In the early socialist period, a spectacular and uniquely Polish form of protest was born – the “defence of the cross.” At this time, as a secularization program known as “decrucification” was causing tensions between the socialist authorities and the Catholic Church, mass outdoor religious events emerged as a platform to voice protest against Communist rule. The most iconic and violent demonstration of this kind was a “defence of the cross,” which took place in the model socialist metropolis of Nowa Huta in 1960 and transformed into bloody street riots against the Communist authorities. The story of how the “defence of the cross” established itself as a popular form of anti-systemic protest in Poland also provides a window onto how women in particular devised creative modes of nonconformist behavior in the gray zone between religiosity and rebellion.

In the transformative decade marked by the rise of Solidarity (1980–1989), the cross came to serve as a source of metaphysical legitimation for the growing opposition movement. Used to imply the “sacred” nature of anti-Communist mobilization, the symbol of the cross became not only a default signal of anti-Communist politics, but also an extremely popular motif that came to dominate both Solidarity’s visual culture and Poland’s memorial landscape. Solidarity used the symbol to mark spaces of anti-Communist dissent, mourn workers killed in standoffs with the police, and foster a rift in the popular mind between “the nation” and the Communist rulers, portrayed as “anti-nation.” Three case studies illuminate how the symbol was instrumental in both solidifying and challenging this boundary. Communist attempts to hijack celebrations held at the foot of the Poznań Crosses in commemoration of the workers’ rebellion of 1956, Solidarity’s campaign to rebrand May Day using Catholic symbols, and the project to display the symbol of the cross during the fortieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising throw into relief the contradictory nature of the symbol in the late socialist period