Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950 [1 ed.] 0801432871, 9780801432873

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REBUILDING POLAND Workers and Communists

1945-1950 PADRAIC

KENNEY

“An important book on an important subject. Padraic Kenney has made a major contribution to our understanding of the social and political evolution of postwar east-central Europe.” —Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University The first book to examine the communist takeover in Poland from the bottom up, and the first to use archives opened in 1989, Rebuilding Poland provides a radically new interpretation of the communist experience. Padraic Kenney argues that the postwar takeover was also a social revolution, in which workers expressed their hopes for dramatic social change and influenced the evolution—and eventual downfall—of the communist regime. Kenney compares Lodz, Poland’s largest manufacturing center, and Wroclaw, a city rebuilt as Polish upon the ruins of wartime destruction. His account of dramatic strikes in the textile mills of Lodz shows how workers resisted the communist party’s encroachment on factory terrain and its infringements of worker dignity. The contrasting absence of labor conflict among migrants in the frontier city of Wroclaw holds important clues to the nature of stalinism in Poland: communist power was strongest where workers lacked organizational ties or cultural roots. In the collective reaction of workers in

(continued on back flap)

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PRINTED INU.S.A

Rebuilding Poland

Digitized by the Internet Archive In 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

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Rebuilding Poland Workers and Communists, T94§—-1950 PADRAIC

KENNEY

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Padraic Kenney received the Eugene M. Kayden University of Colorado Annual Faculty Manuscript Award for this manuscript. Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges a subvention from the Kayden Advisory Committee of the University of Colorado at Boulder, which aided in bringing this book to publication. Research for this book was supported in part by a grant from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Information Agency, and the U.S. Department of State, which administers the Russian, Eurasian, and East European Research Program (Title VIII). Copyright © 1997 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1997 by Cornell University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kenney, Padraic, b. 1963

Rebuilding Poland : workers and Communists, 1945-1950 / Padraic Kenney.

5 (oie. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8014-3287-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Communism—Poland—History. 2. Working class—Poland—History. 3. Poland—Economic conditions—1945-1980. 4. Poland—Social conditions—1945-_ I. Title. HX315.7-A6K46

1996

338.9438—dc20

Printed in the United States of America

This book is printed on Lyons Falls Turin Book, a paper that is totally chlorine-free and acid-free.

96-21388

For Izabela, Maia, and Karolina,

for Moira and Shelagh, and for my parents, Michael and Sara

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Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Figures and Maps Acknowledgments

Abbreviations in Text Introduction: Continuities in Twentieth-Century Polish Society

Part I Revolution in the Factories, 1945-1947 The Struggle for the Factory On Strike in Lodz

+ n

Wroclaw: Communism’s Frontier

135

Part II The Party’s Revolution, 1948-1950 Social Foundations of the Stalinist System The Rise and Fall of the Labor Hero The Battle for Working-Class Identity

237 287

Conclusion: State, Society, and the Stalinist Revolution

335

Sources

347

Index

353

Illustrations

Nationalization of Poznanski mill, E6dz, 1946 Election poster, 1946 Election march, 17 January 1947 Worker housing, Lodz Poznahski mill, Lodz Workers clearing rubble, Wroctaw Workers clearing rubble, Wroclaw Labor recruitment poster for Recovered Territories, 1946 Workers signing pledges for a national loan campaign,

55 76 ingly) 1) 150 180

231

1948(?) Lodz ZWM

30 47

members participating in parade, Warsaw, July

1946

Wincenty Pstrowski, 1948 Labor competition poster, 1947 Award recipient in Youth Labor Competition, Warsaw, 1948 Ryszard Obrebski, during campaign to honor Stalin’s birthday, December 1949 Participants in a course for labor avant-gardists, Lodz, 1949 Wanda Gosciminska, £6dz, c. 1950 “Pass Me a Brick”? (Podaj cegle), by Andrzej Kobzdej, 1950 “Service to Poland”’ brigade, Lodz, 1949

241 251 259 264

276 296

393 307, 320

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