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What was it like in 1989+ in Poland when the Soviet house of cards fell? [237]
Strange thing, Delphi is a very reasonable person to me, and when he is -- imho -- wrong, I do not hesitate to correct him.
Regarding un-falsified publications, I have read enough of them when I was a student and had access to everything published underground at that time. Ossendowski was one of authors I read. To be quite honest, the underground publications also included a lot of gibberish, for example works of Cat-Mackiewicz. One day it was enough when me & friend got a pile of "Protokoły mędrców Syjonu", Me and friend looked at each other, dug up a large hole at my lot and buried that poison. We would not risk going to prison for distributing such crap, believe me.
Also, reading "official" publications such as Joseph Stalin's "O językoznawstwie" (do you know the English title, 1jola?) gave me good understanding of the communist crap.
Antek_Stalich: Indeed, (AFAICR), Poles could access East Germany using their personal ID, at least for many years, and at least the inhabitants of the border zone.
I could be totally wrong on this
*I* could be wrong. I could have mixed that with free access to Czechoslovakia.
Even one question - about the presence of barbed wire on the Polish/Czechoslovak border is impossible to find a clear answer for. I've found some documents which suggest that it existed, even on the top of Sniezka - but nothing definitive.
Not that I could remember that - it depends on what year it might be.
When I was a kid, my Dad took me to the Czechoslovak border and I enjoyed entering to Czechoslovakia, just having fun how I broke the law ;) No barbed wire that I could remember. And absolutely no in 1980's. I only don't remember when the free access was allowed and when it was revoked, but I KNOW such period existed.
There was barbed wire on the Czechoslovak-Austrian borded with "fields of death". I could see it myself in 1974.