What was it like in 1989+ in Poland when the Soviet house of cards fell?

Great stuff Antek! This is exactly what I want to know. Keep the recollections coming. btw your scale story was deep.

So you Havok think that to be sorry for some nation and wish them better fortune means laughing at them? What a pathetic little man...

(Not because I had Camels. Because she had a single cigarette packed in tissue...)

dude, you would have tricked me if i wasn't brought up Polish but my father is the same. Stop pretending and work on changing yourself. It's gonna be hard i tell ya.

No where in the story is he laughing at the Russians. He was feeling grateful for how much things had changed in Poland due to the end of Communism. Big difference. And whatever he has posted has been to show that while poor and rich are relative, things are much, much better than before. He is an optimist and attempting to encourage his nation to look on the bright side, to use the new found tools which were not available in Commie times.

I also heard from another musician in Poland who is severely disabled and in a wheelchair. His basic needs were met in Commie times, but now due to more freedoms, he found he could learn the guitar, play and sing, write stories. Now he is self-supporting about about to marry. A dream he never thought would happen.

wall of text, 0 meaning. I was a kid during commie times in Poland. Please don't try to teach me about what i haven't forgot yet. optimist trying to encourage LMAO, finish your joint and go to bed soft.

Well, I feel sorry for you. I really do. I never claimed to understand what it was like growing up in Poland. But, I can recognize a sincere person.

Me too!

Havok, you're insulting the nicest person on this forum. If anyone deserves it, then it's definitely not her.

The only sincere thing about Antek is his delusion but i think there is a hope because he has artistic mind. Sorry guys sometimes i wish i could be like you and be able to look at things through my fingers.

delusion. what delusion?

I only thing I regret is English is not my first language, so I cannot really convey what I think. I'll try:
-- Like father, like son (niedaleko pada jabłko od jabloni)
-- Don't measure another's corn with your own bushel (Nie mierz innych własną miarką)

My feeling is Havok's father was one of those standing in the butcher-shop queue on some cold December 1981 daybreak and scaring off young student freedom activists... Figuratively, of course.

we knew you weren't speaking literally :)

Which reminds me of another story!

When I and my pals were young punks in 1979, we used to be walking streets up & down to match the jokes we could read in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker brought by my best friend from his uncle in Sweden. The jokes read about punks aimlessly walking up & down the street because "when you sit, your hair starts growing, and we will never like to be like hippie" ;-) On some of such walks, a policeman stopped our little group, demanded papers. Then, seeing young educated people he asked my best friend a strange question:

-- Are you a... wooer... or what? (the actual word was "absztyfikant", rarely used, bookish word)
My friend answered:
-- Depending on who I'm wooing!
-- Aaaah, policeman answered

The poor village policeman missed his unique chance to get the real meaning of that hard word "absztyfikant". Now when I think of Havok and his horizons, he reminds me that policeman ;-)

(Rybnik, I said "figuratively" just anticipating Havok would tell me his father never was in Warsaw in December 1981! ;-))))

In '79 I was finishing my first year in Poland (Kraków) :)

I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to say but if i read you right...

all I'm saying It's not too late to change bro.

My father is a male chauvinist, he would put women down and teat them like a shitpaper , like most Polish males did back than in Poland. He would never stand in line because he believed it was women's job to buy food and argue for the right price.

I must have fallen 60 miles off my tree because i can't really find any similarities between me and father now. One thing i've learned is that a woman can be a fearsome allay for the good or the worst in this ****** up world and she will never betray you if you treat her right.

Your measuring stick saying doesn't make much sense in the current reality. You simply have to be better than others if you want to succeed whatever the stick is they measure you with.

ok, let me explain the delusion about the ham & cigarettes story
(btw, the reason for the exact weight measurement was not a threat of imprisonment or Russian mentality but the fact that ham was a very precious commodity, 10 grams over and the store is losing money, 10 grams under and the client starts arguing...)

So Antek went to Russia and felt sorry for the Russians for not having access to quality clothing and cigarettes, grateful for his own situation, and trying to encourage them. Well, this is basically how people from richer countries feel about going to Poland now - grateful for the fact they don't have to live there, but sympathetic for the situation of the Polish people. But while he was very happy to play the role of the "rich guy from the West," he gets indignant, and petty, and resents being given advice himself. I would call it hypocritical if he was aware of it, but he's not, so I call it delusional.

Thanks GW.....you know I am a powder puff, but not an airhead. :-)

No offense taken though, we all have our opinions.

You don't get his 'picture'! Who's really delusional here?

Do you realise what is the title of this whole post?
I don't know Antek but how he saw some things in changing post communist Poland is interesting and what's your problem? Have you got any experiences you want to tell us about, if not, why bother.


What about:
- he went to Russia and just realised, how very different the little things in Poland became after the end of communism. He realised it when he saw the unchanged Russian's way of living (including small things like cigaretts without packet, no quality clothings).


Really! How dumb one can be.

Antek was from a poor Poland, which was changing drastically when freed from communistic opressors and thievs called Russians. These 'friends' as they called themselves, were stealing from Poland for the past 44years, when we look at all the facts from the year 1989.

That's why Antek was proud of his new and free country while visiting Russia and looking at things. Get it?

Today's the anniversary of the June 4 elections back in 1989. Does anyone remember the Gary Cooper sheriff posters? I just saw them on TVP.

GrzegorzK
What a BULLSHIT!!

I think that everyone remember that one. I remember thinking - great poster, I haven't actually noticed that it was Gary Cooper at the time, in a way it was like impersonation of the sheriff in the wild west, bringing hope to sort out all the bad guys.

Yeah, shot the bastards, a peaceful approach hasn't worked for the solidarity that well in 1981 (which I hardly remembered), now guys size the moment and finish them off - well I was a naive kid then, my father said as early as in 1990 "that is all sham, the same people are everywhere - they are great democrats now, phew!". I did not believed him at the time - little that I knew.

Well, I know now that it a sham, but then I was all exited and old enough to know that I'm witnessing a historical moment.

Hope that is a good enough for you rybnik.

It's all good Iron. Thanks. I'm after everybody's recollections from that time :)

Had shooting down Ceaucescu helped Romania reach any economic success, comparable in any way with the Polish success?
Unless you want to "shoot the bastards" and steal their properly like Stalin and his henchmen did.

By the way, Iron, 40 students of Technical University of Wrocław paid PLN100 each from their own pocket last month to cover the missing financing for the technical training. For your information, this is equivalent to 10 lunches for each student or 40 beers per student. Because they want to learn. Tomorrow, I will take pictures of the parking lots of Wrocław Saturday/Sunday students too.

Get some work. Or maybe enhance your education. Or maybe apply for a post of an executioner if killing makes you horny.

Traitors should not have property, property stolen by commies should go back to rightful owners (like Zamoyski for example)and the rest should had been taken care of - wisely!


Do not take that tone with me mister, because I can throw insinuations, personal jabs and insults faster that you can type, ask anybody who is longer on PF than you.

Trust me you don't want that!

Ironside for president !!! I mean it. I hope you mean all properties, also the ones stolen right after the WWII too.

It's okay, sometimes we wish that we could look at life through the eyes of a toilet granny, too.

I had a tree full of them.

Czeresnie (sweet cherries) and Wisnie (sour cherries)


Always plenty of superb quality cherries in Poland during commie times. But only in the growing season.


Cherries grow great in Poland. Many varieties. And Polish climate is not cold but moderate.

"Nobody except the People should have any property! Traitors of the People cause shall be deprived of their property and eliminated. Property stolen by bourgeois and rich farmers shall go back to the rightful owners (the People) and the rest should be taken care of by the wise representation of the People - the Bolshevik Party!"

Ironside, that is not a personal jab anymore. You are unaware you repeat the most banal Communist phrases. Exactly your way of thinking was the base for all atrocities of Communism, from Lenin to Stalin to Kim Ir Sen (Kim Il Song) to Pol-Pot. And only 22 years after the fall of communism you are unable to see it!

Yes, the property was greatly returned to former owners in Romania in recent years. You know Ironside what happened? Those guys -- getting the wealth back into their hands -- have bought all possible luxuries to them and sold or lost their properties in the effect... This is true life. Not only it is this the fact widely known but I also know one of such guys personally. He got his apartment house back in Bucharest 1 (the best location). He and his son stopped working and the son started buying luxuries (not maintaining the house at the same time because why should they? That would only cost money) and they were only sucking rent money from tenants. What would young Zamoyskis of your example do? They could not handle their restored properties. They would simply sell it to the highest bidder...


This reminds the words on "The sweet cream being drunk with lips of the wise representatives of the Working Class - The Communist Party".

"All pigs are equal but some are more equal than the others" wrote George Orwell in his "Animal's Farm". I really recommend that you Ironside read a lot on communism. You might start finding similarities between your and commie thinking. If not, we could have Peep Tribunals and Revolutionary Guard Corps soon. Because who will decide who the "traitors" are? The Peeps by means of their Enlightened Representatives... I have a feeling you would be a good NKVD worker, full of moral strength and idealism...

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The talk on sweet and sour cherries brought memories of innocent childhood back to me. Wawrzyszew in Warsaw (now a quarter of blocks of flats in Bielany) was a farming and gardening neigbourhood just a stone throw away of the city, the latter really starting behind today's Aleja Władysława Reymonta. The neighbours lived together since early 1920's when they bought the land on bank loans during the partition of large land properties (few know today that Chomiczówka and Wawrzyszew in Warsaw were owned by the Chomicz family). My parents had a nice piece of land. Gardening was the favourite pastime of my Dad. We had a large sweet cherry tree, and alley full of sour cherry trees on both sides, strawberries, gooseberry, redcurrant, green peas and beans, and even a field of rye! Cucumber and tomatoes! Potatos! My uncle directly neighbouring us was a professional gardener, growing flowers on sale, and he even had a horse. During the harvest time all Wawrzyszew neigbours were joining to help one another. Because of that, my larger family was partly independent of the food deficiencies in the market, and I can only describe my childhood as very happy one. To end up in 1972, when the neigbourhood was overtaken by the state to build a living quarter... And then we became urban inhabitants.

Ah, there even was a commie radio-jamming station in Wawrzyszew, to jam broadcast of Free Europe and Voice of America broadcast there in Wawrzyszew ;-)