Nowa Huta - History

History

The historic area of present-day Nowa Huta is one of the few places in Poland settled continuously since the neolithic age. Archeological research has discovered a big Celtic settlement and Poland's oldest Slavic settlements there. In the 8th century, a mound was erected nearby by the Vistulans. According to legend, the Wanda Mound is a tomb of Wanda, daughter of Krakus, a mythical founder of Kraków. In the 13th century a Cistercian monastery in the village of Mogiła was built.

In the 19th century and in the beginning of 20th century, during the partitions of Poland and up to the First World War, the outskirts of Nowa Huta constituted a border between territories controlled by the Austrian and Russian empires. One can find historic Austro-Hungarian forts there, and one of Europe's oldest permanent airfields (Kraków-Rakowice-Czyżyny Airport, currently housing the Polish Aviation Museum).

Following the establishing of the People's Republic of Poland in 1945, the Communist authorities had encountered substantial resistance to their new regime from middle-class Cracovians. A referendum held by the authorities was soundly defeated by the people of Kraków - a major cause of embarrassment for the government. To "correct the class imbalance", the authorities commenced building a satellite industrial town to attract people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to the region, such as peasants and the working class.

Nowa Huta was started in 1949 as a separate town near Kraków on terrain resumed by the Communist government from former villages of Mogiła, Pleszów and Krzesławice. It was planned as a huge centre of heavy industry. The town was to become an ideal town for the Communist propaganda and populated mostly by industrial workers. In 1951 it was joined with Kraków as its new district and in the following year tramway communication was started.

On July 22, 1954, the Vladimir Lenin Steelworks was opened and in less than 20 years the factory became the biggest steel mill in Poland. In the 1960s the city grew rapidly. The monumental architecture of the Central Square (Plac Centralny) was surrounded by huge blocks of flats. In the 1970s the steel production reached 7 millions tonnes of steel yearly. At the same time the biggest tobacco factory in Poland was opened there and a huge cement factory.

The reasons for building such an industrial town near Kraków were mostly ideological and were against laws of economy (coal had to be transported from Silesia and iron ore from the Soviet Union; the products were shipped to other parts of Poland since local demand was relatively small). This became visible in the 1980s, when the economic crisis halted the city's growth.

One type of building lacking from the original urban design of Nowa Huta was a Roman Catholic church. The public campaign to construct it lasted several years. As early as 1960, inhabitants of Nowa Huta began applying for permit to build a church. In that year, violent street fights with riot-police erupted over a wooden cross, erected without a permit. The locals were supported by Bishop Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, and eventually, a church called the Lord's Arc was built. The complex was consecrated by Wojtyla in 1977. Wojtyla himself, after being elected Pope in 1978, wanted to visit Nowa Huta during his first papal pilgrimage in 1979, but was not permitted to do so.

In the 1980s Nowa Huta became a place of many demonstrations and violent street protests of the Solidarity movement, fought by the police. At that time, almost 29,000 of the 38,000 workers of the then Lenin's Steelworks belonged to the Trade Union "Solidarity".