Zweierlei Wiederaneignung der postsozialistischen Stadt. Kommunale Selbstverwaltung und Privatisierung in Polen in den 1990er-Jahren

This article investigates the functional intertwining of municipal self-government and privatisation in Poland’s post-socialist transformation since 1989. It draws attention to the process of municipalisation of rights to previous state property that accompanied the unprecedented expansion of private property after the collapse of state socialism. To explain the historical preconditions that gave meaning to the question “Who owns the city?”, the article outlines the rise of self-management/self-government (Polish: samorząd) and property to key concepts of post-socialist transformation. In a second step, it examines the fundamental debates on re-constituting municipal property in the course of Poland’s municipal reform in the spring of 1990. Finally, it discusses exemplary fields and challenges of property politics pursued by Polish municipalities during the early 1990s. In doing so, the article shows privatisation and municipalisation as entangled, but also conflicting dimensions of re-appropriation of local lifeworlds by post-socialist urban communities and highlights their close link with individual and collective claims for re-appropriation of agency. Focusing on the turbulent early phase of post-socialist property transformations, the article contributes to a nuanced understanding of the various functions of diverse forms of property, as well as their social embeddedness. Hence, it conceives of the post-socialist city as a laboratory for identifying both crucial building blocks and potential fault lines of the liberal capitalist property order.