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Why communism failed in Poland? [275]
The Iron curtain kept us apart, unfortunately.
True. But there was no spite towards anybody because commies proclaimed "we're all brothers" and to some extent that worked. I can't say I didn't like it.
The quality of food everywhere was better.
They told us GM foods would be better, now they tell us organic is better. when i was a kid there was no organic foods or so much that there was no concern about anything else.
I agree here.
I am dealing with an old guy today here in Lithuania, he does not work, only for bribes.
The corruption in this country is underestimated, bribes are a way of life.
And?.. I mean I don't quite understand what does nowaydays Lithuania have to do with the USSR? In fact even times of the USSR Baltic States didn't look as a part of it.
One of the big differences between communism and other isms seems to be freedom of speech, tens of thousands of Lithuanians were sent to work in Siberia, as young as 15 years old (I heard).
We can't seriously speak about the freedom of speech at present either. We've probably can speak out more things without worrying of being imprisoned or killed but that's it. As for the freedom of speech in the USSR... I've got the book El otoño del patriarca (Patriarch's autumn) by G.G. Markes published in middle 70s in the USSR.
Secondly I was talking only about 70-80ss when there were no "sendings to Siberia" or so. The earlier years are totally different story.
Earn money?, what use was money, if there was nothing in the shops?.
Of course now we've got far bigger alternative of what to buy but that's surely wrong to state that there were nothing in shops. I could say more about goods and industry of those years but I don't want to look like commy booster. I just want everybody to be as fair as possible towards anything that happened in the past.
I do find here in Lithuanian, that there was a devolution, people who could think for themselves or had leadership qualities were killed.
If you blindly followed, you lived, thankfully this not hereditary and there is a few generations gap here between people over 40 and under 40 years of age, it will take time.
Yes this is the problem. Many people here realize that the brains especially on the early stages of "communism building" were simply extincted (physically).
I'm not sure if I have any specific rate before or after which I can or cannot work with people. Sometimes I may simply call it "generation gap" sometimes it has something to do with their "old school". But I may also tell you I had similar problem with people in the US who still lived in the times of "cold war". Eventually I don't think it's any related to particular regime; it inheres in all regimes.
There're lots of features in our mentality I wish we (Russians) didn't have. Perhaps some of those are related to our commy bygones but I don't dare state if that finally did us good or bad. Who knows... maybe if there were no commies we (you, poles, me) would all live in one big Deutschland.
