This dissertation examines the background and history of the Warsaw Uprising Museum, opened in 2004 in the Polish capital, and its role in the historical policy pursued by the founders of Poland’s Law and Justice party. It argues that while the museum would morph into a major cultural landmark, embraced by a broad segment of Polish society, its originators brought to the project a discrete set of political objectives. This dissertation recovers those goals and situates the institution’s conception and development in the context of Poland’s post-1989 political transformation.

The present study maps the strivings of the team empowered by Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczyński to establish the museum. In doing so it reveals the duration, scope, and intensity of an effort to redraw the boundaries of state authority over matters of historical remembrance by vesting in the government the power to endorse its preferred interpretation of the past. The story of the Warsaw Uprising Museum can thus be taken to represent the first act in a larger drama unfolding in the country today, at the center of which is a dispute over the proper ambit of politics itself.

Chapter 1 charts the development of official policy vis-à-vis the Warsaw Uprising during the communist period and its lasting impact on the national discourse surrounding the battle. Chapter 2 reconstructs the origins of the historical policy launched by the Law and Justice party following the collapse of communism and initial failure to enact ‘lustration’. Chapter 3 examines the establishment of the Warsaw Uprising Museum and the evolution of its mission in the years since its opening.