Apocryphal as the tale might be, there are some who say that Stalin offered Bolesław Bierut, Poland’s leader of the time, the choice of one of three lavish gifts: a new housing estate, a metro, or a gargantuan tower in the center of the capital. According to urban legend, Bierut chose the latter: “We can build the estate ourselves, and we don’t need a metro,” he is alleged to have answered.
As implausible as this might sound, what is not disputed is what happened next. On April 5, 1952, an agreement was signed between the Soviet Union and Poland that rubber stamped the construction of the behemoth that would later be christened Pałac Kultury i Nauki im. Józefa Stalina (The Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science).
However, this presented a new set of problems. With much of Warsaw still lying in ruin, accommodation options were thin on the ground – so just where could the city house the thousands of Soviet workers that would soon travel westwards to turn Stalin’s gift into reality? The answer was in a cabbage field ten kilometers west of downtown Warsaw.
Wasting no time, within months over a hundred buildings had been constructed on this plot. Some of these were allegedly built from dismantled materials removed from the prisoner of war camp Stalag IB Hohenstein in northern Poland (a claim dismissed by several historians); others began life as ready-to-assemble cabins bought from the Finns in exchange for tons of coal.
Workers’ paradise with barbed wire
By November, this ambitious workers’ paradise was complete. A village within a city, at its peak the population of this self-contained microworld swelled to around 4,500 (more modest estimates put this figure at 3,500).
Lodged in timber hostel-style barracks (for the rank-and-file laborers) and single-unit cottages (for the engineers), those living here had a cinema, canteen, social club, library, gym, a well-stocked store, and two sports fields at their disposal. Were it not for the barbed wire perimeter and sentries on duty, one could have mistaken it for a holiday camp.
Over 4,000 trees and 40,000 shrubs had also been planted on the estate, and these helped lend an idyllic atmosphere to this rural-style refuge. Practicalities were likewise abundant. Eight kilometers of roads had been laid, and other welcome necessities included a clinic, a bathhouse and a sewage plant. In the immediate aftermath of the war, these were conditions to envy. On the face of it, life was good.
This, though, overlooked the backbreaking nature of the hard labor expected of the workers. Bussed in and out each day, over the next three years 16 died while building the Palace of Culture. Several others sustained non-fatal injuries. Still, propaganda reels of the time pushed an almost ludicrous narrative that showed construction workers engaging in cultured post-work activities such as chess, choral singing and literary study.
Among others, this fantasy was perpetuated by the daily newspaper Trybuna Ludu. Describing the life of the typical worker, the broadsheet swooned that laborers would return from a day on-site to recite Pushkin, read Tolstoy, and exercise, before retiring to study the teachings of Marx and Lenin.
As far-fetched as this may have seemed, a few years later it came close to becoming a reality.
With the Palace of Culture and Science completed in 1955, authorities signed over the management of the nascent workers’ estate to the Ministry of Higher Education which, in turn, established a student village on the site. By the start of the academic year, around 3,000 students, professors and university employees had moved into this 32-hectare sanctuary.
Hotbed of free-living
But if the intention had been to create a utopian community bound by its diligent devotion to the Party, then this didn’t go as planned. On the contrary, what had been named (the Friendship Estate) became a hotbed of free-thinking and free-living.
At the center of this was Karuzela, a clubhouse located inside Warsaw’s biggest wooden building. In business until 2021, this legendary club became a rite of passage for generations of students.
Przyjaźń earned a heady reputation for its parties, and according to one neighborhood legend, at one point in the 1960s female students were barred altogether after being implicated in a string of “indecent happenings”.
By the 1970s women had returned, and normal service resumed; indicative of the liberal attitudes so prevalent around Przyjaźń, the grid of streets gained a range of informal nicknames: Island of Happiness and Broken Heart Street to name some examples. Although each student dormitory had a housekeeper, these stewards were more concerned with keeping toilet paper stocks healthy, as opposed to keeping the students in line.
Social life thrived, and among those to play at Karuzela were big-name musicians like Maryla Rodowicz and Jacek Kaczmarski. In a country shackled by the glum realities of Communism, Przyjaźń felt like a different world – almost, say some residents, like an independent republic.
More innocent pleasures were also to be had. Those who grew up here remember it as an incredible place for families and children. Of the students, meanwhile, some would become household names: the future President of Mali, Alpha Oumare Konare, lived here, as did the actor Krzysztof Tyniec, the linguist Jerzy Bralczyk, and the economist Leszek Balcerowicz. The latter would later be credited for introducing the shock economic tactics that pulled Poland into the free-market world following the country’s transition from Communism.
As expected of such a liberal-minded district, dissent was rife. During the 1980s, two covert printing presses operated here producing anti-government pamphlets. Such was their secretive nature, neither cell knew about the other.
Slow deterioration
Ironically somewhat, the collapse of Communism brought the pressures of the outside world to the estate’s doorstep. Beset by restitution claims, legal wrangles, infrastructural issues, management disputes, and financial woes, Przyjaźń found itself slowly deteriorating.
This all reached a head earlier this year when angry protests were sparked following City Hall’s announcement that students would have to move out due to planned renovations. Fears for the future appear to have been quelled with authorities later stating that no one would be evicted, but even so a sense of uncertainty has prevailed.
Restoring Przyjaźń to its former glory will be a challenge in itself – and a costly one at that. Renovation of the Karuzela building, for instance, is forecast to cost between 20 and 25 million zlotys alone. Each dormitory, meanwhile, will cost around two million to renovate.
Regardless of the complexities of the current situation, Przyjaźń remains one of Warsaw’s best-kept secrets – a remarkable time capsule whose cultural, historic and social value is not up for question.
A place of leafy side alleys and sleepy wooden cottages, today it is one of the capital’s true hidden glories. But this, too, is perhaps ironic: were it not for the construction of Poland’s best-known eyesore, the beautiful world of Przyjaźń would never have been created.
