Mit Nowej Huty. Analiza i interpretacja wybranych aspektów

Abstrakt

THE MYTH OF NOWA HUTA. AN ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF SELECTED ASPECTS

In the article, Nowa Huta has been analyzed in the context of the past realities that brought about both progress and regress in the investment as well as, in 1989, a change of the political system in Poland. The origins of the categorization of Nowa Huta in mythical terms go back to 1949, when the decision was made to locate it on the territories of villages on the then outskirts of Kraków. The article discusses the ways in which the myth of Nowa Huta had an impact on the first generation of the builders and the inhabitants of the place. It has been written from the perspective of historical anthropology, a field of study that aims at describing man’s position in history in all possible contexts and experiences. Understood as an embedded way of comprehending the reality that characterizes a whole community and is present in human culture and mentality, the myth emerged in Nowa Huta as an unexpected outcome of the propaganda disseminated in the first half of the 1950s. Only some of the mythical components have been discussed in the article, present to this day in the mentality of Nowa Huta’s earliest constructors and residents. The first aspect of the impact of the myth of Nowa Huta consisted in developing an identity connected with the location of the town – the perception of the place as a chosen and significant one, considering it in the context of the cultural links, history and tradition. This component – the myth of origins – had as its key feature the supplanting of the hitherto way of perceiving the place and its connections by a new one, linked to the decision about building the town of Nowa Huta and the metallurgical plant on the territories of the villages of Pleszów and Mogiła. The process was undertaken intentionally with the view to converting the rural area which abounded in history and tradition into an urbanized and industrialized one. Another important element of the process of embedding Nowa Huta in the cultural map of Poland evolved around the discussion over its relations with Kraków, significant in terms of the historic legacy of the latter city, and a clash between the two qualitatively diverse urban organisms, which resulted in the emergence of stereotypes. Another factor analyzed in the article has been the presence of the myth in the world of values typical for Nowa Huta, laid out in the Marxist propaganda and ideology. The principles of utmost importance for the early inhabitants of the socialist town included that of Nowa Huta as an intrinsic value that safeguarded individual and nationwide well-being, and the physical labour – a componential construct in the identity of the New Soviet Person. Its builders and early inhabitants considered Nowa Huta their once-in-a-lifetime chance; most of them came from poor villages where there were no prospects for them to have a decent living. This aspect was exploited for propaganda purposes; by schematically emphasizing the past hardships of the builders of Nowa Huta, the propagandists beguiled them with the momentousness and modernity of the investment to encourage superhuman work for the benefit of its further expansion. The belief in such principles remained unwavering even to such outside criticism as the one expressed in Adam Ważyk’s Poemat dla dorosłych [A Poem for Adults], which has also been taken account of in the article. The concept of the heroes of socialist labour has been referred to as well, including its mythical aspect connected with heroism. On this occasion there has been depicted not only the function of the heroic myth in Nowa Huta, which consolidated the community around a labour hero, created a sense of pride about that hero’s success which made the whole community famous, and inspired imitation; based on an individual example of the life of Piotr Ożański, the most famous labour hero from Nowa Huta, an analysis has also been offered of the attempt at moulding the local version of the New Soviet Person. Moreover, the shift in the discourse on the labour hero movement that accompanied the screening of Andrzej Wajda’s Człowiek z marmuru [Man of Marble] in the 1970s has been described alongside the resistance to that shift in Nowa Huta. An evidence of the continuous effect of the myth of Nowa Huta – its persistence years later – lies in the feeling of nostalgia expressed by earliest inhabitants of Nowa Huta in the narrative interviews analyzed in the article. In their memories, witnesses to history have preserved all components of the myth of Nowa Huta. Their lives are the foundation for longing after the bygone days. They do not seem to realize the injustice, the exploitation of people through work in the Communist system, the distortions and the concealments of the propaganda, the abuses of authority. The way of thinking of the earliest builders and inhabitants of Nowa Huta within the mythical categories analyzed in the article cannot be interpreted only in terms of its defiance of logic or a distorted picture of the reality and of the self within that reality. The myth by nature falls outside rational categorization. The first builders of Nowa Huta fulfilled their task in the most self-sacrificing way possible, frequently at the cost of relinquishing their freedom – giving up the search for an alternative to the inhumane working conditions. They built a town and a metallurgical plant despite the difficulties, faithful that the fruit of their work would be something valuable and unprecedented. Finally, in the outcome of their work they found what every person seeks: a place of their own.