Matters of Propaganda...Or: how was the West portrayed in Poland?

What upraising ?
Some frustrated underpaid workers 1953 ?
Some riots at their best

In those years thousands partisans were fighting commies from the Oder river to Tallinn in the Baltics.

Well..more riots than Poland had...
You must have been quite happy about your situation, no riots at all...


Tell me more about the polish partisans...

PS: You don't mean those partisans who had fighted shortly before still with the Wehrmacht againt the oncoming red army? The "Forest Brothers"?

Can I have some links on that? Some proof? Thanks.

Some more anti-communism prop:



>^..^<

M-G (nah)

Use Google to search for partisans, BB.
Last of them died fighting in the sixties
Zone was the best comrade and proven friend of the Great Soviet Union.
Not some troublemaker like the rest of the gang - Poles, Czechs, the Baltics etc.

Google Forest Brothers: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Brothers#The_partisan_war

Fascinating Baltics! :)


The party surely was!
But we won't judge the countries because of the party leadership, won't we?
I would never judge the Poles about the participation in the murdering of the brave resisters in Prague, now won't I.
Or that 35 million of Poles never once tried to get rid of the few soviet troops in their country...naaah
Or that barely a Pole risked death to become free..

I'm trying to believe Poles are innate brave and upstanding people instead! (As they tell me all the time)


I'm still waiting...when did Poles ever mean trouble for the Soviets???

Couldn't care less about what you are trying.
Just don't lie and use Google.

BTW. What's wrong about the Forest Brothers ?

The most interesting thing is that the german commies in the GDR needed a wall being build to survive...to keep the people jailed in, Poland's commies did not!

Yeah...tells all there is really!

The Baltics? really??
that is interesting.

The "brave resister" myth is in the polish mind only....

I never said that.
I said that the Baltics were part of the U.S.S.R. and Poland was seen by people in the now named Lithuania, as a free country (at least a lot freer than Lithuania).

As for the victims and those doing the shooting, how were they portrayed in the media (east vs. west)?

No..I did say that! :)
And the discussions here on this board are very convincing. There are mostly only arrogant statements of their "braveness" without any evidence to support that.

Whereas on the other hand other people are downtalked...they are brainwashing themselves!


You got only to know about it the shootings and the victims in the west-german media, they tried always to find out names and such.

In the GDR such things didn't happen, were not much talked about....they called them "Republik Flüchtlinge". If one wanted to know something he had to listen to west-radio...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_and_Independence

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Józef_Franczak

Poland did have by far more freedom as compared with the Baltics.
Both Poland and the Baltics used to fight commies in the late 50-ties, single partisans longer.
Not even to compare with a proven friend of Stalin and Chrushczev - German Democratic Republic.

Another totally empty statement....*yawns*

Do you have a source? Wiki claims anywhere from ~100-200...



Translation Please?

morgenpost.de/printarchiv/berlin/article1148197/Mauertote_Verwirrung_um_Opferzahlen.html


Most likely even more, many cases are still open.
The 200 are the number most likely only of the inner-Berlin victims. The other numbers is also for victims killed trying to leave over the Baltic sea or everywhere else at this border...

But not all got to the western media at all!

mauermuseum.de/english/frame-index-mauer.html


Erm..."refugees of the republic"?

spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,563992,00.html

What revolution?There was no revolution.These governments collapsed after orders from Moscow.

Well...The "non-revolution" in East Germany could only happen because Gorbatschov explicitely denied the SED any military support as they begged for it...that is proven!

Actually Gorbachev forbid them to use DDR troops as well.

Nope...Gorbatschov said more or less "What you do or don't do is not our concern anymore! It's your country."
Then all descended into tohuwabohu...the GDR own troops could have fired but they didn't.
They just didn't dare without the backing of the soviet troops...and the motivation between the conscripts just wasn't high enough.

The border troops for example got just overwhelmed by the masses and instead to fire at them stepped back and let them through....

In Poland they died trying to free it. As Grzegorz wrote, there was nowhere to escape. Where do you propose Poles could have jumped over the border? DDR?


BBoy, you will chuckle at Poles loosing in 1939. They did. But they didn't give up despite millions of Germans occupying the country. Was it easy for the DDR to fight. Hell, no. Was it easy in Poland? What do you think Polish anti-communist go through? Medals of honor from commies?

Your 900 pale in comparison to thousands of Poles resisting from day one of commie rule in Poland.


Yes, brave Czechs did it, as you wrote above.
Hungarians did it and it was probably the fiercest of them all - a blood bath.


Why should I do your homework? The information is not hard to get.
Check Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.

Where? When? What makes Poles so much more brave and resisting than any other people in the eastern bloc? What made Poles so much "tougher" as you said?

Remember it was YOU starting to downtalk other commie countries.


I don't even know where to start with Poland...but I know about the brave Czechs and Hungarians!


Oh really? Do you have a number, a statistic for me? I mean something else instead of empty phrases....

Did the polish communists ever needed to build a wall to keep the people in and the state alive and functioning? No? I thought so...


Why? The only connection I see is polish troops invading Czechoslovakia to help to kill the uprising of the Prague spring...anything else?

There was this little movement called Solidarity with its lider Lech Wałęsa that you might have heard about... :)

I'm not here to take sides in this "we had it worse than you" argument but to make this conversations more about facts and less about assumptions/speculations:

polish resistance againts communism:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozna%C5%84_1956_protests
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Polish_political_crisis
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_1970_protests
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_1976_protests
August 1980
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/August-Streiks_1980_in_Polen

This of course does not include the forest partisans.

PS: Great thread MG.

Oh I heard about it....:)

Hmmm...sounds like "riots" as Borrka called them on the East German side

And riots they were. Doesn't it fit the definition of resistance?

I would say yes! It's Poles who here won't have any other resisting than them...that's what the whole bruhaha is about! I find it despisable actually...but it's not me who had started that downtalking of other victims of communism!

Start with Gdańsk 1970 than you can read about Kukliński for example.

Brave Czechs you said? I went to Praque in 1981 (between establishing Solidarność and implementing the marshal law) and I spoke to one Czech guy on the train. He appreciated our bravery and asked a lot of details but as soon as the train stopped he gave us a sign not to talk until the train would run again and cover our voices. Yeah, brave Czechs indeed.


Nonsense. Hungarian uprising is very much appreciated. Problem with DDR was that individuals tried to escape but there was no mass movement or desire to beat commies. Although there was individual Poles who tried to escape (through Baltic Sea like those young brothers under the truck or plane hijacking to West Berlin) it was a 10 million strong movement that did the trick.

I dunno. Must be something in the blood.


Matyjasz gave you a list for your research.


Sure.
Read on pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerstwo_Bezpiecze%C5%84stwa_Publicznego later UB.


Don't be silly.
There wasn't enough building material for that. It was badly needed for rebuilding the country after 60% of its infrastructure has been destroyed by the Germans during WW2.


WTF are you talking about. You bounce back between denying other countries had uprisings and using some connections among them (or lack thereof) to prove what? That Germans got beat once by the commies and they stayed put?

You mean " the brave polish race"? Another myth...


I read them, did you? Some riots, how Borrka would call them...nothing more, nothing less!


I'm not, a honest question.
MILLIONS of eastern Germans made their choice clear with their feet. The commies in East Berlin NEEDED the wall to keep going.
But still people kept trying to leave and over 1300 people got killed for that. Not to mention those who were caught and spend the rest of their lives in Gulags...


Well...somehow rocks and stone were still there even after the Soviets plundered the land for reparations...don't tell me Poland didn't even have rocks?


Well...an uncomfortable reminder that not all Poles were as brave and resisting as you would like them to be....


Yeah..and I got visited by a martian last night...seriously!


No mass movement? Millions left the GDR...how would you call that??? That's why the wall was build in the first place!
Don't make me laugh..

Some things are messed up in this thread. Bravery of the people and brutality of each every communist government, these are two different things that hardly can be compared. Those people lived in different political conditions.

Poland was indeed considered as "the happiest barrack of the socialist camp" by many people who lived behind iron curtain. Regime in Poland was softer duo to several reasons.

- strong position of the Catholic Church
- before WWII communist movement was a marginal force unlike in many surrounding states
- Stalin himself as a general experienced defeat of Soviet forces at the gates of Warsaw in 1920. Later claimed that imposing communism in Poland is like putting saddle on cow.

- rich history of military uprisings started by Poles

Soviets knew that foundations are shaky in Poland so they decided run softer policy. Church was not destroyed, no collectivization, it was easier to travel, less terror in general. There is nothing to compare with the Soviet Union, these were two separate. In Soviet Union nobody would scream on the middle of street "f... communism" or something like that. This is not about lack of bravery but simply common sense. In Poland you could easily get away with no punishment, in the Soviet Union these could be your last words. Scale of terror was different on different periods of time. Till Stalin was alive people elsewhere were terrorized the most. One could say that each every leader was less oppressive but still oppressive.

The fact that there was not great military uprising in Poland was a good thing. Realistically such event had no chance to succeed, so reasonable people had different priority. If for example Lithuania organized uprising before 1956 (and perhaps even later ) Stalin would kill half of them and send the rest all over the SU. For a small nation this could be a kiss of death. Fortunately nobody influential over there was that stupid and today they enjoy independence at least till Lisbon Treaty is not ratified by president Klaus. Funnily enough Klaus and Havel often travelled to communist Poland to rest a bit from communist repressions in Czechoslovakia. Czech candidates often secretly becoming priest in Poland, because church was repressed in their homeland.

Those interested in relations between the west and the SU should read book of former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky who had an unique opportunity to study Soviet archives for a while. Title if the book is "Process in Moscow" (Moskiewski Proces), Unfortunately, it is not available in English duo to threats of some American businessmen mentioned in text. I know that there are Polish (check out Allegro) and German translations, probably some other as well. Book mention this attitude mentioned by southern (there was something about Greece as well) of some socialist and communist parties in Europe (often financed partly from Soviet budget).