitan Memories under Pressure: The Case of Postcommunist Wrocław

This article uses the Polish case of Wrocław (formerly Breslau), a city burdened by memories of war and forced displacement, to show the dynamics between hegemonic memories, dominant memories and countermemories. After the fall of communism, the city changed the previous nationalist-communist narrative of its past by institutionalizing a new official narrative that promotes cosmopolitan memory. The authors investigate how these local, "Europeanized" politics of memory have since 2015 been confronted by exclusionary narratives of Polish memory and identity that the Polish national government strives to make hegemonic. The study pinpoints the successful maneuvers of the liberal local government determined to resist this nationalist pressure.