KKinga Pozniak: Nowa Huta. Generations of Change in a Model Socialist Town. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014. X., 227 S., 33 Abb., 1 Kte. = Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. ISBN: 978-0-8229-6318-9

Kinga Pozniak: Nowa Huta. Generations of Change in a Model Socialist Town. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014. X., 227 S., 33 Abb., 1 Kte. = Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. ISBN: 978-0-8229-6318-9.

The cover photo shows a paradise: children playing “wild” in a plushy yard between just finished houses. This arcadia is contrasted by the propaganda photograph on page 28: clean dressed and well combed children playing marry-go-about under the surveillance of teachers in front of a modern and comfortable kindergarten. The town where this metamorphosis has taken place is Nowa Huta, which in the fifties of the 20th century became a model industrial town in the socialistic Polish People’s Republic. Only by looking on both photographs one could think about irreconcilable differences between official and private memories, one of the main topics in the book.

But remembering the past in this model industrial town is even more complicated when all positive memories about Nowa Huta became politically incorrect after the fall of socialism. As a project of the now-discredited socialist government Nowa Huta became extremely unpopular and is being remembered in the framework of the current hegemonic national discourse of repression, resistance and inefficiency. Memories of another kind should be forgotten. But actually this programmatic wish cannot prevent the creation of alternative memories. Pozniak shows that Nowa Huta is a place with a contradictory and contested history and that many of these contradictions are physically inscribed and re-inscribed in the city space (p. 60).The good example is the newest map of the town: While the names of the main streets crossing the town were changed after “new” heroes (John Paul or Colonel Anders), the housing vicinities keep their unpolitical old names (Charming, Concordia et. al.), therefore both narratives seem to exist peacefully side by side. More complicate was the naming process in the case of the main square: first it was called Central Square, in 2004 renamed by Krakow’s city councillors (then from above) Ronald Reagan Square. This action led to massive local protest. Currently its name “reconciles” both narratives: Ronald Reagan Central Square.

In the socialist period, the history of Nowa Huta was presented by socialist propaganda as a big success. The town name refers to the steelworks named after Vladimir Lenin, built “from the seeds” on the margins of the cultural capital of Poland, Cracow, as a symbol of victory over backwardness and poverty and of a complete rupture with the pre-socialistic past. In connection with the steelworks a new and multifunctional city was created: housing, communal gardens, schools, a hospital, play-grounds, recreation areas and cultural institutions. The steelworks community functioned relatively well until the middle of seventies. Then the economic depression proceeded, accompanied by worker and inhabitant protests – religion provided the language and symbolism. In the 1980ties the steelworks became one of most important sites of Solidarność. After the fall of communism Nowa Huta underwent the shift from an industrial town to a postindustrial one: the steelworks got privatized and the town community is currently afflicted by unemployment, instability, privatization of services and cutting of public programs. Pozniak estimates that these increasing disadvantages were not seriously contested by memories about the secure socialist past because people accept neo-liberal ideas to a high degree – the cuttings are perceived as the price for technical modernization, efficiency and individual freedom. Nowadays the municipal administration tries to improve Nowa Huta’s status by economic zoning and by creating of heritage sites, encouraging either establishing new industries or town revitalizing. Pozniak put the history of Nowa Huta in a more broad context of development from production to consumption, from industrialization and deindustrialization and of the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist organization of work with its narrative of flexibility, risk-taking and individual responsibility. She points out that “the story of Nowa Huta’s steelworks can tell us much about how larger global historical processes […] are variously adopted, adapted, negotiated and contested in local places and in relation to local histories” (p. 99).

Pozniak analyses the familiar and generational dimension of the memory building process, and mentions that generational experiences make the memories polyphonic. While the generation of new arrivals and first builders perceived the creation of the steelwork community as a success they identified with and benefited from, the second “indigenous” generation witnessed shortage combined with decline and protested against them. The current community leaders were active in the political opposition in the 1980s. The currently dominant narrative underlining repression, resistance and inefficiency mirrors their experiences. This narrative is strengthened by the competition for EU project funding: The people engaged “had to develop a common narrative on the socialist past that mashes with the narrative that informs the work of E.U. institutions” (p. 62). The youngest generation tends to accept the representations of past produced by elders.

On the local level there exist some initiatives, e.g. two museums exhibiting histories of Nowa Huta. Positive accounts of the socialist period are generally missing there. Because of the discrediting power of any association with socialism local memory makers avoid mentioning the connection between the town and ideology and emphasize instead the hard work of its first residents. The exhibitions concentrate on the district’s pre-socialist past. The second main narrative is that about resistance and the heroic role of the Catholic Church. Pozniak summarizes: “Public representations of Nowa Huta as a site of resistance to the socialist government feed into the currently hegemonic national narratives of the socialist period as a time of repression, resistance, and inefficiency.” (p. 121) She notices a recent trend toward the decentralization of national collective memory that in future could help pluralizing the memories by taking in account specific experiences of residents in Nowa Huta, for whom living and working here was an opportunity and a life chance, for economic improvement, education and also social mobility. Pozniak contests the notion dismissing such memories as “nostalgia” and sees them as a possible “call for an ‘alternative moral order’” (p. 152). Until now people who voice alternate memories are demonized, which is “a very effective strategy for preventing the emergence of alternative discourses that might seek to challenge the present political or economic arrangements” (p. 186). On the other side the lack of positive memories about a place negatively affects the sense of belonging to it.

Pozniak shows the connection between memories, generations and place in one particular town. While the Nowa Huta socialist architecture and urban planning indeed lost its negative image through its connection with international modernity, the positive memories about life in the socialist city did not. But as Pozniak underlines memory building is a negotiating process. Some Polish experts continually voice their discomfort with a hegemonic national narrative and state a widespread longing for alternative memories. The grief on lost social solidarity caused by neo-liberalism is also expressed. Is the time for positive Nowa Huta memories already coming?

Hanna Kozińska-Witt, Rostock