POLAND: Socialist Model City Fights for a Future

By Zoltán Dujisin Reprint | | Print |

Zoltán Dujisin

NOWA HUTA, Apr 18 2007 (IPS) - From communist showcase to bastion of anti-communism, the Stalin-era model city of Nowa Huta is now being stigmatised by Poles who depict it as Krakow’s criminal hub and a place without a future.

Construction of Nowa Huta (New Steel Mill), now a district north-east of Krakow, a city of 1.4 million about 300km south of capital Warsaw, began in 1949 as authorities of then People’s Republic of Poland decided to build an autonomous model city around the Lenin Steel Works.

The monumental city grew rapidly with migrant workers coming mostly from the countryside, and its steel mill became the largest in Poland. The city came to be known as the perfect example of socialist-realist urban planning and architecture, with a Polish touch.

Today media and Krakow residents depict Nowa Huta, a 20-minute tram ride away, as a neighbourhood with the highest crime rates, a suggestion never confirmed by statistics. Krakow’s city council has done little to counter the prejudices, committing little funds and implementing few policies for the upgrading of its eastern fringe.

Many feel the 200,000 strong community’s stigmatisation stems from unresolved historic disputes between Krakow and Nowa Huta. The latter was built as a working class stronghold to contrast Krakow’s long tradition of bourgeoisie and Catholicism.

“Those living in Nowa Huta are very different and have other customs than in Krakow,” a local teacher who gave her name as Zofia told IPS.

For Zofia, Krakow’s role as the ‘spiritual capital’ of Poland plays a part in this contrast. “People in Krakow detest communism and are very religious,” she says. “I don’t understand why, Krakowians are poor, and poor people should support communism.”

Nowa Huta was planned so as to make schools, health care and stores easily reachable for residents, and soon cultural centres, theatres and sports facilities were added to provide it with the infrastructure of a large city.

Steel workers and their families were offered various leisure and cultural recreation opportunities with the purpose of fostering a strong community feeling. They also enjoyed more opportunities than average to travel and work abroad.

But the economic crisis of the 1980s and the subsequent turmoil deeply affected the city, and the opposition trade union Solidarity found one of its largest support bases here.

Solidarity replaced the communist party as the social centre of the city, even as it was banned following the declaration of martial law in 1981. Nowa Huta turned into a site of recurrent demonstrations and clashes with the authorities, and the illusion and hope of the 1960s and 1970s was replaced by anti-communist resentment in the 1980s.

“Nowa Huta always had a strong community, but things are changing, a new generation was born here and is much more influenced by the Krakow mentality,” Gienek, a former metallurgic technician told IPS.

The local church in Nowa Huta, built during the 1970s following grassroots pressure, is packed with believers who celebrate Easter and attest to the strength Catholic values have regained Poland. The church’s all-too-human Christ figure with tears down the face is said not to have pleased the late Polish pope John Paul II.

In a nearby square, formerly known as Plac Centralny and renamed Ronald Reagan Square, youths ride bicycles and skateboards where once stood a giant statue of Lenin. The statue was pulled down by a crowd in 1989.

But nothing had prepared ‘Hutniks’, as they are derogatorily known to outsiders, for the economic difficulties of transition. Initially optimistic and hopeful about the future, they were soon to discover the restructuring of the steelworks would take a large toll on the local economy.

Once employing 43,000 workers, the steel mill was downsized to a workforce of 9,000, and much of it lies abandoned as only few sections were sub-leased to private companies.

“Politically and economically everything has changed, but I’m not sure people are happier,” Aleksander, a former engineer at the Lenin Steel Works told IPS. “Perhaps there is more freedom, but many more people don’t find work. Maybe our work wasn’t that good, but it was work.”

With the steelworks decline, much of the town’s active cultural life has disappeared. Unlike the days when moving into Nowa Huta opened prospects for the young, central Krakow is now the new generation’s primary aim.

“I didn’t really like living here, people are not very educated,” student Wojciech told IPS. “That’s why I moved to Krakow.”

Some from the same generation disagree. “I am always fighting this view of Nowa Hutans being suburban people, worse than Krakowians,” Dorota, a law student in Krakow told IPS.

“In my faculty, whenever I say I’m from here my colleagues ask me how I manage to live here, if I have to be strong or brave, but I have lived here since I was born and I never felt in danger.”

Explaining the city’s stigmatisation, Dorota argues that “whenever there is crime in Nowa Huta, the press loves to point out it was precisely here, but when a crime is committed elsewhere, they just name a street.”

But even though most Poles look down on her city and it is precisely the young who enjoy the most opportunities in post-socialist Poland, Dorota promises to resist the charm of hip Krakow.

“Nowa Huta is the greenest part of Krakow, I like it here. I won’t leave, I am proud of our history,” she said.