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A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#41

Post by V-2 »

obrero wrote: post #32
V-2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst thing he could say about Poland was a corrupt police. It hardly means that this is the worst thing that could be said about Soviet-controlled Poland > Constrast with the hundrends of innocent police killings in the US US police is notorious for its brutality, but are these killings ordered by top officials in chain of command? If factory workers go on a strike in the US, are police troops sent in to "shoo…

> US police is notorious for its brutality, but are these killings ordered by top officials in chain of command? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Fred_Hampton > If factory workers go on a strike in the US, are police troops sent in to "shoot to kill" them? They did in Poland 30 years ago, eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek Oh god yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_cannery_s…

Well, it's hard not to notice that most of these examples happen to be from before the war... closer to the Victorian era than modern times. So that's getting kind of ahistorical.

Secret service functionaries in communist Poland assassinated nearly 100 people in 1980s alone; mainly oppositionists, priests (the most famous father Popiełuszko wasn't the only one), who were unarmed and not affiliated with organized crime.

Furthermore, you wouldn't go to jail for as little as mentioning Fred Hampton (or Wacko siege) in public - let alone trying to write about it... and an anti-government organization such as Black Panther Party, armed and openly denouncing the state, now that's something utterly unthinkable in any "people's republic", they would all get killed. Solidarity was a trade union which formally called for improving socialism.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that the US was or is a paradise on Earth, you are obviously right to point out that Eastern bloc did not have a monopoly on political killings or unlawful surveillance.

But to insist that this was ever on par with Soviet-controlled countries in terms of freedom and lawfulness would be a doomed task... you'd quickly start scraping the bottom of the barrel in search of counterexamples; that's sort of like "project Steve" ;)

Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#42

Post by warkdarrior »

[deleted] wrote: post #39
tinbad wrote: post #2

Growing up with my grandparents in the 80s in Moscow, I remember standing in line in front of a place literally called 'Store' for hours. Nobody knew what the line was for or what it was the store was getting in that day. Some people spend the night waiting just to be in front. After standing in line all day, finally by dusk a truck pulls up. Everybody looking in anxiety and worried about not being enough merchandise…

[deleted]

Yes, except for the fact that iPhones are not a food item you need, while milk, meat, bread, flour are.

Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#43

Post by usaphp »

x0054 wrote: post #19
tinbad wrote: post #2

Growing up with my grandparents in the 80s in Moscow, I remember standing in line in front of a place literally called 'Store' for hours. Nobody knew what the line was for or what it was the store was getting in that day. Some people spend the night waiting just to be in front. After standing in line all day, finally by dusk a truck pulls up. Everybody looking in anxiety and worried about not being enough merchandise…

Yes, indeed, the "магазин" or the "гастраном" :) I also still remember the experience of having to bring a 3 liter pickle jar to buy milk from a barrel on wheels. It's funny because sometime we would see the barrel pull up, but we wouldn't know what they were selling. Could be mil, could be beer, could be kvas (not sure how to translate). We would rush in, because what ever it was, it's better than nothing ;) I also…

It's called "Гастроном" not "Гастраном"

Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#44

Post by S4M »

jacquesm wrote: post #38
rasz_pl wrote: post #24

The bit about getting a work permit is a little weird. At that time average monthly salary was ~$5. His Dutch parents could literally just send him lunch money, and it would be enough to for an upper class lifestyle at the time. Flower/grape/whatever picking for a month in the west was enough to finance rest of the year. It was as bad as in Greece right now, everything worth something got sold to multinationals for p…

> The bit about getting a work permit is a little weird. At that time average monthly salary was ~$5. His Dutch parents could literally just send him lunch money, and it would be enough to for an upper class lifestyle at the time. I've never depended on anybody for my living expenses after I turned 17 and to ask my parents for money simply never even occurred to me. Also, once you were legally employed you could drop…

What made me curious in this story is the fact that you and your wife decided to move to Poland. I thought life in Netherlands would be much better. You must have had a strong reason to want to live in Poland.

Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#45

Post by _mgr »

I've read this before. Has this already been posted to HN?

I am trying to convince my native born Polish girlfriend to move back for a year to live/work/travel. I figure I will pick up the language far quicker than my current pace.

She's a little apprehensive about our earning potential there. The Polish Zloty does not appear to be the strongest currency and the average wage is half of some of it's other EU cousins.

Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#46

Post by pixelcort »

twqqis wrote: post #5

For as long as I can remember I've had an interest in going to live in another country. But the older I get and the more I get to understand people and the more I travel, the more I start to hold myself back from actually moving to another country. Even if just for a year or two. I think I realise more and more that cultures really are different, vastly more than I once thought. It has me wonder what I would actually…

It's hard to explain, but it helps get perspective of your own country more.

It's been two years now and I'm still learning new things about my own country as well as the rest of the world. (American in Japan)

Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#47

Post by jacquesm »

S4M wrote: post #44
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bit about getting a work permit is a little weird. At that time average monthly salary was ~$5. His Dutch parents could literally just send him lunch money, and it would be enough to for an upper class lifestyle at the time. I've never depended on anybody for my living expenses after I turned 17 and to ask my parents for money simply never even occurred to me. Also, once you were legally employed you could drop…

What made me curious in this story is the fact that you and your wife decided to move to Poland. I thought life in Netherlands would be much better. You must have had a strong reason to want to live in Poland.

G. did not like living in NL all that much so we decided to move to Poland. I sold my company, packed all our stuff into/onto an old trailer that we bought, hooked it up to the car and drove to Poznan.

Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#48

Post by fapjacks »

When I was just a couple months into being a teenager, I went to Russia in 1993. We were the first group of Americans allowed into the Udmurt region, and we traveled from Saint Petersburg to Izhevsk to meet our host families for a short stay, and then to Moscow before leaving the country. It was the first time in my life when I saw anything like that. I remember a few times when I said things that I still cringe at saying to this day. Prior to entering Russia, we stayed in Stockholm. Stockholm was a shining jewel compared to Saint Petersburg, which itself was a shining jewel compared to Izhevsk. I remember I asked out loud if a hotel was going to "be like Sweden", completely oblivious that I was embarrassing the Americans and Russians around me. Things like this that still make me cringe today. The city of Izhevsk was famous for being the home of the inventor of the AK-47, as well as the Baikal munitions plant, which supplied a lot of the world's Soviet ammunition. I remember seeing a group of children, perhaps six or seven years old, running through the street and drinking from a bottle of vodka. A few months later, our Russian host-family counterparts came to stay with us in the States for about as long as we were in Russia. My grandmother gave me a hundred dollars (kind of a big deal in '93 heh) to take my counterpart shopping. When we were at the store, I remember talking about buying some toys and taking my counterpart to the toy section at Walmart. You know what he did instead? He bought Levis and cans of coffee for his family. I still cringe every time I think about how I behaved back then, but for sure it taught me an enormous amount about the world in a very short time.

Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#49

Post by coldtea »

x0054 wrote: post #23
coldtea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think its important for Hacker News readers to read this because techno-communism is becoming a very serious force in western politics. It needs to be tempered with a historical context. Tempered why? The worst thing he could say about Poland was a corrupt police. Constrast with the hundrends of innocent police killings in the US, or the hundrens of thousands incarcerated for BS charges (like drug pocession or thre…

Come on! Did you live through Soviet style communism? Please don't glorify that BS unless you have. A party functionary would be entitled to free servants to help them move, clean there garden, do all kinds of physical labor for them. Those servants were called enlisted soldiers. A party functionary would be entitled to a yearly, 3 month vacation on the black sea, where they would live, in a palace by the sea. And wh…

>Did you live through Soviet style communism?

No, but I lived through a military dictatorship sponsored by the US (though, admittedly, 30+ years later Clinton on an official visit did say the US was sorry for its support of it) imposed on my country so that a large percentage of my countrymen who preferred socialism wouldn't attempt to try it.

Oh, and it was preceded by a prolonged civil war (provoked by the UK, and with the right-wing side given arms and support by the UK and US in a typical Cold War scenario), followed by 15+ years of imprisonment, exile and even torture for tens of thousands of the most prominent left sympathizers, among them war heroes who had just before fought heroically against the nazis, like this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manolis_Glezos

So, yeah, there was that side too.

>And guaranteed house? Like the house that my best friend grew up, with his mom, his dead, and his sister, all sleeping in the same bed in their 250 sqft studio.

And in our modern day and age, in advanced countries, there are tons of people living all 4-5 of them on the same trailer house. Or even worse, being homeless. And that's in a place like the US. In Mexico, Latin America, Africa, Asia etc it can be much worse.

So, while bad in itself, I'd say a guaranteed 250 sq ft studio for 4 people, plus a job for all of them, plus the basics, plus education, etc, sure beats people living in the slums in 1/3 of the modern world, e.g. as in:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/19/shopping.societ...

Re: A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

#50

Post by nextos »

jacquesm wrote: post #47
S4M wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What made me curious in this story is the fact that you and your wife decided to move to Poland. I thought life in Netherlands would be much better. You must have had a strong reason to want to live in Poland.

G. did not like living in NL all that much so we decided to move to Poland. I sold my company, packed all our stuff into/onto an old trailer that we bought, hooked it up to the car and drove to Poznan.

My girlfriend is Polish and, to my own surprise, I don't think I dislike Poland that much right now. Why are you in Romania?
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