Nowa Huta, POLAND

Nowa Huta is a suburb of Krakow. It was built by the Soviets after World War II to house 100,000 workers at the new steel factory. They planned it as a perfect socialist suburb. The apartments are big and comfortable. There are wide avenues to stop fire spreading and there are lots of trees to soak up a nuclear blast. But the workers of Nowa Huta soon became anti-communist. They fought for permission to build a church (see photo). They joined the Solidarity strikes in the 1980’s and in 2004, they changed the name of the central square from Stalin Square to Ronald Regan Square, in honor of the American President who helped bring down the Soviet Union.