Tablice pamiątkowе w przestrzeni miejskiej Charkowa: polskie akcenty

Abstract

Memorial plaques in Kharkiv urban space: Polish emphasis

The article analyzes the place of the Polish element in the commemoration of the past in the spatial dimension of Kharkiv. For several centuries, the Polish community for which a geographically distant Kharkiv has become a temporary or permanent home, has been represented in the ethnic context of the city. The author outlined two categories of Polish figures, to whom ten memorial plaques were installed in 1998-2018. The first includes the world-famous Henryk Siemiradzki, Adam Mickiewicz, Jozef Piłsudski, and Tadeusz Brzezinski. The second group consists of Poles, whose work has made the world of ordinary Kharkiv residents more comfortable, safer, more beautiful: doctor Vladislav Frankovsky, photographer Alfred Fedetsky, composer Konstanty Gorski, philanthropist Mykola Gedroyts, Count Seweryn Potocki, whose name is associated with the creation of the imperial university. A separate plaque concerns honoring the memory of the fallen Poles, victims of the Stalinist regime. The author used a peculiar analysis algorithm: a brief historical background, location, initiator and opening ceremony, location of elements on the board, coverage of the event in the media. The conclusions include the following points: signs of Polish memory, located in the city center, on the one hand, form the image of the local Polish community as an environment from which came famous figures who became part of the symbolic space of the city, and on the other hand the presence of boards forms the image of Kharkiv as a territory of ethnic tolerance. Given that the urban space is an arena of struggle between the categories of „memory” and „oblivion” of the ethnic groups represented in it, the Polish community of Kharkiv belongs to the category of „memory”, perpetuating itself in the memorial plaques of its prominent representatives.Therefore, the term „Polish” Kharkiv in a sense can be used to describe one of the symbolic spaces that make up the common space of a modern metropolis.