In the early 1970s, the head of the Polish Commission for the Modernization of the Economy and State Functioning, Jan Szydlak, summoned industrial designers to assist – no more, no less – in modernizing the economy and state functioning. What was intended as a strategic consultation quickly revealed deep-seated issues. Designers, ministerial bureaucrats, and industry representatives not only found themselves unable to agree on solutions but also were divided over how to define the problems. This lecture uses that episode to unfold a broader story about the perils of shaping the material world of state socialism. It focuses on the ambivalent relationship between the state bureaucracy and a newly emerging professional group – industrial designers – and examines their role in building Poland’s international relations with the world and in materializing socialist promises at home.

A Miraculous Cure, a Means of Distinction, and an Object of Desire: Design and the Material Politics of State Socialism
Gastvortrag im Rahmen des Blockseminars Poland’s Multiple Transformations from 1989 to the War in Ukraine

Freitag, 26.06.2026, 12.30–14.00
SR 221, Fürstengraben 1, 07743 Jena

Katarzyna Jeżowska is a cultural historian of Eastern Europe. Her research focuses on exchanges between Eastern Europe and the world and on the design cultures of state socialism. Her first book, Socialist by Design: The Politics of Material Culture in Cold War Poland, is forthcoming with Cornell UP. She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. In 2026, she is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo. In 2023, she was the Wayne Vucinich Fellow at Stanford University.