History /
81st Anniversary of Warsaw Uprising [72]
Just like Polish communists after 1990.
Compared with some other countries (Czechoslovakia, DDR, Bulgaria, Romania) the PRL was pretty chill. It didn't feel like that to many Poles but lots of things went on that were unthinkable in those other countries...
the equivalent of Pewex were off limits to citizens in the other countries but Poles were encouraged to use them, there were attempts to maintain relations with the diaspora, the church functioned as a de facto opposition party, talk with people (or people who lived in the cccp) and the differences were very stark.
This leads to the paradox: The easier a time a country had during communism, the harder it will be to figure out who can/should be excised from public life.
In the DDR and Czechoslovakia it was easier to figure out who to prevent from holding office. In Poland... it wasn't so clear.
Also, in Poland (I don't know about other Eastern Bloc countries) there was a large gray area between members of the communist party and those with no connection... people with connections to the party but who didn't belong and a fair number of party members did so merely for work-related purposes...
It's a tough question that will only be resolved by time.... (society changes, they say, one funeral at a time).
