Project Proposal:
Living in the Spaces of (Post-) Socialism: The Case of Nowa Huta, Poland

This project builds on preliminary research carried out in 1998/99 on 'Identity, Locality and Economic Restructuring in Post-Socialist Poland' funded by the HSBC Holdings of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) and published in part in Stenning (forthcoming). It also develops methodologies and theoretical approaches used by the applicant in research in the Russian Federation (Stenning, 1999).

Background and research rationale [Back to Top]
The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and in east central Europe highlighted a number of weaknesses in the study of these countries. The responsibility for these weaknesses lay both with 'area specialists', or Sovietologists, and with 'mainstream' social scientists. Whilst "Soviet studies constituted the Soviet Union [and east central Europe] as 'special' and so cut themselves off from developments in other areas of social science" (Burawoy, 1992, p.778), many of the key theorists in the social sciences practised an implicit regional focus on western Europe and north America. As a result, within geography, many of the important methodological and theoretical developments have been slow to filter through to studies of east central Europe and the former Soviet Union. In particular, whilst the restructuring of those economies has been well-documented in a variety of media, there has been less exploration of the connections between the restructuring of the economy and radical changes in social and cultural spheres (but see Stenning and Bradshaw, 1999; Pickles and Smith, 1998), despite the fact that academic geographies in the west have been paying increasing attention to the articulation of culture, economy and space in a globalising world (Massey, 1994; Bryson et al., 1999). The development of a 'new economic geography' (Lee and Wills, 1997) in recent years creates both theoretical and methodological standpoints which are of considerable value in the study of socialism and post-socialism.

In the ten years since 1989 considerable progress has been made in the 'transition' from socialism to some sort of capitalism by all of the countries of the former Soviet bloc. Poland is regularly identified as one of the front-runners in reform and will be in the first wave of accessions to the European Union. However, focusing on the success (or failure) of reform at the macro-scale ignores the changes that have taken place behind the headline events. As with the construction of socialism in the immediate post-war era, the emergence of post-socialism in east central Europe has been accompanied by radical and wide-ranging transformations in the daily lives of the people of the region. This is especially true in those places which held a central role within the socialist system and are faced with the most major economic and social transformations - the 'spaces of socialism'.

The social construction of space and 'spaces of socialism'
Whilst it has long been recognised that the spatial is a social construct, it is increasingly accepted that "the social is spatially constructed too" (Massey, 1984, p.6). As Giddens suggests, space should not only be seen as the outcome of social processes, but also the medium through which those processes are constituted (Giddens, 1981). Not only are places structured in part by wider socio-economic systems, but elements of what makes a place what it is (its history, institutions, economic structure) are active in constructing or changing the nature of social systems, and as such space and society should be "theorized conjointly, not as the impact of one upon the other" (Thrift, 1983, p.31). In this context, the rise and fall of socialism in east central Europe has been shaped by, and has actively re-shaped the practices of, particular places.

The socialist regimes of post-war Europe represent clear examples of conscious and active attempts on the part of the state, and sections of the population, to construct new spaces for new societies. Notwithstanding industrialisation drives in the inter-war period, in the immediate post-war years these states were largely rural and agricultural with pockets of industry in key urban centres. The adoption of socialist regimes in these countries involved a "deliberate attempt to permanently redefine social structures, ways of thinking and behaviour of the population" (de Weydenthal, 1978, p.60), centred on the twin tenets of industrialisation and urbanisation derived from Marxism-Leninism and the Soviet experience. For both ideological and economic reasons, the urban industrial worker was seen to be the vanguard of the revolution and the creation of new urban, industrial spaces - 'spaces of socialism' - was thus absolutely central to building support for the new socialist regimes in east central Europe. These towns and cities are important examples of the mutual construction of society and space and epitomise top-down and bottom-up attempts at building socialism. As Domanski suggests, "symbols of industrialisation such as Nowa Huta, Plock, Pulawy and other towns endowed with new factories were principal symbols of socialism as well" (1997, p.175).

Nowa Huta
The town of Nowa Huta (meaning 'new steelworks') is an archetypal example of such a place. Founded in 1949 (and now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary) just to the east of the historical city of Kraków, Nowa Huta is home to Poland's first and largest integrated steelworks - the Lenin steelworks. The construction of the steelworks and the town were "a deliberate piece of social engineering" (Hardy and Rainnie, 1996, p.148), designed to transform the Kraków region into a source of support for socialism and to "remake Kraków into a proletarian city" (Ryder, 1990, p.233). At their height in the late 1970s, the Lenin steelworks employed over 40,000 workers, produced close to seven million tons of steel annually and supported a wide range of social and cultural facilities in the town (Hardy and Rainnie, 1997). The project's principal designer, Tadeusz Ptaszycki, described Nowa Huta as "a town of significant transformations of people and citizens in new conditions of urban planning and architecture, of new economic and social processes" (Ptaszycki, 1959, p.8).

Nevertheless, Nowa Huta's role in the transformation of post-war Poland and the construction of socialism was not straightforward. Despite being described as "the first socialist town in Poland" (Nowa Huta, 1971), there is also evidence of popular protest, contest and subversion (Gut, 1991). The earliest signs of resistance in Nowa Huta were embodied in the struggles for religion, but these religious struggles were intimately intertwined with political and social struggles for spaces for dissent within the socialist state. Nowa Huta's long-awaited parish church became a central site in the anti-communist movement of the late 1970s and 80s. Throughout these decades, small acts of resistance escalated into strikes, demonstrations and street battles such that Nowa Huta became "a principal bastion of the anti-communist struggle" (Rzeczpospolita, 22.9.98). Writers on the history of Poland and the Solidarity movement such as Touraine, Davies and Nowak testify to the central role played by the steelworkers of Nowa Huta in setting political agendas nationwide throughout the 1980s, highlighting, for example, that the Lenin steelworks branch of Solidarity was then (and remains) the largest single Solidarity organisation in the country, that the steelworks were one of the strategic factories placed under military control during Jaruzelski's martial law and that underground meetings in Nowa Huta sustained Solidarity in Kraków during the mid-decade years of illegality (Touraine et al., 1983; Davies, 1986; Nowak, 1992).

The central irony of the steelworkers' involvement in bringing down the socialist state has been that those events ushered in an era of political and economic practice that marginalised much of what Nowa Huta and the Lenin steelworks (now Huta Sendzimira) represented. The end of socialism challenged the role of large-scale, centrally-planned, heavy industrial projects, it broke down the bonds of friendship between Poland and the Soviet Union and it led to the rejection of attempts to build a new socialist society which had been so clearly played out in Nowa Huta. Nowa Huta stands at the forefront of communities facing the challenges of post-socialism, in need of radical economic restructuring and experiencing profound social and political transformations. Although major 'downsizing' has been delayed up till now by continuing subsidy and a lack of political will, in October 1999 the management of the steelworks announced close to 8000 redundancies, almost half the workforce.

Economy, locality and the lived experiences of transformation
As has already been suggested, although considerable attention has been paid to both the construction of socialism in east central Europe and its collapse, less work has explored the spatial and local dimensions of change, such that much of the literature lacks an understanding of the role of people and institutions at the local level in transforming social and economic systems and building new practices (Regulska, 1998; see also, Stenning 1999). As Simon Clarke has argued, "it is too often forgotten that what ordinary people do is fundamental to the success or failure of any attempts at reform" (Clarke, 1999, p.112). This project is explicitly focused on contributing to this underdeveloped research area.

This research will explore the relationship between large-scale social and economic transformations and the experiences of life and work in Nowa Huta. In a locality so profoundly intertwined with the national socialist project, transformations within the economic, social and political 'rules of the game' (through the construction of socialism, its reform, collapse and replacement) restructure experiences of life and work more than in many other localities. Such an intertwining is based not only on ideological foundations, but also through the tight interconnections between the dominant workplace and the locality. Under socialism, new industrial towns were frequently isolated from existing development, constructed with strategic plants, oriented primarily (often solely) around the workplace. The industrial employer was very visible on the new urban landscape, involved not only in production, but also in daily activities outside work. As Ciechocinska writes, "the workplace was turned into the main axis of organization of social life" (1993, p.32). Domanski describes how "you had to meet your ... comrades and overseers queuing at the shop, waiting at the doctor's, and going on vacation" (Domanski, 1997, p.185). Workers and their families in factory towns under socialism lived routinized, connected lives grounded in the locality of the enterprise (see also, Beynon and Hudson, 1993; Robinson and Sadler, 1985). This internal construction of everyday lives and identities was reinforced by these towns' privileged location within the wider socialist project. Not only did "the company become an important element of [the resident's] sense of place" (Domanski, 1992, p.357) but was also the foundation of the town's wider identity ("the one which made the town known in the country" (ibid.)).

Not only have large-scale transformations deeply restructured life and work in key localities, but many of those localities have been central to the construction of socialism and post-socialism. As Michael Harloe (1996) notes, east central European socialism was built and died in many of the same places. Many of the places which were bastions of support for socialism (capital cities, key industrial centres) were also the ones in which the challenges to socialism were strongest. A number of authors have identified those who fought hardest for socialism, and were later disenchanted, as a critical force in the dismantling of socialism and the construction of market economies (see, for example, Bideleux and Jeffries, 1998). Thus whilst places like Nowa Huta provided the terrain on which socialism was built, they also provided the space and the people to contest and bring down socialism.

Research Questions [Back to Top]
In what ways was the socialist space of Nowa Huta produced, consumed and represented during its construction?
This research will begin by clarifying the position of Nowa Huta within Poland's socialist project and exploring both official and popular representation and consumption in the town. The first part of the research will analyse Nowa Huta's role in the construction of socialism and the importance attributed to the development of the town and the Lenin steelworks. It will consider official and other narratives detailing plans and expectations for the town and explore, through life history interviews, popular consumption of wider narratives. In particular, this stage of the research will ask how the town's centrality in the construction of socialism shaped everyday experiences of life and work in Nowa Huta and constructed particular identities (both individual and collective) in the town.

What was Nowa Huta's role in the active remaking of Poland's socialist system?
Despite being a town built for socialism, Nowa Huta was active in contesting and remaking the system from the late 1950s onwards. However, most of the histories of Solidarity and other opposition movements in Poland are weak in their analyses of Nowa Huta's role. This part of the research will contribute to filling that gap by identifying key events and practices of contestation in the town's history, linking these to wider processes of opposition and reform and questioning what role particular places can have in the remaking of a system. The focus of this part of the research will be on understanding the tensions between Nowa Huta's centrality in the socialist project and its part in its collapse, and on asking what this changing activity meant for Nowa Huta's place, materially and discursively, in Poland and the wider world.

In what ways are the challenges of marketisation and globalisation restructuring lives and work in Nowa Huta?
The primary focus of the research, developed against the background of the two earlier questions, will be the contemporary experiences of Nowa Huta. The town's historical importance in both the construction and collapse of socialism means that it is an exciting and unique site to explore the lived experiences of post-socialist transformation. The processes of marketisation and globalisation, together with political changes, provide new challenges for Nowa Huta as the steelworks (now Huta Sendzimira) confront privatisation and EU accession, and the system which created the town is discredited. Thus the key to the proposed research project will be an assessment of the contemporary economic and social situation in the town which asks i) how marketisation and globalisation are experienced by residents in their daily lives and work, ii) how the relationship between Huta Sendzimira and the town is changing, and iii) how residents are making sense of the changes in the light of the town's history.

Methodologies [Back to Top]
This research will be primarily executed using a range of local-level, ethnographic and discursive methodologies, with an explicit aim of developing the use of such approaches in post-socialist states, where, until recently, limitations on travel and access have encouraged a preponderance of top-down research strategies, focusing on macro-level analyses, statistical material and 'expert' interviews. However, there is also an explicit desire to link the case study work with larger scale analyses of socialism and post-socialism.

1. Archival Work
   Archives in the UK and Poland will be consulted to establish the formal stories behind and media representations of the construction of Nowa Huta and its history of contestation from the late 1950s onwards. Archival work will begin in the UK in the library of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). The SSEES library, in addition to its general collections, holds two archives relating to Solidarity and other opposition movements in Poland in the 1970s and 80s. In Poland, the key resources will be the libraries of the Jagiellonian University of Kraków (this will include the main university library but also subject libraries for geography, sociology and ethnography), the archives of certain newspapers (in the first instance, Budujemy Socjalizm [later Glos Nowej Huty] the paper of Nowa Huta; and the Kraków paper, Gazeta Krakowa) and the nascent museum of Nowa Huta, being established to commemorate the town's fiftieth anniversary. Archival work will begin with readings of books and monographs of Nowa Huta and will use newspaper reports to develop detailed accounts of key events in the town's history. Local and regional archives of the Solidarity union will be used to complement media reports of strikes, demonstrations and underground activity in the 1980s.
2. Life histories
   A series of interviews will be carried out with approximately thirty residents of Nowa Huta, reflecting a range of age, gender and status positions, but all with some relation to the steelworks. These informants will be identified through existing contacts in Nowa Huta, in particular the steelworks' unions, the churches and the local council. The interviews will be loosely structured to explore interviewees' life and work histories in Nowa Huta, paying particular attention to their understandings of the changing relationship between workplace and community, and between Nowa Huta and wider socio-economic systems. Key themes from the archival work will be fed into the interview process and popular consumption of the official Nowa Huta project will be discussed. It is likely that there will be more than one meeting with each interviewee and it is possible that some interviews will take place in small groups. For this reason, four months have been allocated to this stage of the research. This phase will borrow from and contribute to wider literatures on the lived experiences of economic and political change exemplified by, amongst others, Katz and Monk (1993) and Bruno (1999).
3. 'Expert' interviews with key informants
   Approximately 25 interviews will be carried out with a wide range of individuals and organisations in Kraków and Nowa Huta to explore the historical and contemporary development of Nowa Huta and the steelworks. This will build on the earlier phases of the research and on preliminary interviews conducted in August 1998. The following organisations have already been identified:
   • Huta Sendzimira management (3 interviews)
   • workplace trade unions (Solidarity, Solidarity 80, NSZZ Pracowników HTS, Sierpien 80) (8)
   • Nowa Huta district council (2)
   • Kraków city council and regional government (4)
   • the Nowa Huta churches and other community organisations (6+)
   • Kraków Regional Development Agency (1)
   • East Kraków Development Agency (1)
4. Secondary Sources
   In addition to the historical review of media and official publications, contemporary sources will also be analysed to complement interview research in creating a picture of the Kraków and Nowa Huta economies today. This phase of the research will focus on official publications, government statistics and popular and academic media and will run concurrently with all the other phases.

Research Timetable [Back to Top]
The project will last for 24 months with time being spent in the UK and in Poland.

• July 2000 - September 2000 (UK)
  The initial phase of the research will be carried out in the UK. The key tasks will be developing the research context and working in SSEES archives in London. This period will also be spent making additional contacts in Poland and organising the extended research visit.
• October 2000 - June 2001 (Poland) The bulk of the research will be carried out during an extended (nine month) visit to Poland. I will be based in Kraków but will travel internally in Poland as necessary. The nine month period will be divided into three phases. Primary activities are identified for each phase, but it expected that many will run concurrently.
• October - December: archival work; development of contacts in Kraków and Nowa Huta
• January - April: life history interviews
• May - June: 'expert' interviews
• July 2001 - June 2002 (UK) Twelve months after the main research visit will focus on the analysis of materials gathered, writing up and the dissemination of research results. A secondary research visit is scheduled for two weeks in March/April 2002 to respond to recent changes in Nowa Huta and attend to any major gaps in historical data. Twelve months will allow for research results to be disseminated before the end of project report.

Ethical Considerations [Back to Top]
With research of an ethnographic nature, particularly when exploring people's life histories, there are clearly issues of confidentiality, representation and sensitivity. The research aims and context will be explained to informants prior to interviews and research results will be fed back, anonymously if necessary, to both informants and community organisations throughout the research process for comment and debate. Interviewee assent will be gained before recording meetings and the archiving of interview materials will be discussed.

ESRC Themes and HEFCE Initiatives [Back to Top]
This project contributes to at least four of the ESRC's thematic priorities.

• Theme 1 Economic Development and Performance - The project contributes to an understanding of the relationship between economic systems and quality of life as Poland experiences systemic transformations, and highlights the importance of developing market infrastructures and their relationship to social and economic restructuring.
• Theme 3 Globalisation, Regions and Emerging Markets - The research theorises the relationship between globalisation and transformation in east central Europe (ECE), a key emerging market, exploring in particular the transformation of localities, cultures and identities increasingly shaped by global processes as the Polish economy is restructured and its society opened to the outside world.
• Theme 8 Life Spans, Lifestyles and Health - The life history approach adopted in this research permits an examination of changing life experiences and lifestyles over a number of generations and within a spread of historical contexts in one Polish locality. It contributes to an understanding of the wider structuring of life choices and daily lives, and to the methodological development of life history work in ECE, underused up till now.
• Theme 9 Social Inclusion and Exclusion - This project examines the changing role of the state and community actors in providing for the social and welfare needs of populations as the non-productive activities of large state enterprises are divested and welfare provision privatised. It links this issue to changing notions of community and cohesion within a locality dominated by one such enterprise. This research also explores the potential for the social and economic exclusion of people and places previously central to socialism as economic and political values and priorities change.

In addition, this research reinforces the goals of HEFCE's Former Soviet and East European Studies (FSEES) Initiative, launched in 1995 to meet growing national needs for expertise in language, area and disciplinary studies. The principal applicant is a postholder under this Initiative in the economic restructuring of post-communist states and is developing language and research expertise in geographies of Poland and east central Europe more widely. The University of Birmingham also has two other HEFCE FSEES posts and has recently been awarded JIF financing for a new European research institute. The applicant is an associate member of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies which will be part of this new institute.

Dissemination [Back to Top]

• Presentations: work in progress will be presented at seminars and conferences during the research period in both Poland and the UK. In particular, I plan to present a paper to a future meeting of the Joint Polish-British Geography Seminar, to the RGS-IBG annual conference in January 2002 and to the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers in April 2002. Research will also be presented through the channels of the University of Birmingham's Russian Regional Research Group (which covers research in east central Europe also), the Polish Regional and Industrial Research Network, bringing together researchers from a number of UK universities, and the network of academics connected through the current ESRC seminar series on Work, Employment and Society in East-Central Europe.
• Internet: Work in progress and other material emanating from the project (including photographs, life histories) will be published on a dedicated web site.
• Publications: conference and seminar papers will be converted into articles for international refereed journals during 2002. At least four papers will be submitted to journals in geography and area studies such as Transactions of the IBG, Society and Space and East European Politics and Societies. One of these articles will explicitly focus on the use and success of the project's methodologies. Papers will also be submitted (in Polish and in English) to journals in Poland, such as Geographica Polonica or Folia Geographica: Series Geographica-Oeconomica. The research will also contribute in the longer term to a single-authored monograph on the spaces of socialism.
• Non-academic media: Key findings will be fed back to informants and community organisations through brief, accessible papers and summaries, which will make connection to contemporary local development and employment policy issues (see Section 22). Articles will also be submitted to popular British and Polish media, presenting the research to a wider, non-specialist audience.

References [Back to Top]

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