Grabarczyk Mateusz, Uniformed Services Pension Amendment Acts in Poland as Part of State Politics of Memory

Post-communist countries in the transition period carry a burden of dealing with the past. By politics of memory, states strive to shape common awareness about past events, and thus try to maintain their collective memory through various mechanisms. To this end, they can decide to withdraw certain privileges for persons associated with the previous system, an example of which is the reduction of retirement benefits for a specific group associated with the former system. Such mechanisms were introduced in Poland under the Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Acts of 2009 and 2016 .

This paper examines sanctions taken against former officers of the security service of the Polish People’s Republic (Polish: Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL), in particular the decrease of their retirement and disability benefits, and assesses these sanctions from the perspective of transitional justice and the implementation of state politics of memory. The aim is to prove that reducing pensions by means...