Monday, September 27, 2004
Name one for the Gipper
A nice touch from my city of birth, Krakow, Poland. One of Krakow's suburbs is called Nowa Huta (New Steelworks), and as the name suggests, it's been constructed by the communists after World War Two in an attempt to create a new model settlement for the new socialist worker (and thus infuse the city considered to be the centre of "bourgeois reaction" with some correct proletarian spirit). It didn't quite work out like that in practice, the steelworks and the suburbs subsequently becoming a hotbed of "Solidarity" activism in the 1980s, but a few days ago the final nail in the coffin of commie dreams has been hammered in by Krakow City Council, which voted to rename the suburb's Central Square "Ronald Reagan Square." The actual vote was pretty close, 19 to 17, but the opposition was not motivated by political animosity as much as reluctance to change the widely accepted name, which unlike many other Nowa Huta names, didn't have any bad connotations.
Still, all things considered, a good choice.
(hat tip: Dan F for bringing the story to my attention.)
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Still, all things considered, a good choice.
(hat tip: Dan F for bringing the story to my attention.)
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