Kinga Pozniak. Nowa Huta

The story of the building of model industrial towns in the Eastern Bloc, such as Nowa Huta, Magnitogorsk, and Stalinstadt, has been richly told. But what fate befell such places when the curtain fell on state socialism? Not only did the changed economic circumstances typically spell economic decline for cities centered on heavy industry, but the new political climate propelled them from the symbolic center to the margins. Kinga Pozniak takes us on an absorbing journey through present-day Nowa Huta, interviewing its inhabitants in what turns out to be a quest for a usable past. Pozniak is specifically interested in how personal memories of the communist past interact with dominant narratives. Building on classical memory theorists like Maurice Halbwachs, as well as more recent work, she begins from the premise that memories of the past, while grounded in historical events and experiences, also reflect present-day preoccupations. Throughout her study, she stresses how the dominant narrative, embraced not only in Polish public discourse but also by the European Union (EU), has framed the communist era as a period of repression, popular resistance, and inefficiency. Because Nowa Huta was a pet project of the communist regime, this discourse poses a challenge to its past and current inhabitants, who must find a way to articulate their own memories. While Pozniak’s informants by and large do not reject the dominant discourse, they are willing to push back against specific aspects that they do not feel reflect their personal experience. But, true to her theoretical framework, Pozniak shows how discussions of the past are framed by broader understandings of the present. Namely, she shows how Polish political discourse has constructed a Manichean world where the only two options are the doomed communist past and the challenging but inevitable neoliberal present. Thus, her informants have difficulty expressing positive memories because they can be construed as “nostalgia,” a misdirected desire to return to a hated regime. Similarly, those who fail to thrive in the new neoliberal conditions are portrayed as “stuck” in the mentality of the old regime, drawing on the discourse of communist inefficiency. In other words, this one-sided discourse about the past does not only misrepresent aspects of the communist experience and marginalize some people’s personal histories; it also short circuits any critical evaluation of the present, something that is clearly unhealthy for Polish democracy.

Aesthetics · Art · Communism · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology) · Socialism · Sociology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies · Urbanization and City Planning