Many, many thanks to Steve Harris and Daria Bocharnikova for creating such an excellent blog and for inviting me to participate in it; likewise to Ari Sammartino, Sofia Dyak, Kim Zarecor and Łukasz Stanek for their deep and thought-provoking readings … Continue reading
Katherine Lebow’s book starts with a reference to Andrzej Wajda’s movie Man of Iron (1981), which depicts one of the leaders of the Solidarność protests in the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk in 1980. This movie was a sequel to Wajda’s … Continue reading
Unfinished Utopia, Katherine Lebow’s meditation on the meaning and emergence of Nowa Huta as both an idea and a place, is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the postwar socialist city. Working primarily with memoirs, oral history, … Continue reading
Katherine Lebow’s book looks into Nowa Huta, a new town project that symbolized a wide spectrum of emotionally charged attitudes about socialism, communism, radical industrialization, modern architecture, and huge, top-down state projects, but also resistance and protests. Unfinished Utopia focuses … Continue reading
Katherine Lebow’s Unfinished Utopia is a stunning portrait of a fascinating city—Nowa Huta. Nowa Huta was the largest and most ambitious of a host of planned industrial cities that dotted the landscape of postwar Eastern Europe. Most of its residents … Continue reading
We’re pleased to announce the start of our next book discussion, which will be on Katherine Lebow’s Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949-56 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013). Similar to Sztálinváros in Hungary and Magnitogorsk … Continue reading
