Rebuilding Poland

"A pioneering reinterpretation of the communist experience, 'Rebuilding Poland' argues that the post-war takeover in Poland was also a social revolution, one in which workers expressed their hopes for dramatic social change and influenced the evolution--and eventual downfall--of the communist regime. Kenney compares Łodź, Poland's largest manufacturing center, and Wrocław, a city rebuilt as Polish upon the ruins of wartime detruction. In the dramatic strikes by textile workers in Łodź and the individualism of migrants to Wrocław, Kenney locates the crux of the regime's difficulties. Losing the battle for worker identity, the communists placed their hopes in labor competition, which ultimately left the regime hostage to a resistant work force and an overextended economy"--Publisher's description, back cover.