Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945-1950

The first book to examine the communist takeover in Poland from the bottom up, and the first to use archives opened in 1989, Rebuilding Poland provides a radically new interpretation of the communist experience. Padraic Kenney argues that the postwar takeover was also a social revolution, in which workers expressed their hopes for dramatic social change and influenced the evolution—and eventual downfall—of the communist regime.

Kenney compares Lödz, Poland's largest manufacturing center, and...