Public Works, Private Lives: Youth Brigades in Nowa Huta in the 1950s

Abstract

Enthusiastic youth volunteers were a common sight on Poland's ‘great building site of socialism’ of the Stalin era, the steelworks and new town of Nowa Huta. Paradoxically, however, the succesful mobilisation of youthful labour in Nowa Huta was accompanied by failure to socialise volunteers in their attitudes and behaviours after hours. Preferring jazz to mass songs and speak-easies to ‘red corners’, brigade members gained notoriety as ‘hooligans’, and many encountered difficulties adapting to ‘civilian’ life in the new town. The regime's inability to bridge the gulf between itself and Nowa Huta's youth volunteers, the author argues, reflects Polish Stalinism's critical failure to secure legitimacy among its potentially strongest supporters.

Fallen Heroes in Global Capitalism

“…Safety violations were quite common; the number of life threatening accidents was very high, with a fifth of the workforce on sickleave with work-related illnesses at any one time . As a result, labour turnover during the first years was about 20 per cent of the workforce each year (Lebow, 2001 ). During the 1970s, the situation even deteriorated.…”

“…After four years of construction, the first blast furnace was opened in 1954; a year later, the first open hearth furnace started to work, and during the next seven years, many mills opened so that a fully integrated mill came into being (with a hot strip rolling mill, a cold mill, a continuous galvanising line, a hot tip tinning line, a small shapes rolling mill, a coke oven, another open hearth furnace, another two blast furnaces (one with an unprecedented production capacity in Europe), an electrolytic tinning line, a wire-bars mill, an oxygen converter steel plant and a sintering plant. The choice of site was based on the ease of supply of ore (therefore it needed to be as far east as possible, near the border to the Soviet Union), coal, flux and water but was based also on political reasons -a desire to furnish the City of Krak ó w, known for its intellectual and religious tradition, with a proletarian district (compare Lebow, 2001 ;Jajesniak-Quast, 2010). Most of the blue-collar workers were recruited from the surrounding villages.…”

Post‐socialism and the changing geographies of the everyday in Poland

“…Propaganda called young people to Nowa Huta to find work, a home, a life. Notwithstanding the terrible early years when the promises of stability seemed unlikely (see Emeryt w cieniu huty 1996; Stara Nowa Huta 1996; Lebow 2001) by the 1960s stories of stability, opportunity and security were dominant. In Polish sociologies of the time, Stojak (1967), Siemieńska (1969) and Goban‐Klas (1971) focused on the importance in the development of Nowa Huta of improving social‐occupational and material positions and of securing future stability.…”

Re-placing work

“…As such, in its early history, notwithstanding the accounts of appalling working and living conditions in the 1950s (Janus, 1999;Lebow, 2001), work was connected to a set of positive transformations in the lives of people and their community (see, for example, Goban-Klas, 1971;Siemieńska, 1969;Stojak, 1967). As such, in its early history, notwithstanding the accounts of appalling working and living conditions in the 1950s (Janus, 1999;Lebow, 2001), work was connected to a set of positive transformations in the lives of people and their community (see, for example, Goban-Klas, 1971;Siemieńska, 1969;Stojak, 1967).…”