History /
Life in Poland before the fall of communism [30]
so long as they kept being a good citizen.
a good slave you mean.
What's happening right now in the US in terms of Police violence against its citizens and overall paranoia and spying far surpasses anything that we had in Poland during the later states of communism.
Given the fact that everything was under Soviet heel and people were compliant they didn't have to use all those measures. What you see in the USA is a process of taking freedoms away from people. So i disagree in Poland it has been worse. The USA still got a fighting chance not to go under.
By the age of 15 I traveled all around Poland, enjoyed complete freedom when it came to being able to express myself in ANY way.
Would you be able to publicly say that the government are traitorous Soviet bastards and people shouldn't listen to them, without consequences?
There was no private property, so they had the entire country for themselves.
There were private property, namely farms and land allotments and you couldn't camp everywhere,not in the national parks and like.
School was tough... I remember leaving Poland for the US and realizing that I went from an slightly below average student, to someone who even without the grasp on the language was getting almost all straight As.
Yes, schools had been demanding. Even with the amount of lies and ideological BS, but languages and Science has been really on decent level. Given the fact that only 18% of population has been enjoining higher or uni education there were kind of selection. Of course party people were been able to go on special courses and be given diplomas on an easily track.
Not to mention Fairly good vocational schools.
. Food stamps, food rations, clothing stamps, empty stores.
When? After Solidarity started not before, I think that was done on purpose to subdue population. Well after war it was the same but then most countries in Europe had that system after WWII.
There was an overall sense of community, all neighbors knew each other and helped each other.
Or hated each other guts.
If you weren't involved in anything related to politics you were safe,
if you were subdued slave.
we didn't have Lego's, computers, Transformers or what not,
Do you feel deprived? I don't, that it is commercial shyte anyway and computers without internet are useless anyway. I recall locals with a video games you paid for to play.
after the war it was more like that, your relations with people involved with the right wing or more freedom/nationalistic fighters
Or anybody who has been somebody or patriotic.
If you were a kid it was actually pretty cool.
Sure, you could get shot at, gassed. or beaten up with a rubber baton, they must have stuff end of that baton with something. Unless you mean kid like in pram or a little older.
Some of those were spent in mix camps with kids from other Eastern block countries
Cool you could mix up with Merkel. I recall West-German bunch - some lefties lead by a dude with a bushy Marxist beard, I'm sorry I do not recall his name, bunch of nasty fekkers they were, East-German kids were for the most part OK. They were not allowed to display crosses and such, they were shared shytliess if they noticed something like that on Polish kids.
When you came to think of it it wasn't that much different that PC.
