ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the long history of the development of Warsaw’s Metro system, a history which reflected the politics and nationalist inspirations of its eras. The idea for the Metro, an underground railway system, began under Stefan Starzynski, Warsaw’s mayor in the inter-war period, however Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 ended its development. This first phase of the Metro idea represented the newly independent Poland embracing Modernity and developing infrastructures like those in cities such as London, New York, Paris and Moscow. The second phase represented the height of Cold War paranoia and nuclear preparation. A system was devised for creating an underground railway with deep tunnels which could double up as shelters for soldiers in the event of nuclear war, a short tunnel section was cut but the geological limitations to the plans were exposed. What was occurring underground mirrored the domination of the city above ground with Stalin’s ‘present’ the Palace of Culture and Science built in central Warsaw, this provided both landmark and a symbol of the Warsaw Pact military status of the People’s Republic of Poland. Due to complex geology work on the Metro stopped for many years, until in the 1980s a fresh phase of the system was introduced after the repression of the Solidarity movement, as a gift from Brezshnev to the loyal Warsaw Pact allies. The first line of the Metro opened after the end of communism in Poland and was partially funded by the EU. The technique used was ‘cut and cover’, shallow tunnels which did not have a dual function as bomb shelters. The various phases show how a straightforward public transport system came to symbolise Warsaw’s, and by extension Poland’s, aspirations to both Modernity and nationhood. Owen Hatherley has written of how the Moscow Metro represents the ‘transformation of infrastructure into narrative’, if Warsaw’s Metro can also be viewed as an infrastructural narrative it is very much one of stunted possibilities and delayed ambitions, shaped by strategic military dynamics and geo-politics, this paper examines the long history of the Metro and the cultures, ideologies and urbanism which produced it.
