Art in Translation, Volume 3, Issue 2, pp.

179–212
DOI: 10.2752/175613111X12988932045715
Reprints available directly from the Publishers.
Photocopying permitted by licence only.
© 2011 Berg.

The Decade
of Luxury: The
People’s Republic
of Poland and
Hotels in the
Andrzej Szczerski 1970s
Translated by Joanna Abstract
Wolańska
First published in Polish as “Dekada For the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL), the 1970s was a decade of
luksusu. PRL i hotele w latach luxury, characterized by a boom in hotel and vacation resort building.
70,” Ikonotheka, 2007, No. 20,
pp. 161–82.
The perception of the attributes of capitalist consumption as signs of
progress demonstrates that the Communist regime was ready to submit
to a process of “auto-colonization” and create a hyperrealist picture of
the West as a model. The new luxury was not available to everyone, and
its “democratization” was only possible in resorts constructed by state-
owned enterprises. In the 1970s, recreation architecture offered a form of
control over society. If referred to Bakhtin’s notion of “carnivalization”
180 Andrzej Szczerski

defined as a temporary inversion of social order and suspension of or-

dinary life, hotels may be considered as the spaces of such “carnivaliza-
tion of reality.”

Keywords: Poland, tourism, hotels, architecture, Communism, ide-

ology, Architektura, Le Corbusier, Orle Gniazdo, Ustroń-Zawodzie,
soc-modernism, kitsch architecture

Introduction by David Crowley (Royal College

of Art, London)
In this paper, art historian Andrzej Szczerski takes on one of the least
explored themes in the history of the Eastern bloc, that of luxury.1 Life,
for the majority of people in Eastern Europe under Communist rule,
was defined by shortage. After all, the long trailing queue in front of the
empty shop remains one of the most enduring images of “Real Exist-
ing Socialism.” Yet at the same time, the leaders of Eastern bloc states
demanded luxury. The marble halls, ostentatious sculpture, and ornate
ceramic decorations on landmark buildings constructed during the Sta-
lin years—like the celebrated pavilions in the “All-Union Agricultural
Exhibition” in Moscow from the late 1930s—were proclaimed as the
democratization of luxury.2 Similarly, the “workers’ palaces” that were
built throughout the Eastern bloc in the 1950s were not just new cul-
tural facilities but also declarations of new values.3
Szczerski does not, however, focus on the Stalin years. His interest
is in the 1970s, when Poland was led by First Party Secretary Edward
Gierek. Promising to satisfy the pent-up consumer needs of Polish soci-
ety, he came to power following rioting over shortages and price hikes
in 1970. In 1972 Gierek announced the construction of a “Second Po-
land” (Druga Polska), a spectacular program of industrial expansion,
grand urban projects, and modernization. Poland mortgaged itself to
the West in the expectation that it would become an industrial power-
house. Hotels were given at least two functions in the Second Poland:
first, they would draw tourists and, more importantly, the hard currency
in their pockets; and, second, they would provide material evidence of
Poland’s command of modernity.
In terms of architectural history, the period after 1970 in Eastern
Europe has attracted very little attention.4 Still close historically and
seeming to lack the kind of kitsch appeal of socialist realism or the intel-
lectual vitality of the Thaw period of the 1950s and 1960s, late modern-
ist architecture is usually described in rather negative terms.5 An interest
in mass housing—associated with architectural failure and social ano-
mie—has been a feature of recent scholarship on architecture in Eastern
Europe in the 1970s and 1980s.6 Hotels—as bespoke structures and
fitted out with high-quality furnishings—represent the other end of the
architectural spectrum. Heavily promoted by illegitimate and despiteful
authorities, in Poland these spaces constituted extra-t­erritorial spaces
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 181

which excluded ordinary citizens (except in service roles). ­Perhaps for

these reasons—rather than because of any innate architectural failings—
scholars in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe have been relatively
slow to study these landmarks of late socialism.

Notes to the Introduction

1. For new scholarship on this theme, see various essays in David

Crowley and Susan E. Reid (eds.), Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure
and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 2010).
2. Greg Castillo, “Peoples at an Exhibition: Soviet Architecture and the
National Question,” in T. Lahusen and E. Dobrenko (eds.), Socialist
Realism Without Shores, special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly,
94, No. 3 (Summer 1995): 715–46.
3. Anne White, Destalinization and the House of Culture: Declin-
ing State Control over Leisure in the USSR, Poland and Hungary,
1953–89 (London: Routledge, 1990); Simone Hain and Stephan
Stroux, Die Salons der Sozialisten. Kulturhäuser in der DDR (Berlin:
Ch. Links, 1996).
4. For recent examples see Hertha Hernau et al., Eastmodern. Archi-
tecture and Design of the 1960s and 1970s of Slovakia (Vienna and
New York: Springer, 2007); Andrzej Basista, Betonowe dziedzictwo.
Architektura w Polsce czasów komunizmu (Warsaw: PWN, 2001),
pp. 101–5.
5. See my essay “Thaw Modern. Design in Eastern Europe after 1956”
in David Crowley and Jane Pavitt (eds.), Cold War Modern. Design
1945–1970 (London: V & A Publications, 2008), pp. 128–50.
6. Cor Wagenaar (ed.), Ideals in Concrete: Exploring Central and East-
ern Europe (Rotterdam: NAi, 2005); Peter Lizon, “East Central
Europe: The Unhappy Heritage of Communist Mass Housing” in
Journal of Architectural Education (1984–), Vol. 50, No. 2 (Nov.
1996): 104–14.

The Decade of Luxury: The People’s

Republic of Poland and Hotels in
the 1970s
Andrzej Szczerski

When compared to consumption and prosperity levels over vari-

ous periods in the history of the People’s Republic of Poland (Polska
­Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL), the 1970s was a decade of luxury. For
182 Andrzej Szczerski

the government that came into power after the brutally crushed strikes
in the Baltic coast shipyards, one of the main sources of legitimation,
and simultaneously a symbol of success of the socialist system, was to
provide its citizens with a level of material prosperity unseen in the
country over the period of the postwar reconstruction. After many years
of scrimping and saving and a period of so-called small-scale stability,
luxury—in the sense of material wealth and ostentation—acquired a
strictly ideological dimension. According to the data published at that
time in statistical yearbooks, Poland was one of the most dynamic econ-
omies of the world. The visible signs of the regime’s accomplishments
were not new hospitals or schools but imported goods in the shops and
brand new automobiles in the streets. It is within this very context that
the development of new models of leisure culture should be considered.
These new models also embraced tourism, which was no longer re-
garded as the mere fulfillment of dreams of a healthy form of recreation
for the working class, but rather a celebration of affluence and comfort,
hitherto treated suspiciously or with contempt.
Luxury manifested itself most ostentatiously in newly built hotels
and vacation centers, the number of which rose so significantly in the
1970s that one could speak of a decade of vacation resort-building. Ac-
cording to Paweł Sowiński, it was “the period of the greatest boom in
tourism and vacationing in all forty-five years of the history of the Peo-
ple’s Republic of Poland.” The first half of the decade was the apogee of
company-owned vacation home construction: 4,126 company-owned
vacation homes with 433,000 beds had been registered in 1977, in com-
parison with 1971 when there were only 263 beds in such vacation
homes.1 The hotels owned by Orbis, the state-owned travel agency and
the biggest operator of domestic and international tourism in Poland,
were the clearest examples of such luxurious buildings.2 At the begin-
ning of the 1970s Orbis had twenty-three hotels, whereas by 1980 this
number had doubled, thanks to the company’s cooperation with archi-
tects and enterprises from beyond the iron curtain. These high-standard
hotels, incorporated into international hotel networks, were already
being built in the first half of the 1970s. As stated by Zenon Bła˛dek
and Tadeusz Tulibacki, the share of Orbis hotels in the overall num-
ber of Polish hotels amounted to 30.6 percent, and in the categories of
first-class, second-class, and “deluxe” hotels, it came to 58.3 percent.3
The increase in Orbis hotel properties was a compensatory attempt to
counter the catastrophic deficiencies in the number of hotels, which had
resulted in selling single beds in multi-bed rooms to individual guests.
According to contemporary statistics, this practice was particularly no-
ticeable “in the third quarter of the year, being the peak of the tourist
season, when occupancy rate in some hotels exceeded 100 percent (in
one instance reaching 111.2 percent).”4
Although the construction of so many hotels and vacation homes was
primarily the result of a higher level of living standards in the 1970s and
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 183

the promotion of new forms of recreation, it was also a part of the regime’s
new economic strategy.5 In the period of the so-called détente in East–West
relations, not only political but also international economic and tourist
contacts had been restored, which necessitated the creation of an appro-
priate infrastructure. Additionally, inbound tourism turned out to be one
of the most important factors of economic development of the country
and a way of obtaining much-needed foreign currency. Furthermore, the
government fully appreciated the fact that hotels were places of concen-
tration of foreign tourists, where they could be easily controlled and their
undesired contact with Poles restrained.6 The new administrative division
of the country, effective from 1976, had elevated the hitherto provincial
centers to the status of local government seats, thus requiring the construc-
tion of new hotels for business travelers. The construction and manage-
ment of those hotels were entrusted to independent companies, e.g. the
Provincial Tourist Undertakings (Wojewódzkie Przedsie˛biorstwa Turysty-
czne) or “Gromada” Nationwide Tourist Cooperative (Ogólnokrajowa
Spółdzielnia Turystyczna “Gromada”). The hotel buildings were often
considered to be symbolic of the new status of cities and towns in which
they were located, and became their hallmarks of modernity.7
Architecture related to the development of tourism was often treated
in specialist periodicals. In the early years of the decade the Architektura
(Architecture) journal published reviews of hotels and vacation com-
plexes, both from beyond the iron curtain and from the Eastern bloc
countries, including the USSR. Already in 1970, Marek Baranowski
reported on “tourist facilities in the USSR” and analyzed the planning
system as well as the monumental scale of such architecture. He em-
phasized the support of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for
tourism-related architecture and added that, “In the Soviet Union,
tourism belongs to one of the most popular forms of leisure activities
for broad masses of the population.”8 In the same year (in issue no. 7),
Architektura published a series of articles on Polish health resorts and
their new architecture, as well as on development plans for vacation
resorts in the Upper Silesian Industrial District (Górnośla˛ski Okre˛g
Przemysłowy: in issue no. 12). The presentation of Polish vacation re-
sorts, continued in subsequent issues, was sometimes enriched by in-
formation on complexes under construction or on entire development
plans for attractive tourist regions.9 The 1973 January issue of Architek-
tura deserves particular attention, as it was devoted exclusively to tour-
ism and tourism-related architecture, featuring Leonard Tomaszewski’s
report on the 9th International Union of Architects (UIA) Congress en-
titled “Architecture and Leisure,” held in Varna. Next to the account
of the congress’s sessions, including theoretical deliberations as well as
examples of Bulgarian hotel architecture, the journal published the text
of the congress’s resolution, which postulated leisure to be “the measure
of social wealth.”10 The readers of Architektura could also learn about
some technological developments, e.g. the innovative and cheap framed
184 Andrzej Szczerski

structure system applied to the construction of leisure and recreational

architecture.11 This press debate was joined also by the Projekt (Project)
monthly which, in its issue no. 3 of 1973, published Jacek Nowicki’s
article “Czas wolny” (Leisure), and kept returning to the topic of the
interior design of vacation homes in numerous issues over subsequent
years.12 Next to journals dealing with architecture and interior design, it
was above all the specialist Hotelarz (The Hotelier) monthly, published
by the Polish Tourist Hotels’ Union (Zrzeszenie Polskich Hoteli Tury-
stycznych; since 1977 copublished by the Polish Camping Federation—
Polska Federacja Campingu), that particularly stressed the need for the
development of tourism (Figure 1).

Figure 1
Cover of Hotelarz ( The Hotelier)
monthly, January 1976.
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 185

The standards of the decade were set by newly built Warsaw hotels
which, thanks to the privileged status of the capital city, were to be the
harbingers of the PRL’s opening-up to the Western world. Decisions on
their construction were made at the highest level of government and
coordinated by such government departments as the Main Committee
on Physical Culture and Tourism (Główny Komitet Kultury Fizycznej i
Turystyki, GKKFiT), Orbis and the Tourism Management Union (Zjed-
noczenie Gospodarki Turystycznej). At the beginning of the 1970s there
was not a single hotel in the capital of Poland that met international
hotel standards, and the country lacked the technical know-how per-
mitting the construction of such hotels. Therefore, the government de-
cided to make use of the so-called investment imports, i.e. purchases
of the necessary technologies abroad. The process was initiated with
the decision no. 173/71 of the Government Presidium of December 17,
1971 on the construction of the Forum Hotel in Warsaw.13
The scope of demand for new investments and at the same time the
peculiarities of the PRL decision-making process can best be shown
in an episode from the construction of the Forum Hotel. According to
Bła˛dek and Tulibacki, timber barracks were to be built for the workers
hired by the foreign construction company. Instead, because of “the
requirements of city services and some other requirements,” the “full-
standard” Solec hotel, designed by Zygmunt Ste˛piński, had been erected
within only nine months, from January to September 1973.14 Yet, the
construction of the Forum Hotel was a far more spectacular undertak-
ing. Just like the Solec Hotel, the Forum Hotel was also built in coop-
eration with the Swedish company Skanska Cementgjuteriet of Malmö,
according to a project by the Swedish architect Sten Samuelson.15 The
very location of the 100-meter-tall, high-rise, thirty-three-story hotel at
the corner of one of the major crossroads made it the hallmark of the
city’s new, international character. The ascetic forms of the building,
characteristic of late modernist architecture, especially in its Scandina-
vian version, stood in striking contrast with the neighboring socialist
realist style of the Palace of Culture and Science.
The Forum Hotel was an example not only of architecture or technol-
ogy imports but also of an import of certain working standards which
were extremely rare in the PRL. It was built at a quick pace, in a pe-
riod of less than twenty-five months (1972–1973), which—with regard
to the hotel’s substantial scale (1,386 beds)—was considered a record
speed, possible only thanks to the machines and building technologies
imported from Sweden. The daily press informed about the various
standards of luxury present in the hotel, like the air-conditioning system
(the first such example in Warsaw), modern, fast elevators or excellent
catering facilities, highly rated in international competitions. Special
emphasis was put on the fact that the hotel had been incorporated into
the international hotel booking system and affiliated with the InterCon-
tinental Hotels group, which was proof of the capital’s world status.
186 Andrzej Szczerski

A reservation in the Warsaw hotel could be made through a booking

system maintained by a computer center located in New York. A vivid
illustration of the decade of luxury, being simultaneously a period of po-
litical détente, but also one giving new possibilities for artistic exchange,
was the prominent guests who stayed at the Forum (for example, the
retinue of the US President Jimmy Carter or the pop group ABBA).16
Descriptions of the hotel published in the Stolica weekly (Figure 2) were
telling testimonies of the Forum’s uniqueness and eloquent portrayals of
the PRL’s discovery of the world of consumerism:

The most important of the catering facilities is a “rotisserie-type”

restaurant, hitherto unknown in our country. A gigantic rotating
spit installed in its very center, on public view, will be used for

Figure 2
Warsaw, Forum hotel on the cover
of Stolica ( The Capital City) weekly,
No. 4, January 22, 1978.
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 187

roasting all kinds of meats . . . A “cafeteria” is located nearby.

Again, this is a kind of a cafe hitherto unknown in Poland, which,
next to the drinks and meals typically served in cafes, will also
serve hot dinner dishes . . . Every room in the hotel has a bath-
room fitted with a bathtub, shower, and a washing basin . . . Even
telephones at the Forum are different than in other Warsaw ho-
tels. These are so-called service telephone apparatuses on which
icons symbolizing the various hotel services have been put next
to telephone numbers. Thus, a guest will not have to check the
number in the telephone directory but will only press an appro-
priate icon-symbol in order to call the hotel maid, room service,
or waiter.17

Having described an automated accountancy system using, among oth-

ers, machines produced in the German Democratic Republic, and hav-
ing excused himself by saying that a short report could not do justice
to all the appliances installed in the hotel, the journalist, Waldemar
Śmiałowski, could not help but return to the catering section,

which has been equipped with appliances of the Swedish Elec-

trolux make. Thanks to those appliances the hotel restaurant will
be able to serve the so-called flambé dishes. That means that a
customer sitting at a table will be approached by a waiter pushing
a special trolley carrying appropriate kitchen appliances and while
using them, the waiter will prepare a dish chosen by the customer
under his very eyes. (The culmination of such a performance will
be the sprinkling of the dish with alcohol and igniting it.)18

Very telling was, however, the fact that—according to worldwide

standards—this truly luxurious (at least from the perspective of Warsaw
at the beginning of the 1970s) hotel was rated merely as a ­tourist-class
establishment. No wonder, then, that soon the Forum Hotel became
inadequate for the needs of the capital city and the construction of a
new hotel, this time of a far higher standard, became necessary. The
new building was given a prominent location in Victory Square, hence
the hotel’s ultimate name (originally intended to be named the Congress
Hotel) became the Victoria. The hotel’s prestigious location derived
also from the fact that it was built on the site of one of the grandest
palaces of nineteenth-century Warsaw, the Kronenberg Palace, demol-
ished around 1960. The H-plan building matched well the scale of the
existing neighboring buildings, yet, as noted by Marta Leśniakowska,
the monotonous elevations consisting of repeated motifs were the trade-
mark of international hotel networks19 and did not have any closer af-
finities with the architecture of Warsaw. Nevertheless, though from
the architectural point of view the Victoria could at best be consid-
ered only a satisfactory example of fitting a new building in the ­historic
188 Andrzej Szczerski

c­ enter of the city, for contemporary Warsaw it was an undeniable sym-

bol of comfort and an island of luxury. The hotel, built in the years
1974–76, was constructed using the investment import system by the
Skanska Cementgjuteriet building company for the InterContinental
Hotels chain—as had been the case with the Forum. The design was au-
thored by the Polish-Swedish team, the chief architects being Zbigniew
Pawelski, Leszek Sołonowicz and Derek Fraser, as well as Kurt Hultin,
Andrzej Waldemar Dzierżawski and Stanisław Kaim. Designs for the
interiors were prepared by Andrzej Zaborowski in cooperation with
Bo Anderson. From the very beginning, the construction of the Victoria
had stirred up enormous public interest and emotions, beginning with
its site, through the technology of production to its furnishings. Though
it was smaller than the Forum, the new, seven-storied hotel with 742
beds was of an incomparably higher standard than the Forum and, ac-
cording to the PRL’s measures, was rated as a “deluxe” hotel, a category
reserved in principle for foreign guests only. Shortly before its construc-
tion began, the Kurier Polski (The Polish Courier) reported: “Warsaw
is getting a ‘top-notch’ hotel” and went on to enumerate its characteris-
tics: “A white horizontal block and golden windows—hanging gardens
and artificial solarium—sliding walls of the gigantic room—960 people
can dine simultaneously—from a single room to stately ‘Presidential’
apartments.”20 Progress of the construction was covered by daily pa-
pers as well as by the weeklies published in the capital city. Journalists
went into raptures over the new hotel, just as they had done a few years
earlier when writing about the Forum hotel (Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6). This
time Waldemar Śmiałowski, whose report on the Forum hotel is quoted
above, tried to refrain from extolling the level of the hotel’s luxury
(which had been achieved already by the Forum); instead, he focused on
hotel facilities that could be used for organizing congresses and confer-
ences, as well as on some novelties featured in the new building, like
a club for hotel guests, an indoor swimming pool, or a heated garage.
Additionally, the journalist emphasized the wealth of services provided
by the hotel: “a Pewex shop, a florist, a state-of-the-art hairdressing
salon, offices of the Orbis travel agency, as well as of the PanAm and
Lufthansa airlines.” The article was richly illustrated with color photos
of the hotel’s interior.21 The Hotelarz monthly, on the other hand, in-
formed about the prestigious locations in which the hotel personnel had
been trained, e.g. about the manager who had done his apprenticeship
in London or the cooks who had been trained in Vienna.22
New investments were not restricted to the capital city, yet it was
undoubtedly the Warsaw hotels that were most readily recognized as
symbols of the decade. Worth mentioning, however, are some other
remarkable achievements of the period in terms of hotel architecture,
e.g. the Polonez Hotel in Poznań, built using domestic prefabricated
concrete technology instead of the investment import (architects:
Józef Maciejewski, Jerzy Liśniewicz, Janusz Lenartowicz; construction
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 189

Figure 3
Interior of the Victoria hotel on
the back cover of Architektura
(Architecture) magazine, No. 3–4,
1978.

Figure 4
Interior of the Victoria hotel on
the back cover of Architektura
(Architecture) magazine, No. 3–4,
1978.

period: August 1, 1972—June 1, 1974). This undertaking was excep-

tional, not due to the original features of the building’s architecture,
but because of the rapid pace of construction, since the majority of
other hotels, built exclusively by the Polish workforce, usually took
much longer to complete, sometimes even as long as a dozen years.23
No wonder, then, that foreign help had been used to an ever increasing
190 Andrzej Szczerski

Figure 5
Interior of the Victoria hotel on
the back cover of Architektura
(Architecture) magazine, No. 3–4,
1978.

extent. The resolution of the Government Presidium of October 4,

1972 on “using foreign credits and foreign execution for the construc-
tion of tourist establishments in the years 1972–1975” envisaged the
erection of thirteen hotels in various tourist and industrial centers of
Poland.24 But the geography of the investment imports had changed:
the Yugoslavian architects (Jože Kregar and Sverozar Križaj) designed
the Kasprowy Hotel in Zakopane, opened in 1974; the hotels Novotel
in Olsztyn and Holiday Inn in Cracow, both opened in 1975, were
designed by French architects (Jean-Claude Le Bail and Julien Penven,
assisted by Piotr Szczerbiński) and the Wrocław hotel in Wrocław, of
1978, was designed by Finnish architects (Jaakko and Unto Rautanen).
Of the constructions started in the 1970s and completed in the next
decade, mention should also be made of the Gdynia hotel in Gdynia
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 191

Figure 6
Interior of the Victoria hotel on
the back cover of Architektura
(Architecture) magazine, No. 3–4,
1978.

(1983) and the Marina hotel in Gdańsk-Jelitkowo (1985), both de-

signed by the London-based architects Szmigielski Katten Associates.25
It was due to a measure of concern for the hotel-building criteria that
the new, rigorous standards of tourist establishment classification had
been introduced in 1977, which included the above-mentioned “de-
luxe” category, as well as the “star” rating (from one to five stars).
The construction of impressive hotels marked not only the begin-
ning of the decade but also heralded its end. When in 1978 the Presidium
of the Government envisaged the construction of a dozen new hotels
in the years 1978–87, they did not take into account the approaching
economic crisis. As noted by Bła˛dek and Tulibacki, in a few years the
planning of new hotels had been brought to a halt and the construction
of further ones, built by domestic companies, had been suspended.26
192 Andrzej Szczerski

One of the unrealized plans was the so-called Western Area of Warsaw
City Center (Figure 7), planned since 1974 and intended to be a tourist,
cultural, and administrative center (main architect: Jerzy Skrzypczak),
an important part of which was to be a hotel complex (designed by
J. Jedynak and team).27
On account of their scale and the fact that they were supervised di-
rectly by the government, the hotel investments of the 1970s must be
considered one of the government’s priorities at that time, and simul-
taneously, not only a monument to the regime but also an element of a
specific discourse that revealed the methods of conduct and the strate-
gies of government used by the ruling regime. The most conspicuous
of them was the attempt at using controlled attributes of consumerist
culture to create a false image of prosperity—aimed equally at Polish
citizens as well as foreign visitors. This vision was supposed to neu-
tralize the actual political and economic problems. The construction of

Figure 7
Warsaw, design for a tourist hotel in the so-called Western Area of Warsaw City Center, reproduced in Stolica weekly, No. 18, April 5,
1974.
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 193

spectacular hotels was not so much a result of the country’s develop-

ment but rather a simulacrum of such a development. The notion of
simulacrum is here twofold: first and foremost, as a copy of a nonextant
original, that is, a vision of a mighty and sovereign socialist fatherland,
present only in the pages of the propagandist press or through televi-
sion, or else in the guidelines for party members. The Victoria hotel
was just such a simulacrum of Poland’s openness to the world, and for
the capital city it was a hallmark of its membership in the international
network of the largest cities of the world, at a time when unrestricted
travel to countries behind the iron curtain (though incomparably easier
than in the previous decades) had still been a sign of luxury.28 At the
same time the hotels can be viewed as a hyperreal image of the Western
world considered, on the one hand, to be the official rival and mili-
tary enemy of a socialist country, and on the other—the “Paradise lost”
which from the perspective of a poor country could seem the only ap-
propriate model to imitate. That hyperreal image was another kind of
simulacrum in which the air-conditioning or the airline agencies in the
lobby were equally important, and hotels attained the status of the map
of the empire from Borges’s fable, “so detailed that it ends up covering
the territory exactly . . .”29 The hotels were images of the Western world
with which they had been identified, and for the majority of the citizens
of the PRL the Western world did not exist beyond them. An average
citizen—who either had been refused a passport or could not afford a
costly foreign trip, and therefore never got to know the real West—had
to settle for the hyperreality offered by hotels.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning in this context that the defer-
ence with which the hotels had been treated may be considered another
contribution to the discussion about the myth of the West in the PRL
and, by extension, in all countries behind the iron curtain. That myth
could be considered another chapter in the history of mutual relations
between the European regions, especially between Central and Western
Europe.30 The 1970s stand out as a period of tremendous tension be-
tween the crumbling faith in Marxism-Leninism as the alternative for
Western capitalism, the search for the so-called “third way,” and the
less and less concealed desire to participate in the Western consumerist
system, apparent especially among the ruling elites. Paradoxically, it was
this group, for whom the vision of the West as a model to imitate was
almost unquestionable. The hotels were precisely an element of substi-
tution for such a consumerist society. It can be assumed, therefore, that
the term “investment import,” which reflects very well the charms of
the PRL’s newspeak, in fact meant not only the purchase of technologies
but also of the standards of civilization, unattainable in the homeland,
and at the same time the fulfillment of dreams of possessing at least a
small part of the West. Yet, this West was accessible only for a chosen
few, and the hotels could be considered to function as a surrogate selec-
tion method in a society of theoretically equal citizens. The selection
194 Andrzej Szczerski

was usually made by means of financial barriers. The estimated price

of a night’s stay at a hotel approximately equaled one month’s salary in
the PRL. The prices in hotel restaurants and bars were also extortion-
ate. In his description of the Forum hotel, the journalist of the Stolica
weekly underscored the fact that the prices of a night’s stay at the hotel
amounted to “18 to 30 dollars per night since, as noted before, the hotel
is in principle intended for foreign guests,” yet adding also an optimistic
note: “Thanks to that, other hotels will have more places for domestic
visitors.”31 Thus, even the stratification of society and the delineation of
the area of inaccessible luxury were turning out to be activities intended
“for the common benefit.”
The raptures over the new hotels show the PRL as an inferiority
complex-ridden country, barely concealing its weaknesses, and one
convinced that adopting Western models was the only remedy for the
problems of the country. Consequently, the construction of hotels may
be considered a manifestation of the self-colonizing attitude, character-
ized by Alexander Kiossev as one based on the notion that the Others
possess all that we lack, the Others are all that we are not.32 The culture
of self-colonizing is an attempt at eliminating the traumatic incongru-
ity with the chosen model. The Other thus becomes an embodiment
of absolute truths, universality, and the historical mainstream. Self-
colonizing may be also viewed as a modernization strategy, one not
imposed by the colonizer but rather chosen by the peripheral cultures
as being the sole available means of civilizational advancement. Yet,
as noted by Kiossev, the self-colonizing attitude assumes in fact that
what is universal can never be attained, which only confirms the sense
of inferiority and the lack of the essential qualities of substance and
universality, thus only increasing the impression of marginalization in
the self-colonizing culture.33
In the case of the PRL of the 1970s, the process of self-colonizing
could also have been used as another device of controlling society. Ac-
cording to Kiossev, the coming to power by those who give themselves
the right to teach other citizens about their inferiority—and at the same
time about the domination of those in power—is also an element of self-
colonizing. The basis for this process is the conviction of the ruling class
that thanks to self-colonizing, they had acquired universal knowledge,
which allowed them to treat the rest as a crowd deprived of subjectiv-
ity. Very tellingly, it was the government that made decisions on the
construction of particular hotels, thus determining how the hyperreal
“West for the masses” would look and what part of this world of pros-
perity fellow citizens would be allowed to become familiar with, with-
out undermining the foundations of real socialism.
In compliance with Kiossev’s theory, the system of power in the
1970s was self-defined and self-legitimized precisely by perpetuating
the process of self-colonizing. The “keeping up with the West” may be
considered the “founding myth” of the Gierek-period PRL, a state that
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 195

was quite different from the PRL in Gomułka’s time or in the Stalinist
era. This new version of the PRL would not have been possible without
the superficial adaptation of all that was “Western,” and at the time
when all self-colonizing attributes started to disappear, this Westernized
version of the PRL was also doomed to crumble. As Kiossev asserts, the
necessity of self-colonizing is characteristic of cultures facing the trauma
of their birth as inferior cultures: the adoption of alien models is in-
tended to help them overcome this traumatic experience. Gierek’s team
came to power after the bloody events of December 1970, and they des-
perately sought to legitimize their rule, both for themselves and in the
eyes of their fellow citizens. Relishing the Western prosperity seemed to
be a very flexible and convincing method by which to achieve that goal.
Yet, it did not mean raising living standards on credit. The attitude of
self-colonizing cultures entails presenting the actions taken as a continu-
ation of a grand historic tradition, in order to suppress the memory of
the cultures’ traumatic beginning. Hence the occidentalization of the
PRL may be considered an effort at emphasizing Poland’s connections
with Western culture, aimed against the imposed relationship with the
despised East. Needless to say, the construction of “Western” hotels was
a part of the same strategy, of which a further element, for example, was
the decision to rebuild the Royal Castle in Warsaw.34
The most meaningful signs of the self-colonizing strategy—which
usually only amounts to a superficial acceptance of ready-made models
or a minor adaptation of such models—are above all the architectural
forms of the hotels and their furnishings. The architecture of both the
Victoria and the Forum hotels was quite average and typical of build-
ings of that kind. Certainly, it was not exceptional in any way and by
no means luxurious. In the best case it could be associated with the
traditions of Scandinavian late modernism, influenced by the work of
Eero Saarinen, or the British or Italian architecture of the 1960s. Yet,
it was definitely more akin to the standardized architectural forms of
the international hotel chains, identical in various parts of the world.
From the point of view of an architectural historian, the Warsaw ho-
tels were not only significant examples of hotel architecture by any
standards, but, through their appearance, they also underscored their
autonomous, colonial status, hardly fitting into the city’s urban con-
text. Nevertheless, in comparison with the average hotels defined by
the PRL’s criteria as luxurious, the interior of the Victoria Hotel clearly
stood out, both as regards the furnishings of the rooms and the main
restaurant, and—above all—the interior design of the lobby and bar,
which had been arranged in the pop design style, reminiscent of the
contemporary Scandinavian and Italian designs. The interior design of
the remaining restaurants and rooms was not so innovative, yet the
interiors were maintained in a unified color scheme and were furnished
with much attention to detail and elegance, far removed from the ba-
nality of the building’s architecture. These interiors, designed by Polish
196 Andrzej Szczerski

architects, members of the ­international team of architects working on

the Victoria, were considered the hallmark of luxury in the PRL, as
testified by the commentary accompanying the photographs of these in-
teriors published in an issue of Architektura monthly of 1978. The com-
mentary asserted their exceptional, as if fanciful status in the world of
real socialism: “What is luxury? This question, considered in aesthetic
categories, may lead us to divergent conclusions. If we were to seek the
answer, for example, by looking at hotel interiors, then . . . a fairy tale
is luxury. And the interiors of the Warsaw Victoria hotel have precisely
such a friendly feeling of partly grotesque illusion.”35 The fairy-tale ex-
traterritoriality of the Victoria’s interiors was confirmed from a different
perspective in an interview with their designers, Zbigniew Pawelski and
Leszek Sołonowicz, published in the Polska [Poland] monthly (No. 9 of
1975). While emphasizing the fact that the hotel complies with the in-
ternational standards of the InterContinental Hotel chain, the designers
added that—according to the wishes of the Americans—the public areas
of the hotel, i.e. the lobby, bars, and restaurants had been endowed
with “typically Polish traits,” which was a difficult task. For example,
the main restaurant alluded to the Warsaw version of the Empire style
and the period of the Duchy of Warsaw, so that the hotel guests would
know that they were in Warsaw and not in New York.36 Thus, a hybrid,
combining cosmopolitan architecture with “authentic” local features,
was created. It revealed one of the characteristic features of colonial
architecture which, by means of quotations and stylization, aims to sug-
gest its affinity with the culture it tries to dominate.
The hotels in Warsaw and other important Polish cities remained
an elite world. Quite different results came from the process of imple-
menting the new standards of luxury in the buildings aimed at a more
democratic clientele, that is, in leisure complexes, scattered all over the
country, which shaped popular opinion about the achievements of the
decade. In this category belong examples as different as roadhouses,
motels, or inns, the construction of which was closely connected to the
development of the new routes and A-road networks. Already since
1976, the Program of the Development of A-Routes had been in ef-
fect, prepared by the GKKFiT (Main Committee on Physical Culture
and Tourism), which envisaged the construction of twenty-six new mo-
tels, next to the twenty-nine already extant ones, within the following
four years.37 With regard to their scale (though not always the level
of luxury) the most important establishments were built by the Pol-
ish Tourist and Sightseeing Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Turystyczno-
Krajoznawcze; PTTK), the Main Office of the “Peasants’ Self-Help”
Farmers’ Cooperatives (Centrala Rolniczych Spółdzielni “Samopomoc
Chłopska”), and the Employees’ Vacations Fund (Fundusz Wczasów
Pracowniczych, FWP).38 The latter organization deserves a special note
as it was an institution that created the most widespread patterns of
vacationing, and offered lodgings for visitors in its own vacation homes.
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 197

The fund came into being on the basis of a Sejm (i.e. Polish parliament)
decree of February 4, 1949 as an agency of the Central Trades Union
Council (Centralna Rada Zwia˛zków Zawodowych; CRZZ), and was
another step in the centralization of government in the PRL.39 The deci-
sion of the CRZZ secretariat of January 13, 1950 had stipulated the
objectives of the FWP. They were:

To organize vacations for and to provide means for spending va-

cations to the union’s members, especially the heroes of socialist
labor, rationalizers, innovators, and expert savers; to enable the la-
borers engaged in strenuous and exhausting work to restore their
strength. By organizing the vacations, the FWP should simultane-
ously provide the workers with a wide-ranging educational and
cultural program, in order to elevate the social class awareness of
the trade union members to a higher level. Through the interna-
tional exchange of vacationers, the FWP should contribute to the
consolidation of international relations of the working class.40

Although some of the guidelines were abandoned with time, the prin-
ciples of providing workers with cheap vacations, of controlling the
distribution of written orders allowing the workers to stay in a vacation
home, as well as the ideologizing of the vacations, remained of key impor-
tance. Dariusz Jarosz wrote the following about the activities organized
by the FWP, referring to the years 1945–56: “The ‘entertainment soirées
akin to dance parties, alien to the working class,’ were to be replaced
by artistic events prepared according to a strictly controlled, politically-
ideological scenario, aimed to be an instrument of propaganda.”41 In
the 1970s efforts were made to raise the standards for spending vaca-
tions in FWP establishments, thus determining the scale of luxury acces-
sible to the masses. Luxury was very carefully defined, as testified by the
tables specifying the room furnishings in vacation homes, which served
as the basis for their categorization. The classification entailed such de-
tailed items of furnishing as flower vases or wall pictures, whereas the
measures of the highest standard were, for example, a bath towel for
every vacationer, a room with bathtub, shower, and WC or a bar or club
available at the hotel.42 Among the ideas aimed at raising the standard
of vacations in 1976, developed by Romuald Okrasa, the leading activ-
ist of the FWP, was to include in the vacation “culturally entertaining as
well as sporting and hiking” programs, some important cultural events
as well as important developments in the life of the trades union, e.g.
the 7th Trades Union Congress or the 130th anniversary of the birth
of Henryk Sienkiewicz.43 The vacationers could improve their physical
condition by taking part in all kinds of sports and recreational activities,
the programs of which “were specially prepared so that they would seem
to be a common merrymaking.” Finally, “in several vacation homes . . .
room service with meals was introduced.” Most innovative, ­however,
198 Andrzej Szczerski

were the new additions to the list of specialist vacation programs,

e.g. “vacations for mountain ramblers,” “vacations behind the wheel,”
or “vacations for the overweight.”44 Among the vacation homes owned
by the FWP, there were, exceptionally, establishments whose architec-
tural forms—maintained in the style of late modernism or a specific
kind of vernacularism—merited attention, such as the dining room unit
at the Krokus vacation home in Polanica, published by Okrasa.45
The FWP is undoubtedly a peculiar instance of the paternalistic
policy of the state toward the citizens. The state not only provided
vacations and entertainment but, above all, restricted the scope of
those activities, in the hope that, as Okrasa had put it, “all people ben-
efiting from FWP services will be fully satisfied” (Figure 8).46 On the
other hand, the employees’ vacations were also a part of the strategy
of “­micro-government,” since such vacations usually condemned the
workers to spending their free time together with their fellow workers
employed in the same company, or at best, in the same area of trade or
industry. This meant that they spent vacations in the same environment
in which they had been working on an everyday basis.47 Not only did it
lead to the replication of the official hierarchy of the workplace during a
vacation, but it also enabled a constant, mutual control instituted by the
vacationers themselves. During the “common merrymaking” they were
not so much able to strengthen their sense of community but rather
to learn, for example, about political views or intimate details of the
private lives of their colleagues, which in a totalitarian police state was
not without meaning.
But luxury à la FWP could not hold a candle to the level of comfort
offered by the vacation houses or sanatoria built by the Foreign Trade
Enterprises (Centrale Handlu Zagranicznego) or the so-called unions of

Figure 8
Vacations organized by the
Employees’ Vacations Fund,
illustration in Romuald Okrasa’s
article “FWP w sezonie 1976 r.” ( The
Employees’ Vacations Fund in the
Season of 1976),” Hotelarz VII–VIII,
1976, No. 7/8: 28.
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 199

particular industry branches, especially of heavy industry. Although from

the architectural point of view these hotels did not constitute a homoge-
nous group, they shared a common denominator in the form of a specific
style of interior furnishings, being a variation of models borrowed from
domestic deluxe hotels and the architecture in countries from beyond
the iron curtain. Among the artificial crystals, oversized candelabra, and
large quantities of mirrors, armchairs upholstered with leather-like mate-
rials, cheap dark-brown boiserie or wooden panels on walls, floors and
walls partly covered with panels of stone imitating real marble, there de-
veloped a specific atmosphere of soc-modern kitsch: interiors using cheap
materials pretending to show off a world-class luxury, located within
similarly average-level buildings pretending to be luxury architecture.
One of the earliest examples of this style is the Builders’ Sanato-
rium in Krynica, accommodating 200 guests, designed by Mirosław
Gliszczyński in 1972, recognized by critics and included in the history of
architecture of the PRL (Figure 9). The monumental mass of the build-
ing alludes to contemporary European mountain resort hotels and man-
ifestly towers over Krynica. The reason for this, beside the ­prominent

Figure 9
Krynica, the Builders’ Sanatorium. Photo from the author’s archive.
200 Andrzej Szczerski

location of the hotel, was its large dimensions, which contrasted sharply
with the remaining architecture of Krynica, dating mostly from the turn
of the twentieth century and the interwar period (though, according to
T. Przemysław Szafer, the architect tried to adjust his design to fit the
terrain).48 The form of the building alluded to the traditional model of
modernist architecture, that is, a ship as already described, for example,
by Le Corbusier or Jaromír Krejcar at the beginning of the 1920s.49
The hotel had an indoor swimming pool overlooking Krynica and the
neighboring hills, and its reception was linked to the bar. On the whole,
it displayed a peculiar combination of superficial “modernism,” typical
of such vacation establishments, and details which were supposed to
endow the building with a feeling of uniqueness—like a hanging lamp,
stretching the entire height of the stairwell (Figure 10), or a trowel motif,

Figure 10
Krynica, staircase in the Builders’
Sanatorium, state as of 2006. Photo
from the author’s archive.
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 201

decorating the grille of the entrance to the bar. The hotel itself was one
of the most luxurious spa centers, equipped with extensive medical
treatment and spa facilities, including an electrotherapy unit.
The most interesting experiment, as far as health resort and hotel
architecture was concerned, and one rising far above the average pro-
duction level of the PRL, was undoubtedly the construction of the
Ustroń-Zawodzie spa district in the years 1971–75 (architects: Henryk
Buszko, Aleksander Franta, Tadeusz Szewczyk). The complex consisted
of walking paths and sports facilities for all seasons, as well as sanato-
rium and natural medicine units, service pavilions and, above all, re-
habilitation homes in the form of pyramids (Figures 11 and 12). The
pyramids were supposed to be reminiscent of rocks scattered in a valley,
and were accompanied by so-called bear’s lairs, hollowed out in the
slopes and covered on the outside with turf, the construction of which
started in 1975. The district, which covered about 200 hectares, could
accommodate 7,000 patients at a time. Apart from spa and medical
treatments, the patients had at their disposal extensive entertainment
facilities: a cinema seating 500–700 people, exhibition halls, various
services (including a beautician), a palm house and an open winter
garden.50
As far as the hotel investors were concerned, special mention should
be made of industrial plants from Upper Silesia, which owned many of
the leisure complexes in the towns and villages of the Beskidy Moun-
tains region. One of the biggest of these was the Orle Gniazdo (“Eagle’s
Nest”), designed in 1974 by Jerzy Winnicki (in cooperation with An-
drzej Da˛browski), a joint investment of the Huta Katowice Steelworks
(in Sosnowiec), the Huta Kościuszko Steelworks (Chorzów) and the

Figure 11
The Ustroń-Zawodzie spa district.
Postcard.
202 Andrzej Szczerski

Figure 12
Emblem of Ustroń.

Transprze˛t (Tychy), which soared over Szczyrk (Figure 13). Originally, a

complex of three separate buildings (each for 150 beds) was envisaged,
but eventually a decision was made to erect a single structure. It remains
a singular example of pretentious grandiosity and extreme lavishness
in the use of soc-modernist aesthetics.51 The Smelter Repair Company
(Hutnicze Przedsie˛biorstwo Remontowe, HPR) based in Katowice
owned a vacation complex in Pora˛bka-Kozubnik (started in 1969)—an
island of true luxury in one of the valleys of the Beskid Żywiecki moun-
tain range, far remote from the tourist resorts of the region.52 At Ko-
zubnik (Figure 14) there were thirteen hotel buildings of various sizes,
which could sleep 500, a restaurant for 260 people, a night club, eight
cafes, a bandshell, swimming pools, a billiard room, tennis courts, and
a bowling alley. The complex was equipped with its own water sup-
ply and sewage system, its own healthcare system, and greenhouses in
which fruit and vegetables were grown for the hotels’ guests. The ex-
traterritorial character of the complex was further emphasized by the
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 203

Figure 13
Szczyrk, the Orle Gniazdo (Eagle’s
Nest) vacation complex. Promotional
leaflet. Photo from the author’s
archive.

Figure 14
Pora˛bka-Kozubnik, a vacation
complex of the HPR (Smelter Repair
Company). Postcard.

contrast between the luxurious architecture of the hotels and the modest
houses of the inhabitants of the local village; for the latter it additionally
constituted an unattainable enclave of the “better world,” which only
a chosen few could access. Sold into private ownership after 1989, it
symbolized the end of PRL vacationing. The new owner was not able to
cope with the new economic reality and Kozubnik has fallen into total
and quite unpicturesque ruin (Figure 15).
204 Andrzej Szczerski

Figure 15
Pora˛bka-Kozubnik, a vacation complex of the HPR, state as of 2005. Photo from the author’s archive.

The examples analyzed above of the democratization of luxury: ho-

tels, leisure complexes, sanatoria, and vacation homes, were the key
elements of the modern system of control over society, adapted to the
Polish reality of the 1970s. If referred to the notion of “carnivalization,”
defined by Mikhail Bakhtin as a temporary inversion of social order and
suspension of the rules and regulations of ordinary life, the hotels may be
considered precisely as the spaces of such “carnivalization of reality.”53
Despite the officially proclaimed egalitarianism in the PRL and the lead-
ing role of the working and peasant classes, it was the workers who
were the victims most exploited by the system, and the fact that they
were given the right to a period of two-week luxury during the vaca-
tions was only an exception which confirmed the rule.54 The celebration
of the fortnight-long “carnival” was an element that helped to maintain
and uphold the system, since, thanks to this ritual the system of power
remained stable. The carnival satisfied the desires of people within a set
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 205

frame of the margin of freedom tolerated by the government. Yet, it was

not a real freedom but only a temporary absence of control, which did
not allow for, for example, the development of attitudes characteristic
of a mature and responsible civic society. Instead, it encouraged uncon-
trolled consumption and a greedy profiting from the temporary access
to luxury. The carnivalization of vacations is also an explanation of
the hotels’ grotesque mannerism and their peculiar interior decoration,
which worked as unintended pastiches and caricatures of Western Euro-
pean models. Equally grotesque was the incompatibility of these islands
of prosperity with the poor reality of life in the PRL, barely concealed
behind the investments funded by the money borrowed from the West.
The practice of praising those investments in exalted rhetoric about the
incredible progress and civilizational advancement of the country was
a good illustration of this grotesque principle, since “the sublime and
the hilarious are stepsisters.”55 Paradoxically and ironically, it can be
said that the hotels were grotesque also in their attempt to “invoke
and subdue the demonic aspects of the world.” From the perspective of
the socialist realist decision-makers, the competing capitalist political
system, civilizationally superior, could seem to represent “the demonic
aspects of the world.”56
The grotesque aspect of the hotels must also be regarded with respect
to “fantasy,” that is, a kind of phantasmic background that ideology
has to rely on, as analyzed by Slavoj Žižek.57 Among those fantasies,
or inherent phantasmic veils, Žižek singles out the “inherent transgres-
sion”: “In order to be operative, fantasy has to remain ‘implicit,’ it has
to maintain a distance toward the explicit symbolic texture sustained
by it.”58 The obligatory distance toward the professed truths in real-
ity underscores the fact that they are fundamental, and confirms the
particular position of the person who professes them in the hierarchy,
thanks to which such a distance is at all possible. According to Žižek,
“An ideological identification exerts a true hold on us precisely when
we maintain an awareness that we are not fully identical to it . . .: ‘Not
all is ideology, beneath the ideological mask, I am also a human person’
is the very form of ideology, of its ‘practical efficiency’.”59 Hence, the
hotels of the 1970s and the world of the “Western” consumerism which
they symbolized, could have acted as such an internal transgression,
creating a pretended distance toward the socialist system of the division
of goods, and consequently, toward the entire system of real socialism.
While staying at the hotels, the members of the new elite (those who
could access the hotels) were eager to be ironic about and to mock the
victims and the contradictions of the PRL, whereas it was precisely such
hotel establishments that guaranteed the endurance of the system. The
fact that the elite members could ridicule the realities of socialist life
was proof of their secure position within the system of power. Thus,
the profiting from the mocked-up capitalist system and the protect-
ing of the socialist rhetoric of the PRL depended on one another in a
206 Andrzej Szczerski

g­ rotesque manner, combining what the system considered to be sublime

(socialism) with the caricatural (capitalism).
By building the luxurious hotels and vacation complexes, the ruling
power invited society to take part in a spectacle of, as Guy Debord had
put it in the late 1960s, “the bad dream of a modern society in chains,”
which “presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part of so-
ciety, and as a means of unification.”60 The hotels played a key part in
the “entertainment of the spectacle,” being an equivalent of a phenom-
enon that Debord had analyzed using the example of film stars: “As
specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people
can identify with in order to compensate for the fragmented produc-
tive specializations that they actually live . . . They [the stars] embody
the inaccessible results of social labor by dramatizing the by-products of
that labor which are magically projected above it as its ultimate goals:
power and vacations—the decision-making and consumption that are at
the beginning and the end of a process that is never questioned.”61 This
spectacle, even if it was taking place in a different political and economic
system than the one referred to by Debord, showed to what extent the
importance of the hotels was the result of their role as instruments of
control, imposed by the PRL. If we assume that the construction of the
hotels had a performative character, it becomes possible to explain why
their interpretation could be changed so easily. When Pope John Paul II
celebrated mass on Victory Square in Warsaw during his visit to Poland
in 1979, the name of the Victoria hotel, visible behind the altar on TV
screens and in press photographs, was already a harbinger of a quite
different victory.

Notes

Translator’s note: The first version of this text was read at the seminar en-
titled “Socialist Luxury,” organized by David Crowley and Susan Reid
at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London on January 20, 2006, to
coincide with the preparations for the museum’s exhibition entitled:
“Cold War Modern: Art and Design in a Divided World, 1945–1972,”
[then scheduled] to be held in 2008 [“Cold War Modern: Design
1945–1970,” V&A, September 25, 2008–January 11, 2009].
  1.  Paweł Sowiński, Wakacje w Polsce Ludowej. Polityka władz i ruch
turystyczny (1945–1989) [Vacations in People’s Poland. The Govern-
ment Policy and the Tourist Traffic, 1945–1989] (Warsaw: Trio, In-
stytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2005), pp. 229
and 263. See also: J. Ensztein, Z. Żupańska, “Analiza stanu urza˛dzeń
­zakwaterowania w obiektach wczasowych” [ The Analysis of the
Accommodation Facilities Condition in Vacation Establishments],
in Analiza stanu bazy wczasowej w Polsce (na podstawie danych z
pocza˛tku lat osiemdziesia˛tych [ The Analysis of the ­Condition of
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 207

­ acation Accommodation in Poland Based on the Data from the Be-

V
ginning of the 1980s], ed. Jerzy Bogucki (Poznań: Akademia Wycho­
wania Fizycznego w Poznaniu, 1987), p. 52, quoted by Sowiński.
These investments were often at odds with a rational policy of re-
gional development of tourist resorts or any ecological standards.
  2.  On Orbis, see Zenon Bła˛dek, Tadeusz Tulibacki, Dzieje krajowego
hotelarstwa od zajazdu do współczesności [The History of the
Polish Hotel Industry: From an Inn to the Present] (Warsaw and
Poznań: Albus, 2003), subsection “System hotelowy ORBIS S.A.”
[The Hotel System of the ORBIS S.A.], pp. 168–74.
  3.  Ibid., p. 171. The authors note that in 1980 Orbis had forty-five
hotel establishments, although the statistical tables published else-
where in the book show that it in fact owned forty-six hotels.
  4.  Analiza jednostkowych wskaźników eksploatacyjno-­ekonomicznych
zakładów hotelowych i gastronomicznych [The Analysis of Unit
Exploitation and Economic Indicators in Hotel and Catering Es-
tablishments], ed. W. Kwiatkowski (Warsaw: Materiały Zrzeszenia
Polskich Hoteli Turystycznych, 1972), p. 13.
  5.  This problem has been treated in detail by Sowiński, Wakacje w
Polsce Ludowej, pp. 173–263.
  6.  At the beginning of the 1970s, 60 percent of tourists coming to Po-
land from the West were people of Polish origin living abroad who
visited the homeland in order to meet with their relatives. See ibid.,
p. 243. Inbound and outbound tourism was controlled by Depart-
ment III in the Ministry of Interior; ibid., p. 177.
  7.  For architecture related to leisure and tourism, as well as the health
resorts’ architecture, see Tadeusz Przemysław Szafer, Nowa archi-
tektura polska. Diariusz lat 1971–1975 [New Polish Architecture.
Diary of the Period 1971–1975] (Warsaw: Arkady, 1979), pp. 289–
328 (including bibliography of particular buildings), and idem,
Nowa architektura polska. Diariusz lat 1976–1980 [New Polish
Architecture. Diary of the Period 1976–1980] (Warsaw: Arkady,
1981), pp. 285–338.
  8.  Marek Baranowski, “Urza˛dzenia turystyczne w ZSSR” [Tourist Fa-
cilities in the USSR], Architektura, 1970, No. 12: 455–59.
  9.  See e.g. Architektura, 1970, No. 4/5, an issue entirely devoted to
the Tatra Mountains region, reporting on the monumental project
for recreational building development in Bukowina Tatrzańska.
10.  “Miernik społecznego bogactwa. Rezolucja XI kongresu UIA” [The
Measure of Social Wealth: Resolution of the 11th UIA Congress],
Architektura, 1973, No. 1: 4–5.
11.  K. Stangel, “Konstrukcje szkieletowe w obiektach rekreacji
masowej” [Framed Structures as Applied to Construction of Mass
Recreation Buildings], Architektura, 1977, Nos. 9–10: 62–4.
In 1977 the journal also published the author’s reflections on the
construction of “second homes” in Poland.
208 Andrzej Szczerski

12.  Jacek Nowicki, “Czas wolny” [Leisure], Projekt [Project], 1973,

No. 3: 2–9.
13.  Bła˛dek, Tulibacki, Dzieje krajowego hotelarstwa, p. 50. The con-
struction was financed by foreign currency credits to be paid back
by the hotel using its prospective income.
14.  Ibid. The workforce building the Forum Hotel had been quartered
in another hotel.
15.  See Marta Leśniakowska, Architektura w Warszawie [Architecture
in Warsaw] (Warsaw: “Arkada” Pracownia Historii Sztuki, 2005),
p. 109.
16.  “Warszawa na światowym szlaku turystycznym. Mówi dyrektor
hotelu ‘Orbis–Forum’ Wiesław Wilk” [Warsaw on the Global Tour-
ist Trail. An Interview with Wiesław Wilk, Manager of the Orbis–
Forum Hotel], Stolica [The Capital City], 1978, No. 17: 2–3. A full
list of the celebrity guests as well as other achievements of the hotel
was published in the cited article.
17.  Waldemar Śmiałowski, “Za kulisami wielkiego hotelu” [Behind the
Scenes of a Great Hotel], Stolica, 1974, No. 6: 2–3.
18.  Ibid.
19.  Leśniakowska, Architektura, p. 70.
20.  “Warszawa otrzymuje hotel na najwyższy połysk” [Warsaw is Get-
ting a ‘Top-Notch’ Hotel], Kurier Polski, 1974, No. 125.
21.  Waldemar Śmiałowski, “Hotel ‘Victoria’ ” [The “Victoria” Hotel],
Stolica, 1976, No. 37: 4–5.
22.  M. Tarnowska, “Jeszcze jeden hotel” [Yet Another Hotel], Hote­
l­arz, 1976, No. 2: 9. See also “Szansa ambitnych” [A Chance of the
Ambitious], Hotelarz, 1976, No. 12: 6–10.
23.  Bła˛dek, Tulibacki, Dzieje krajowego hotelarstwa, pp. 51, 61. The
Polonez was the first hotel to have been managed using a computer
system, thanks to the laboratory of Electronic Computing Tech-
nology, affiliated with Orbis. From the domestic investments the
authors singled out especially, among others, the Hevelius hotel in
Gdańsk, designed by Szczepan Baum and Adam Matoń, of 1979,
which “is a typical example of the basic standards of furnishing
and finishing developed at the beginning of the 1970s.” Converse
examples were: the construction of the Neptun hotel in Szczecin
(designed by T. Ostrowski), which took about 136 months, and the
Forum hotel (designed by Janusz Ingarden) in Cracow, which had
been under construction from 1975 to 1988.
24.  Ibid., p. 52. The Victoria in Warsaw was one of those thirteen
hotels, whereas the remaining ones were located in the following
places: Zakopane, Olsztyn, Karpacz, Sosnowiec, Poznań, Wrocław,
Jelitkowo, Cracow, Gdańsk, Kołobrzeg, Szczecin.
25.  Ibid., pp. 52–53, 60.
26.  Ibid., p. 56. The suspension of the construction was the result of
resolution no. 133 of the Council of Ministers, of January 17,
1980.
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 209

27.  Jerzy Skrzypczak, “Na zachód od PKiN” [To the West of the Palace
of Culture and Science], Stolica, 1974, No. 18: 5, 12–13.
28.  In 1976, 10 million Poles traveled to the Communist countries,
whereas only 401,000 passports were issued for travel to the West.
See Sowiński, Wakacje w Polsce Ludowej, p. 242.
29.  Jean Baudrillard, The Procession of Simulacra, quoted after Jean
Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations: I. The Procession of
Simulacra, translated by Sheila Faria Glaser (http://www.egs.edu/
faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/simulacra-and-simulations-i-the-
­precession-of-simulacra; accessed December 25, 2009).
30.  See, for example, Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map
of Civilization on the Mind of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1994).
31.  Śmiałowski, “Za kulisami wielkiego hotelu.” In his description of
the Victoria hotel, Śmiałowski additionally informed the reader
that it was intended for foreign guests “who of course, to a cer-
tain extent, will vacate places in other Warsaw hotels for domestic
visitors”; see Śmiałowski, “Hotel ‘Victoria’.” In 1971 Poland had
been visited by almost 2 million tourists, whereas in 1978 by about
10 million. The number of tourists from capitalist countries reached
300,000 in 1971; in 1979 the figure was 1 million. See Sowiński,
Wakacje w Polsce Ludowej, p. 243.
32.  Alexander Kiossev, “Notes on Self-Colonizing Cultures,” in After
the Wall. Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe, eds. Bojana
Pejić and David Elliott, exhibition catalog (Stockholm: Moderna
Museet, 1999), p. 114.
33.  Ibid., p. 115.
34.  Ibid. On postcolonial studies with regard to the art history of Cen-
tral Europe, see Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, “Unworlding
Slaka, or Does Eastern (Central) European Art Exist?,” in Local
Strategies, International Ambitions. Modern Art and Central Eu-
rope 1918–1968, ed. Vojtěch Lahoda (Prague: Artefactum, 2006),
pp. 29–40.
35.  Architektura, 1978, No. 3–4, back cover.
36.  “ ‘Victoria’ z placu Zwycie˛stwa” [The “Victoria” of Victoria Square],
Polska, 1975, No. 9: 40. Notable are also the names of the hotel’s
eating and entertainment establishments: the Canaletto Restaurant,
Hetman’s Tavern, Boryna’s Inn, the Opera Cafe, and the Black Cat
nightclub.
37.  Bła˛dek, Tulibacki, Dzieje krajowego hotelarstwa, p. 56.
38.  Ibid. In 1970 the Peasants’ Self-Help Cooperative owned seventy
hotels, whereas in 1980 it had already 168 hotels.
39.  Ibid., p. 153. According to 1976 estimates, 683,000 people were
to benefit from all kinds of services provided by the fund in that
year. See Okrasa, “FWP w sezonie 1976 r.” [The Employees’ Va-
cations Fund in the Season of 1976], Hotelarz VII–VIII, 1976,
No. 7/8: 25.
210 Andrzej Szczerski

40.  Quoted after Dariusz Jarosz, “Masy pracuja˛ce przede wszystkim.”

Organizacja wypoczynku w Polsce 1945–1956 [“The Work-
ing Masses Above All.” The Organization of Vacations in Po-
land 1945–1956] (Warsaw–Kielce: Instytut Historii PAN, 2003),
pp. 21–2. The international exchange concerned the Eastern bloc
countries.
41.  Ibid. On the history of the FWP, see Chapter 1: “Fundusz Wczasów
Pracowniczych w latach 1945–1956” [The Employees’ Vacations
Fund in the Years 1945–1956], pp. 20–86. On the connections
between vacations and ideology, see Sowiński, Wakacje w Polsce
Ludowej, pp. 210–20.
42.  See Table 8: “Detailed Categorization Requirements for Vacation
Homes and Establishments Owned by the FWP,” in Romuald
Okrasa, Organizacja, finansowanie i formy wczasów pracownic-
zych [The Organization, Funding, and Forms of Employees’ Vaca-
tions], (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Zwia˛zków Zawodowych,
1988), pp. 50–53.
43.  Okrasa, “FWP w sezonie 1976 r.” For the following quotations, see
ibid., pp. 26–28.
44.  Ibid., p. 28. See also a full list of specialist vacation programs, in-
cluding, for example, the vacations for philatelists and tennis play-
ers, in Table 10: “The Participants in Specialist Vacations Organized
by the FWP in the Years 1974–1984,” in Okrasa, Organizacja, fi­
nansowanie i formy, pp. 86–87.
45.  Okrasa, “FWP w sezonie 1976 r.,” pp. 24–25.
46.  Ibid., p. 28.
47.  In the 1970s the FWP no longer was the sole organizer of such
vacations and did not develop as dynamically as it had done in
previous decades. Its services were gradually being replaced by va-
cations organized independently by individual companies for their
employees. See Sowiński, Wakacje w Polsce Ludowej, p. 182, and
Romuald Okrasa, Wczasy pracownicze. System organizacyjny
[Employees’ Vacations. Organizational System] (Warsaw, 1979).
48.  Szafer, Nowa architektura polska. Diariusz lat 1971–1975, p. 315.
49.  See Jeremy Howard and Andrzej Szczerski, “Ships in the Night
along the Coasts of Bohemia? Modern Design Aesthetics and the
Turn of the Liner,” in Local Strategies, International Ambitions,
pp. 111–23.
50.  Szafer, Nowa architektura polska. Diariusz lat 1971–1975, p. 313.
The pyramids, each with 200 places, became the symbol of the
town and feature in its emblem. According to information on the
official Internet site of Ustroń (www.ustron.pl), the last of the six-
teen pyramids was completed as recently as 1990. See also: Irma
Kozina, “Obok tyskiego eksperymentu” [By the Tychy Experi-
ment], in Sztuka Górnego Śla˛ska od średniowiecza do końca XX
wieku [The Art of Upper Silesia from the Middle Ages to the End
 The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s 211

of the Twentieth Century], ed. Ewa Chojecka (Katowice: Muzeum

Śla˛skie, 2004), pp. 464–66.
51.  Ibid. Szafer asserts that the building broke with the old models of
vacation establishments and that the hotel was characterized by
“the volume corresponding with function, the rational terrain con-
figuration, and the unified spatial and architectural solutions,” as
well as an equally high standard for all inhabitants. On the conse-
quences of the wasteful tourism industry in Szczyrk, see Wojciech
Błasiak, Marek St. Szczepański, and Jacek Wódz, Szczyrk—miasto
w sytuacji inwazji turystycznej [Szczyrk—A Town in the Situation
of Tourist Invasion] (Katowice, 1990).
52.  See Kazimierz Foltyn, Na Pogórzu Beskidu Małego. Przewodnik po
gminie Pora˛bka [At the Foothills of the Beskid Mały Mountains.
A Guide to the Pora˛bka District] (Pora˛bka, 2001), pp. 68–69, and
Bogdan Wasztyl, “Jaka pie˛kna ruina . . .” [What a Beautiful Ruin
. . .], Dziennik Polski (Magazyn “Pia˛tek”), 2006, No. 94: 24.
53.  Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, translated by Hélène
Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). See also:
Teoria karnawalizacji. Konteksty i interpretacje [The Theory of
Carnivalization: Contexts and Interpretations], eds. Andrzej Stoff
and Anna Skubaczewska-Pniewska (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwer-
sytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2000).
54.  On the alleged power wielded by the “working class” in real social-
ism, as well as on their “working-class” dreams about the West and
its material attributes, see Marcin Kula, “Biedny Marks. Pośmiertne
losy idei” [Poor Marx. The Posthumous Fate of an Idea], Europa
2007, No. 9: 12–13.
55.  Tomasz Gryglewicz, “Płeć i grafika. Tematyka erotyczna w
twórczości Alfreda Kubina w kontekście niemieckiej i austriackiej
grafiki przełomu XIX i XX wieku” [The Sex and the Graphic Arts.
Erotic Themes in the Work of Alfred Kubin Against the Background
of German and Austrian Graphic Art at the Turn of the Twentieth
Century], in Sztuka a erotyka. Materiały z sesji Stowarzyszenia
Historyków Sztuki, Łódź, listopad 1994 [Art and Eroticism. Pro-
ceedings of the Association of Art Historians’ Conference, Łódź,
November 1994] (Warsaw, 1995), p. 294. On the grotesque, see:
idem, Groteska w sztuce polskiej [The Grotesque in Polish Art]
(Cracow, 1984).
56.  On such understanding of the grotesque, see: Wolfgang Kayser,
Das Groteske. Seine Gestaltung in Malerei und Dichtung (Ham-
burg, 1957), pp. 278–9. [English translation: The Grotesque in Art
and Literature, translated by Ulrich Weisstein (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1957).] Quotation after Gryglewicz, “Płeć i
grafika,” p. 296.
57.  Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (London and New York:
Verso, 1997), pp. 3–4.
212 Andrzej Szczerski

58.  Ibid., p. 18.

59.  Ibid., p. 21 (original emphasis).
60.  Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated by Ken Knabb
(London: Rebel Press, 2004), pp. 7, 12.
61.  Ibid., p. 29 (original emphasis).