Stalinizm jako stan wyjątkowy. Robotnicy i robotnice: budowniczowie socjalizmu czy więźniowie obozu?
Stalinism as a state of emergency: were workers builders of socialism or camp prisoners?

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the image, propagated by Communist State propaganda, of working class men and women as builders of Socialism. Florczyk juxtaposes this ideologically motivated image with eyewitness accounts of the actual role of Polish workers. Visual sources and workers’ memories suggest that Poland’s political system in the 1950s was in many ways reminiscent of a labour camp. Florczyk investigates the propaganda mechanism by focusing on labourers’ difficult living and working conditions in the years when the foundations of Socialist Poland were laid. Rescue history in this context should be understood as the recovery of the workers’ history, especially the history of female workers, who have remained on the margins of scholarly interest. Florczyk’s second goal is to show that by acting as a unified group, people can transform even a repressive political system. The Poles’ dissent took the form of negating the negative definition for freedom; articulating their dissatisfaction, workers showed that to be free is to be able to say “No!”

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