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A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

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

#71

Post by rokhayakebe »

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…

Please, do it. Even if it is for just one year. Costa Rica, I hear, is a great place and you can live very comfortably for a modest cost, and it is close to the States (if you are in America).

I moved from my country to the states a few 15 years ago; I cannot imagine my life otherwise. I would move again to another country if the conditions are right (and the conditions are not even much).

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

#72

Post by limaoscarjuliet »

_mgr wrote: post #45

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.

Poland is still very closed society. You will be fine in large cities (Wroclaw, Krakow, Poznan, Warszawa, Gdansk), but unlikely to do well in small and medium cities.

Wages are way smaller than in EU countries, prices are pretty much the same. Real estate might be the only exception, but not by much.

Polish is a very hard language to pick up. Not only tongue twister, but full of exceptions and mind twisting rules. A pretty good example is counting objects, e.g. apples: 1-4 jablka, 5-21 jablek, 22-24 jablka, 25.. jablek. Yes, good luck with that!

The good news is most young and some mid-age people speak English, large cities welcome foreigners, and - if you have decent profession - you will do ok.

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

#73

Post by limaoscarjuliet »

I'm from Poland, born in 74, so I remember that time well.

1987 was 3 years before bankruptcy of the communist government and fall of iron curtain. It was still bad as author described. I remember the long lines to bakeries, I remember the grey block of flats (these are still there, and even though painted in other colors are dull as hell!).

But... we, children, did not know there is a "better life" out there. Sure, everybody had someone in the West (mostly in US), we got an occasional package for Xmas with chocolate and some clothes.

But we, children, did not care for the West that much. We were outside playing stupid games like hanging out on carpet hanger next to block of flats (and screaming "cinema!" when one of the girls revealed her underwear while doing some risque maneuver). We jumped rope and "rubber". We played war (zee Germans vs us). I would come out in the morning or right after school and stay until dark, at which time my mom would call "comeeee baaaaaack!" from the window.

So yes, it was dark middle ages, but somehow simple and pleasant. This is in contrast to my children today rarely venturing outside and playing some phone crap all day long.

For adults that might have been whole another story. The promise of the West likely has been large. But I still want to bet guys were busy chasing the ladies, the family was the focus, and people who wanted to be happy were happy.

So not romanticizing the system too much - I am a successful software engineer working all other the World for "the man" and like it - it was not that bad as people might think. Some of us were quite happy, despite system's shortcomings.

Strange for sure, but not hopeless.

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

#74

Post by V-2 »

coldtea wrote: post #51
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? Directly no. They are just nurtured by top officials in chain of command, who could have stopped this shitty behavior in a day if they wanted to, but instead either ignore it or even encourage it. From people arming police departments with military grade equipment and allowing SWAT teams etc to be used for…

> Saying "they just earned 20 bucks a month" is not enough -- one also has to know how things were for the majority of people in these countries before socialism, in order to compare.

Well, before the war literacy rate was low and noone had a TV set, the socialist state has come and these things took a fortunate turn ;)

Or if we truly want to put things into perspective, prewar Poland, while obviously poorer than Germany or the UK, was better off than Spain or Portugal (not to mention eg. [South] Korea). A few decades later did young Spaniards dream of picking strawberries in Poland, or was it the other way round?

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #53
blumkvist wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously suggesting that people living in the US have it worse than in the communist bloc?

Depends. There are poor people in the US living in comparable (or worse) conditions than people suffered in some of the countries of the "communist block". I know some older people from the "block" (from Albania and Hungary for example), and some of them look back into that era as "the good times", considering that they were teachers, engineers and other such jobs, and now they clean floors or poor concrete in constr…

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by jpatokal »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #73

I'm from Poland, born in 74, so I remember that time well. 1987 was 3 years before bankruptcy of the communist government and fall of iron curtain. It was still bad as author described. I remember the long lines to bakeries, I remember the grey block of flats (these are still there, and even though painted in other colors are dull as hell!). But... we, children, did not know there is a "better life" out there. Sure,…

Your description of life for kids in Poland reminds me a lot of my own childhood in Finland -- except that I was on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and there were no bread lines. (Quite few grey blocks of flats though...) I also remember driving through East Germany and visiting East Berlin in the mid-1980s and getting thoroughly freaked out by what a even child could recognize as a monochrome totalitarian dystopia.

It's the US, with its pervasive fear that kids must be supervised at all times or they'll immediately be kidnapped and sold into sex slavery or something, that's the real outlier here. See http://www.freerangekids.com/ for a movement that's trying to roll this back, with some success.

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

#77

Post by zbraniecki »

brc wrote: post #65
x0054 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So I'm genuinely curious - what's your attitude towards socialism and communism now?

you're kidding right? People who lived through it don't find it funny... As my mom always said "Communism is such a great idea, but they should test it on mice first".

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

#78

Post by mseebach »

coldtea wrote: post #52
stretchwithme wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, there a few of these paradises still available. Productivity and creativity vary a great deal. It is only fair that compensation varies a great deal too. We have systems to day that make it possible to deliver value to millions of people. Those who create and make use of those systems are the ones creating that value. Those who do not don't have some inherent right to what others have produced. But they…

> Which is why even the poor are better off escaping from communism and the foot traffic usually indicates that. The only thing it really indicates is that the soviet states were run badly and have deterioted into dictatorships.

"Cheka (ЧК – чрезвыча́йная коми́ссия chrezvychaynaya komissiya, Emergency Committee, Russian pronunciation: [tɕɪˈka]) was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20, 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was subsequently led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat turned communist. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had been created in various cities, at multiple levels including: oblast, guberniya ("Gubcheks"), raion, uyezd, and volost Chekas, with Raion and Volost Extraordinary Commissioners. Many thousands of dissidents, deserters, or other people were arrested, tortured or executed by various Cheka groups. After 1922, Cheka groups underwent a series of reorganizations, with the NKVD, into bodies whose members continued to be referred to as "Chekisty" (Chekists) into the late 1980s.

From its founding, being the military and security arm of the Bolshevik communist party, the Cheka was instrumental in the Red Terror. In 1921 the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a branch of the Cheka) numbered at least 200,000. These troops policed labor camps; ran the Gulag system; conducted requisitions of food; subjected political opponents to secret arrest, detention, torture and summary execution; and put down rebellions and riots by workers or peasants, and mutinies in the desertion-plagued Red Army."

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

So, yeah, it "deteriorated into dictatorship" a whole month after the revolution.

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

#79

Post by mseebach »

coldtea wrote: post #55
hga wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Echoing others, the go-to source for democide tabulates an estimated 10,000 to 54,000 Poles killed by their government in the 1948 to 1987 period.

Can we count blacks, latinos, indians etc killed by cops without a crime in that statistic as well? And even white people, from the Kent State shooting to Wacko? Or stretch it a little to include kids send to die in wars half a planet away, while young people all over the country were protesting against them?

OK, let's play.

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

1240 is the estimated unusually high number for 2015 and US population is just over 318 million: that's a rate of one in 256,000 (or, 4 per million).

The population of Poland rose from 30 to 38m 1961-1990, so let's assume an even 30m on average for the 39 years covered by the GP. The 10-54k killed in that period come out as 256-1384 pr year, or one in 117,000 to one in 21,000 (or 8-47 per million).

So, even being very generous with the numbers, communist Poland killed its citizens at a rate of twice to more than ten times the rate the US does.

Including military deaths, there has been just over 100k US deaths, WWII to date, that's an average of 1430 to add to the 1240 for 2670/year, or one in 119,000 -- still (just) better than the Polish lower bound.

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

#80

Post by tallanvor »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #73

I'm from Poland, born in 74, so I remember that time well. 1987 was 3 years before bankruptcy of the communist government and fall of iron curtain. It was still bad as author described. I remember the long lines to bakeries, I remember the grey block of flats (these are still there, and even though painted in other colors are dull as hell!). But... we, children, did not know there is a "better life" out there. Sure,…

The way you played wasn't much different than how I played growing up in the US less than 30 years ago. After school we'd be outside riding bikes or playing games with friends, often until dusk. We mostly stayed on the block, but our parents were fine with us wandering as long as we stayed in the neighborhood and didn't cross any of the busy streets.

I still don't understand the fear that's gripped much of the western world about not letting kids go play outside by themselves.

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