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Future of Polish-Ukrainian relations [669]
I had a young person (a teenager), ask me some interesting questions recently.
We were watching Ost Bloc military parades, as one does with his brother on a Thursday afternoon. At some point he asked me: what were these Polish/Romanian/GDR/etc soldiers feeling, marching in front of their "puppet" leaders? Did they feel pride, like we did? Did they always know it was an elaborate kabuki theater, and they were essentially attack dogs of the Kremlin?
It made me think, for a second. I told him, that in my opinion these were still "Leaders", with a capital "L". The only person higher in authority than Jaruzelsky, can only be some Brezhnev, but not any other citizen of the almost 300M USSR.
This prompted a second question - did normal citizens then, have a hierarchy of their own amongst themselves? For example, could a Soviet tourist come to Warsaw and act like a complete boor, and annoy all the Poles through his arrogance? Again, I told him that in my opinion, this was a ludicrous concept. If anything, we are seen as slaves, and a people that suffer from a myriad self inhibitions. It's hard to imagine, a Soviet citizen striding around anywhere as a colonial overlord.
So then, we returned to the question of the parades, and if they were authentically uplifting for the people involved. I told him, that it was a good question, and the answer is likely yes. Of course, I also explained that his idea of them as "attack dogs of the Kremlin" was much too simplistic, and that in actual practice they often did refuse to do things or outright rebelled.
