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Thaddeus Kosciusko

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Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#81

Post by 6d6b73 »

chewz wrote: post #63
6d6b73 wrote: post #56

"The dude lived a metal life and I have no idea why there hasn’t been a movie made about him." There are many historical figures that should have movies made about them. i.e Witold Pilecki who volunteered for Auschwitz - the whole team of the guys who decrypted Enigma (and I'm not talking about Brits.) - Rejewski, Zygalski and Rozycki - mathematicians of the Lwow School of Mathematics and their Scottish Book and many…

> being ignored by the Anglo-Saxons and their propaganda machine. Polish propaganda machine is largely ignori ng the king of Poland (Tsar Alexander I), who had given to Poland the most democratic constitution of the time in Europe. Also role of Tsar Alexander II is largely ignored in Polish history a ruler who succesfully abolished serfdom in Poland (a task where Kościuszko failed) and introduced custom union between…

Tsar Alexander II was the ruler of the occupying nation, so forgive us for not considering him one of the best rulers in our history. Perhaps if Russia didn't partition Poland, Kosciuszko would have successfully abolished serfdom long before Russians even thought about doing it, so sorry for not being thankful for his great contributions.

Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#82

Post by jwieczorek »

6d6b73 wrote: post #81
chewz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being ignored by the Anglo-Saxons and their propaganda machine. Polish propaganda machine is largely ignori ng the king of Poland (Tsar Alexander I), who had given to Poland the most democratic constitution of the time in Europe. Also role of Tsar Alexander II is largely ignored in Polish history a ruler who succesfully abolished serfdom in Poland (a task where Kościuszko failed) and introduced custom union between…

Tsar Alexander II was the ruler of the occupying nation, so forgive us for not considering him one of the best rulers in our history. Perhaps if Russia didn't partition Poland, Kosciuszko would have successfully abolished serfdom long before Russians even thought about doing it, so sorry for not being thankful for his great contributions.

Claims like this are essentially impossible to have a reasonable historical discussion about, because they do not concern history but rather alternative history, and the two are mostly disjoint. One is concerned with facts, the other – with fantasy. And facts are more interesting and meaningful.

When it comes to facts, it's worth understanding why Russia took part in the partitions of Poland (hint: as is well-known, Catherine the Great was the most hesitant of all the three rulers to take such an action). To have a better grasp of this highly propagandized (in typically Polish martyrological shades) period of history, I recommend the book The History of Stupidity in Poland by Aleksander Bocheński.

Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#83

Post by chewz »

6d6b73 wrote: post #81
chewz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being ignored by the Anglo-Saxons and their propaganda machine. Polish propaganda machine is largely ignori ng the king of Poland (Tsar Alexander I), who had given to Poland the most democratic constitution of the time in Europe. Also role of Tsar Alexander II is largely ignored in Polish history a ruler who succesfully abolished serfdom in Poland (a task where Kościuszko failed) and introduced custom union between…

Tsar Alexander II was the ruler of the occupying nation, so forgive us for not considering him one of the best rulers in our history. Perhaps if Russia didn't partition Poland, Kosciuszko would have successfully abolished serfdom long before Russians even thought about doing it, so sorry for not being thankful for his great contributions.

Tsar Alexander II had been killed by bomb thrown by Ignacy Hryniewiecki Polish person and part of Russian Narodnaya Vola conspiracy. Tsars bodyguard had been Polish noble.

I think people of XIX century would be laugh your narrow nationalistic schooling.

Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#84

Post by 6d6b73 »

chewz wrote: post #83
6d6b73 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tsar Alexander II was the ruler of the occupying nation, so forgive us for not considering him one of the best rulers in our history. Perhaps if Russia didn't partition Poland, Kosciuszko would have successfully abolished serfdom long before Russians even thought about doing it, so sorry for not being thankful for his great contributions.

Tsar Alexander II had been killed by bomb thrown by Ignacy Hryniewiecki Polish person and part of Russian Narodnaya Vola conspiracy. Tsars bodyguard had been Polish noble. I think people of XIX century would be laugh your narrow nationalistic schooling.

History is complicated, I know. And I've never claimed that Alexander didn't abolish serfdom, or even that he was a bad ruler. All I'm trying to say is nobody should be surprised that his accomplishments are not part of the school curriculum as he was simply an occupier.

Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#85

Post by foobarian »

sverige wrote: post #72
foobarian wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kind of shenanigans are exactly why Mr. Karadžić [1] pushed for an orthographic alphabet in Serbia, and why it quickly got adopted by neighbors as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuk_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87

The Cyrillic alphabet is even simpler and clearer, but apparently too orthodox for Catholics.

I blame it on Methodius. He tried to get the Catholics to use the Glagolitic but in the end it didn't take and the vacuum got filled with Latin.

Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#86

Post by anigbrowl »

dsr_ wrote: post #69
alboy wrote: post #66

What strikes me the most whenever I read about this period is how no-hassle moving between countries used to be. For some reason we think of the modern world as finally "global" and "open", but it doesn't necessarily seem as such when you try to get a visa.

That's an overly romanticized view. Moving long distances was slow and/or expensive. There was little in the way of international banking, so if you wanted to have money in your new home, you had to bring gold or silver or sell other things. If you were robbed, you were pretty much out of luck -- insofar as there were police forces, they weren't much concerned about foreigners. It's true that you now have to cope wit…

All that is true, but it's a fallacy to group them together and conclude that we are better off in the aggregate.

Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#87

Post by jwieczorek »

sverige wrote: post #72
foobarian wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kind of shenanigans are exactly why Mr. Karadžić [1] pushed for an orthographic alphabet in Serbia, and why it quickly got adopted by neighbors as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuk_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87

The Cyrillic alphabet is even simpler and clearer, but apparently too orthodox for Catholics.

Indeed, it's one of the peculiarities of the Polish language that it has Slavic phonetics but a Latin alphabet. Hence why typically Slavic phonemes, which in Cyrillic are represented by single letters (such as sh = ш), in Polish get represented with two (sz), and why you need a double-letter context to know how to pronounce a given sequence of characters.

Unfortunately, back in the 10th century, the choice of an alphabet was essentially a pure consequence of whom the first ruler of Poland would adopt Christianity from: the Western part of the Church (this was before the official Schism) or the Rus (Ruthenia). The Rus had a liturgy in Old Church Slavonic, and for the liturgical books they adopted an alphabet, the Glagolitic (a predecessor to the Cyrillic), which was more suitable for the phonetics of the language (and, indeed, of Slavic languages in general). Poland adopted the Latin liturgy and the alphabet was part of the “package”.

Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#88

Post by anigbrowl »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #76
alboy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, I understand that this is the price of increased convenience for an average person. I simply feel that there's a certain sense of irony in those new barriers been erected as the old ones fall. Now it's harder to pull a Kosciuszko but easier to post pictures of your vacation on instagram, that's the trade-off here.

Before if someone traveled half way around the world to enter your country you let them in because clearly they were rich or industrious enough to get there in the first place. The deadbeats were excluded by the difficulty of actually traveling. Taxes were minimal and services were minimal so if you let a bunch of poors or refugees or whatever in and half of them did nothing productive it was no big deal either way.…

It seems like you're the one trying to score 'cheap virtue points' by signaling your dislike of people you consider to be economic freeloaders to people of similar temperament.

One of the weaknesses of utilitarianism is that it's predicated on an assumption of reliable foresight that's not grounded in fact but is subject to all sorts of selection and confirmation biases.

Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#89

Post by chewz »

6d6b73 wrote: post #84
chewz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tsar Alexander II had been killed by bomb thrown by Ignacy Hryniewiecki Polish person and part of Russian Narodnaya Vola conspiracy. Tsars bodyguard had been Polish noble. I think people of XIX century would be laugh your narrow nationalistic schooling.

History is complicated, I know. And I've never claimed that Alexander didn't abolish serfdom, or even that he was a bad ruler. All I'm trying to say is nobody should be surprised that his accomplishments are not part of the school curriculum as he was simply an occupier.

That's exactly my point :-) History is complicated and we oversimplify it looking back through our modern lenses.

Re: Thaddeus Kosciusko

#90

Post by jawk »

6d6b73 wrote: post #84
chewz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tsar Alexander II had been killed by bomb thrown by Ignacy Hryniewiecki Polish person and part of Russian Narodnaya Vola conspiracy. Tsars bodyguard had been Polish noble. I think people of XIX century would be laugh your narrow nationalistic schooling.

History is complicated, I know. And I've never claimed that Alexander didn't abolish serfdom, or even that he was a bad ruler. All I'm trying to say is nobody should be surprised that his accomplishments are not part of the school curriculum as he was simply an occupier.

> he was simply an occupier

That's not the history, as you just admitted yourself: he abolished serfdom and started a period of unprecedented prosperity in Polish history (when the Polish city Łódź had gone from a village to become one of the main industrial centers in the whole of Europe), among many other things. The list could go on but the point is this: you pick statements that suit your feelings and therefore are not even close to serve as an objective description of a historical figure.

I would even argue, as a separate point, that he wasn't an “occupier” at all, much like Donald Trump is not an “occupier” of Native American lands.

I think there are grounds to be surprised and dissatisfied when the school curriculum teaches kids shallow, anti-intellectual ressentiments, instead of actual history, with all its shades of gray. And when it does that, it's awful for their future. Indeed, as one great Polish historian once said, false history is a mistress of false politics. Mistress in the old Shakespearean sense. Although the modern alternate meaning of the word gives the saying quite an appropriate twist…

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