This austere Soviet-era monument is typical of statuary from the PRL period, though you don't see much of the kind in Kraków these days. The back story to this enormous monument of larger-than-life fist-raising labourers is a strike at the local Semperit rubber factory, which was brutally put down by police in March 1936 resulting in the deaths of ten workers. Fifty years later the incident was 'rehabilitated' and inspired this overtly political monument which flips the script and glorifies the idea of the working class rising up and fighting against capitalist oppression. Essentially a 'Workers Unite!' propaganda poster cast in concrete, the names of the 'martyred' workers actually go unmentioned here, the only reference being the monument's small impersonal dedication "On the 50th anniversary of the events of 1936." Meanwhile, lyrics from L'Internationale - a socialist anthem, which was actually the official anthem of the USSR from 1922 to 1944 - are writ large: Ruszymy z posad bryłę świata (We will move the world from its foundation). Hardly subtle, the fact that these heroic comrades haven't been moved from their foundation is a bit surprising considering that the ideology this monument personifies was never much in vogue in PL and was officially scrubbed from state policy with the arrival of democracy in 1989. Fascinating, at any rate, and something you don't see much of anymore.