City of Struggle & Toil

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Nowa Huta and the massive steelworks nearby were showcase projects for the Six-Year Plan. Initially the plant was meant to be located on the Gliwice Canal. However, when the communist powers raised the expected steel production yield, the former location proved inadequate. A request was sent to Russian experts to determine an appropriate location. At the beginning of 1949 a team of experts under the direction of Chryzant Zybin decided on the area around Mogiła and Pleszów as the site for the steelworks. On the 24th of February 1949 the government approved the location. It is still uncertain why the Polish and Russian communists decided on building a large metallurgical plant and a new city for workers in close proximity to the ancient and conservative city of Krakow. Even though it may be difficult to give a single answer to that question, it is certain that Nowa Huta was designed from the outset as socialist city void of God, a city that was meant to be a forge, forging a new man – the builder of communist Poland.

Already in the early spring, measuring crews appeared in the area of Mogiła and Pleszów. The soil here was exceptionally fertile, so the local peasants opposed relocation. Compensation for the confiscated land was symbolic. One square metre was evaluated at 30-65 grosz, depending on the size of the farm. The bigger the farm the less was paid. Some peasants refused to accept what they described as “alms”. The compensation claims are still not resolved till this day.

The building of the first housing estates was begun by cutting down the unripened wheat fields. Digging for the first blocks of flats on the A-1 estate (today Wandy estate) was started on the 23rd of June 1949. The first building crew numbered 20 men who came here after finishing the expansion of the Tabaco Factory in Czyżyny. The first estates (today’s Wandy, Willowe, Na Skarpie, Młodości and partly Sportowe and Krakowiaków) were build according to the typical pre-war designs of Franciszek Adamowski. Residents moved into the first block of flats in December 1949.

July 1950 saw the formation of the City of Nowa Huta Building Management Board and October of the same year that of The City of Nowa Huta Building Association. An architectural office “Miastoprojekt Nowa Huta” (Citydesign Nowa Huta) was also created and managed by Tadeusz Ptaszycki. The overall town plan of the new city with a central square and five wide alleys running in different directions was presented in March 1951 at an exhibition of works by town planners and architects for the general plan of Nowa Huta, which was organised at “Miastoprojekt”. The authors of the plan were: Tadeusz Ptaszycki, Bolesław Skrzybalski, Stanisław Juchnowicz, Tadeusz Rembiesa, Janusz Ingarden, Henryk Borowy, Adam Fołtyn, Tadeusz Janowski, Janina Lenczewska, Władysław Leonowicz, Zbigniew Sieradzki and Andrzej Uniejewski.

The facade of the Central Square and the city segments initially marked by the letter A (Centrum A, Ogrodowe, Hutnicze, Stalowe), B (Centrum B, Słoneczne, Szkolne and Zielone) and C (Centrum C, Zgody, Urocze, Teatralne, Górali and Krakowiaków) were completed between 1950 and 1956. These estates along with the Central Square make up the historical part of Nowa Huta built in the socialist realist style. This Nowa Huta socialist realism was not just a blind copy of the Soviet pattern. The architects under the leadership of Tadeusz Ptaszycki gave it its own unique character with many elements relating to Krakow’s renaissance period. The building of the steelworks commenced on the 11th of March 1951. Buildings characteristic of that period are the management office blocks in front of the main entrance gate to the plant.

From 1949 till December 1950 Nowa Huta was an administratively independent city. It was included into Krakow on the 14th of December 1950. Formally, it became part of greater Krakow on the 1st of January 1951. The new city developed very quickly. Whereas in 1950 there were 18,846 residents in the area of Nowa Huta, by 1952 that number had increased to 56,931. In 1956 the area of Nowa Huta was inhabited by over 100 thousand people. But the city continued to develop. That same year saw the launch of the second phase of the Nowa Huta building project. It was at this time that the estates of Szklane Domy and the estates of segment D (Centrum D, Handlowe, Kolorowe and Spółdzielcze) were built. In the 1960s work began on the large development of flats in the villages of Bieńczyce and Wzgórza Krzesławickie. At the beginning of the 1970s blocks of flats were built in the area of Mistrzejowice and half way through that decade building work began in the area of the old airport in Czyżyny. With the new buildings came more residents. In 1991, on the basis of a statute by Krakow City Council, eighteen new subsidiary suburbs were formed. The area of Nowa Huta was divided into 5 such suburbs: District XIV - Czyżyny, District XV – Mistrzejowice, District XVI – Bieńczyce, District XVII – Wzgórza Krzesławickie and District XVIII – Nowa Huta. Today, the 5 Nowa Huta districts are home to almost 230 thousand residents, making it 1/3 of the total population of Krakow.

Nowa Huta was never a city that was easy to categorise. During Stalin’s era it was on the lips of almost the whole of Poland. It was here that production yield records were smashed and photos of the building of the new city and steelworks were shown in almost all the news bulletins. Many journalists, writers and poets came to the massive building site. The Nowa Huta of the 50s was described by such authors as Konwicki and Kapuścinski. Wisława Szymborska published her poems in the Nowa Huta weekly “Budujemy Socjalizm” (We Are Building Socialism). On the 21st January 1954 the steelworks was named after Vladimir I. Lenin (to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of the leader of the Bolshevik revolution), and on the 28th April 1973 in al.Róż his statue by Marian Konieczny was unveiled. The steelworks communist party organisation was one of the biggest in Poland and the representative of the Polish United Workers’ Party’s Factory Committee was always a member of the party’s Central Committee.
On the other hand many residents campaigned for a church almost as soon as building work began. Unfortunately, the government consistently refused permission to build one. Permission was only granted after the events of “October 1956”. However, soon afterwards they turned back on their promise and in April 1960 demanded that the cross be removed from the proposed church building site. This caused violent clashes in defence of the cross which started on the 27th of April 1960. As a result of the unrest nearly 500 people were arrested and sentenced. Many people were wounded. A special role was also played by Nowa Huta during the time of martial law. This youngest suburb of Krakow was talked about throughout the world and the few Nowa Huta parishes became real islands of freedom during the dark days of martial law. Nowa Huta is also an extraordinary example to the rest of Poland of a stubborn fight by its residents for the right to practice their faith and build churches. The residents were consistently supported in this struggle by the Krakow Bishop and metropolitan cardinal Karol Wojtyła. The result of these stubborn efforts was new churches, among them the famous Ark of the Lord and the church in Mistrzejowice from where father Kazimierz Jancarz, the legendary “Solidarity” union chaplain worked during martial law.

Nowa Huta has a very complex history but it is worth knowing because here, like through a magnifying glass, all the processes present in communist Poland took place.