Nowa Huta and its Struggle in Globalization

In one of my earlier blog posts, I had mentioned a city in Poland called Nowa Huta. I promised that I would discuss this in further detail. How does this relate to globalization, one might ask? Well, during the Cold War, most of the Soviet Union's actions were followed by the world, as people constantly worried about the enemy using the nuclear bomb and starting a nuclear war. This tension effected the entire world and set an uneasiness for a long period of time. The rivalries caused each country to pour lots of money into multiple projects and thus attempt to improve their societies. This can be seen in the Great Space Race, for one. What did the Soviet Union pour its money into? Why, developing its communist ideals of creating a single individual that all people were meant to mimic, but of course! This is where the little city of Nowa Huta comes in.

Above you can see a map of Poland (provided by Google Maps), and Point A is Nowa Huta. Nowa Huta is one portion of the well-known tourist city of Kraków. While it existed well before the Communist era, Stalin "gifted" the development of Nowa Huta to Kraków. Kraków was a highly artistic and cultural city, and such activities allowed individuality in a society that did not permit individual thought. Or well, they preferred people to follow their every whim, but people still went around it. Nowa Huta represented the ideal Communist town. It was set up surrounding the idea of work. Every person was easily capable of making their way to their job industrial job in the town. In fact, the town had the perfect layout: a semicircle so that most things were equidistant from one another and easy to find and access. Below shows the town's constructed layout.

The government provided every family the perfect and necessary apartment. These apartments were often cheaply built and had identical furniture and other accessories. Nowa Huta fought capitalism in every sense, because supposedly everyone had the same things and the same opportunities. However, this perfect industrial town did not prove the desired efficiency. At the time, in comparison to the world, its products resulted from backwards thinking. The Soviet Union refused to analyze or acknowledge the failure of its ideal Communist town. The steel mill employed 34.000 people; it was easily the biggest steel mill in Europe. The results did not reflect its size. In comparison to the United States, the size of the plant and the number of people employed proved to be less efficient. The steel mill wasted a tremendous amount of energy and manpower.

Stubbornness effected not only Nowa Huta, but all of Poland, as its industry growth reflected the poor political rule of the country. Because Stalin refused to admit that the United States produced more efficient industrial plants, the Soviet Union and all satellite countries suffered. Many of these countries only recently had a chance to catch up with the rest of the world, while others still struggle. Here, we see how this constant comparison amongst nations, this globalization of ideas and understanding that one country can easily effect another, can greatly alter the future of any nation, whether for the better or worse. While the poor performance of Nowa Huta resulted from Communist decisions, these decisions occurred as a manner to fight what they thought was wrong: Capitalism.

Well, that's my spiel for the blog post! I hope you enjoyed it as a specific example of economic and political globalization from the Eastern European section of our world. :)

Citation: Poland in Europe in the 20th Century Lecture, Fall 2011