Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]

I've spent much time over the past few days, thinking about how to raise birth rates in Poland. I'm happy to announce that I am not coming back empty handed. I have developed several potential solutions:

1) Create a secret government agency tasked with poking holes in all condoms imported into Poland. Just small, millimeter-sized holes that would not raise suspicions of the population.

2) Provide people fake abortions. After 10-15 mins of poking around "down below", on generous helping of anesthesia, announce to the patient that the "job is done".

3) Pass legislation making masturbation illegal under penalty of confiscation of assets.

4) Men and women, above age 40 and still childless, automatically sentenced to 10 years hard labor of building kindergartens and playgrounds.

5) Reward productive members of society with once annual trip to Spain or Turkey (viagra included), paid for with money confiscated from masturbators.

I have many more potential solutions, but this should be good to get the discussion going.

Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]

@Alien

You are German, no? Are Germans, Austrians, and Swiss the same people? How do you think an Austrian would react if you told him he is a "lost Bavarian"? What would a Zurich resident reply, if you told him he's just a southern Swabian? Take that sentiment, distill it, multiply it by 10x and you will have an accurate understanding of how close Britain and America are.

History / Polish mathematicians who solved the Enigma machine [86]


Pity, however, that Chuchill judged it not necessary to share the work of Bletchley Park with his ally, Russia. Another example of the reprehensible behaviour of perfidious Albion.

Thankfully men of conscience, like John Cairncross, ensured that we received the information in a timely manner. Later, it was revealed that some information was on Stalin's desk sooner even that it had reached the War Office.

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]


Nasty word.


Don't really see this anywhere else in the world, other than America. A vulgar quality they unfortunately have. In principle I agree, if you have to say how much you earn, or are actually able to say how much money you have at moment - the likelihood is that your successes thus far have been rather modest in the grand scale of things.

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]


This is actually not true, at least regarding the top. As someone who studied early modern demographics, I can confirm. In the past, very wealthy people tended to have more children than others on average. In the present, the situation is reversed.

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]


Economic classes, I would argue yes - Jon. Is man's worth calculated in dollars and cents - of course not. Is material success a reflection on one's intelligence - absolutely not. As a Russian, you don't have to explain to me the nuances in the differences of terminology, and what it means to be an Eastern European интеллигент. Most of my cousins back home, who work for $1,500 a month, would blow the socks off any guy I work with in the States who calmly collects $200K a year. Life is not fair, and money is not a good measuring stick.

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]

@GefreiterKania

Don't worry, I will do it soon, and more than just two :)

I always told myself I need enough money. Now when I have enough money, I tell myself I have no time. But as my deceased grandmother always said - it actually doesn't take much time at all.


I don't like your fatalism, hopeful fatalism, but still fatalism. Perhaps you need a bit of an American, a bit of a Russian in you. Stop thinking like a Chinese. We live once, and we have to take this life by the throat. There is enough time and opportunity in the world to make GefreiterKania able to support 100 kids without breaking the bank. Don't limit yourself.

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]


Poland really is a sh!t country, if a bright guy like you, with perfect English and an electrical engineering degree, is lower middle class.

Alternatively... it's your kids that are to blame ;)))

I'm same age as you, as we established, and I'm still in proud solitude. Well, if you take my girlfriend out of the equation. In my case, I don't have much clever excuses - what I tell myself is I had no time.

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]


I'm trying to stay below Strelecz35's number of warnings. I seem to collect them like Zelensky collects presidents as friends.


That's the bottom line. It really is not very exceptional, just a country with a typical post-industrial fertility rate (France is probably the only big exception, but it's also playing catch-up).

There were a few waves of demographic change in the last two-three hundred years. In pre-industrial agricultural societies it made economic sense to have as many children as possible. However, mortality rates were also extremely high, and as a result population growth was stagnant or modest. Then, with the first improvements in public sanitation and healthcare that arrived around the same time as the Industrial Revolution, life expectancy exploded and child mortality declined, but birth rates remained the same as before. The result was a huge explosion in population. Life had changed, but people kept breeding like it had not. This is what is happening in Africa currently.

Several factors worked to correct this situation. The mechanization of agriculture meant less hands were needed for work. Public education regarding contraception was also important. Urbanization, however, was probably the primary driver. Each successive generation that was born and lived in a city would have lower and lower fertility rates. In cities, kids went from being a productive asset, to a net drain on capital. Because they needed to go to kindergarten, school, uni - meant that their labor was no longer available, and instead you had to invest in them over decades. This made urban families change their calculus and lower the number of children to 1-2, since a larger family meant poorer outcomes in both education and career for the children.

The present day problem is the astronomic cost of raising a kid, that makes people not want to have kids at all. I think this explains, to a certain extent, the huge fall in fertility after 1991 in most Eastern Bloc countries. The state used to offer those services for free, but now they became a serious financial burden on the parent.

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]


Not to turn a demographic thread into a military one - but I highly doubt this. Poland's military would rapidly collapse, and the war would be over quickly. In 1945 the USSR still had a monstrously large army, which had just gone from the Ukraine to Germany in under a year. The mortality rate in the GULAG was microscopically small compared to a Nazi death camp. The purges of the 1930s were already behind us. So I have a hard time imagining a scenario where Poland would lose another 6 million people in a struggle with the USSR. It would still lose hundreds of thousands, unnecessarily - this I don't debate.

Stick to the topic of the thread please

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]

Actually, correction to above point - Poland did not permanently lose all 7.8M people to the USSR. A large part (not sure exactly how many) were transferred from now-Soviet territory to the lands annexed from Germany and added to Poland, following the deportation of Germans (-750K German pop as seen in above chart). So as the Germans moved out, Poles from the Kresy came back in.

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]

@GefreiterKania

I agree. If Britain and America didn't have the appetite to start an immediate hot war with the USSR, it would certainly be stupid for Poland to ride out into the vanguard. I can't believe there are people that would argue for this as a sensible thing to do.

In other news, I found another wiki article, which is specific to Historical Demographics of Poland. Link:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Poland

I like this article quite a lot. Would recommend quickly skimming through it.

An example of the cool tables inside, is one I'm attaching below. Just this one chart contains the answer to the people that say USSR=THIRD REICH. Of course, 150K dead Poles is nothing to be proud of, as a Russian, but at least I can tell myself it was 38X less than the amount the Germans killed. On the other hand, you can also see from this chart that Poland lost more people to the USSR through cession of territories than it did to the Nazis through deaths. This is the rest of the missing third (the Jews being the other part). Mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians that became Soviet citizens. A silver lining from this data also, is that the population of ethnic Poles has still almost doubled between 1931 and 2022, from 20M to 38M.

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Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]

@GefreiterKania

It's impossible to wrap one's mind around that number. My brain just can't compute what it means to lose a third over such a short period of time.

From that same wiki article, something else surprised me. It's not specific to Poland, but just something wonderful about the guiding hand of nature, or God, in demographics. Quote:

Females were in the majority in the country. In 1931, there were 105.6 women for 100 men. In 1946, the difference grew to 118.5/100, but in subsequent years, number of males grew, and in 1960, the ratio was 106.7/100.

How the heck does that happen? How do wombs all around Poland synchronize and say to each other - "Ok, now for a bit we only make boys!"? Nature truly is amazing.

Another paragraph that surprised me:

"Before World War II, the Polish lands were noted for the variety of their ethnic communities. Following the Polish-Soviet War, a large part of its population belonged to national minorities. The census of that year allocates 30.8% of the population in the minority."

Out of a population of 31M in 1931, only 20M or so were Poles. Contrast that to post-war Poland which is remarkable for its homogeneity. That's a radical change. Usually I think people think of this change as a result of the Holocaust, but these numbers show that were was clearly a lot of other things going on too.

Life / Poland's birthrate on the decline [480]

Just skimmed through the wiki article for "Demographics of Poland". It's really shocking to see how Poland has an only slightly higher population than in 1939. You sort of understand it intuitively, but to see it on a chart still produces a shock.

Looking at the first chart - I don't think it would be a stretch to say that if Poland had no losses in WW2 period, it would be comparable to France or Britain in population today. That would be a different Europe, and maybe a different world. Kinda makes one sad.

I was struggling to think of a country that's similar in its demographic history (excluding the Baltic states, where the driver is migration). I thought Cambodia, or Belarus might come close (Khmer Rouge and WW2 respectively), but after checking I was surprised to see Poland is actually still comparatively worse. The only country I can find which had something similar, or actually worse, is Ireland. Ireland has a population nearly 25% smaller than it did 150 years ago - which is simply spectacular. That Potato Famine really did a number on them.

Polish and Irish demographic history (1st POL, 2nd IRL):

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Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]


For the feeling to be mutual, you would do well to actually post original content (even learning about ballet shoes was interesting), and spend less time engaging with the local gremlins.

As Novichok said - I don't give a sh!t who you are, or whether you are what you purport to be - as long as you write something I haven't thought about.

As a supposed 16 year old ballerina from Piter, you could do better in sharing your unique perspectives.

Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]

@RussianAntiPutin

Hahahahaha! To grade that as Russian, would be a mistake. He wrote broken English using Cyrillic alphabet. Why, god knows.

UK, Ireland / Is it good for Poland as Sinn Fein will win today in Northen Ireland [282]


I was speaking figuratively, in response to your very dismissive take on Russia's history and unity. I'm well aware of Ireland's relatively high state of development in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire. You were lucky that the English took on the brunt of the Saxons and Danes, and your little island became somewhat of a safe haven.

UK, Ireland / Is it good for Poland as Sinn Fein will win today in Northen Ireland [282]


That was a reannexation. As mentioned above, the first time Crimea came under Russian control was in the 900s, when it was won in war from the Byzantines, who inherited it from the Roman Empire. By the 1000s it was firmly in Russian control, and marriage links were established with the Byzantine emperors to secure the peace. It was lost during the 1300s to Mongol invasion. Later, when the Mongol Empire collapsed, it became the possession of one of its successor states - The Golden Horde. Through the weakness of the Horde, Genoese and Venetian merchants established a large number of trade posts and controlled substantial land there during this time. When the Golden Horde itself collapsed in the 1440s, Crimea became the center of the state of the Crimean Tatars, vassals of the Ottoman Turks. Then, finally, in the 1700s we took it back from them.

During the 450 years or so that the mongols and their Crimean descendants controlled Crimea, they made it into one of the world's largest slave trade centers. Tens of thousands of Slavs were kidnapped and sold into slavery through the ports of Crimea annually. The Tatars made constant devastating raids into Russian and Commonwealth territory, that hampered development in the affected regions for centuries. Do you think they deserve to have the Crimea returned to them?

Bottom line: Russia controlled Crimea when Gaelic chieftains we're still running around in sheepskins, living in holes in the ground.

UK, Ireland / Is it good for Poland as Sinn Fein will win today in Northen Ireland [282]

@Atch

I should not be telling you about the unified legal codex of ancient Rus, the bonds of language, Orthodoxy, and dynastic marriage in an Irish thread... Neither that, three centuries before Ireland was conquered by England, Russian princes had already taken the land of Crimea from the Byzantine Emperors. Not even that, in 988 AD St. Vladimir was baptized in Chersonesus, signifying the beginning of the christianiziation of Rus. Truly - I suspect if I go on, Vincent will then boot me again for some days. Suffice it to say, Russians can just as easily employ the same arguments you are using now.

Regarding Ireland being some ethnic, and religious monolith - you need to get back to your history books. Yes, being an insignificant island in the middle of nowhere did lead to relatively fewer waves of migration, but not zero.

UK, Ireland / Is it good for Poland as Sinn Fein will win today in Northen Ireland [282]


It amuses me that Atch is the same person that wanted to ban all Russian-supporters from this forum and even started a whole thread about it. Now it emerges, that Atch is a bit of an irredentist herself. The dirty complaining about the unwashed. As you said - if Ireland lost a part of its land 100 years ago, then Poland only lost it 77 years ago. In Russia's case, it lost its key territories just 31 years ago.

Now this little slogan of yours... One island. One people. One state. Hehehehe.

Sounds a little like: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer - no?

Food / Poland-Tea or coffee land? [156]


There is proof, then, for our commonality. Each Pole and each Russian carries within himself a blueprint of the original hard drinking Slav.

Food / Poland-Tea or coffee land? [156]

Whaaaaaaat? I thought only I had this figured out.

Darkest of black teas, judicious use of lemon - two cups of - back to work.

Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]


Three possible answers. First - Kiev, Second - Novgorod. Third - all the areas in between.

Kiev is called the Mother of All Russian Cities. It's the historical center of gravity for the ancient state of Rus.

On the other hand you could argue that Novgorod is where it all started, because that is from where Oleg the Seer planned and executed his takeover of Kiev, which was the beginning of the creation of the Russian state.

Finally, both Kiev and Novgorod were in effect run by Vikings (Askold and Dir in Kiev, and Oleg, relative of Rurik in Novgorod). They were invited there to rule by the local population. So in this way you could argue that the origin territory is neither place, but everything in between these two points.

Unlike Ukrainians, Russians can trace the history of their leadership all the way back to Rurik. That is, there is an unbroken line of Novgorodian-Kievan-Vladimiran-Muscovite-Russian-Imperial-Soviet-RF leaders that you can trace from the 800s to the 21st century. When Ukrainians try to explain how it's actually them that are the custodians of Rus history, this is where things begin to break down for them. Every single one of their legendary leaders turns out to be a historic Russian statesman that considered himself Russian and never applied the word "Ukrainian" to himself.

At this point, many Ukrainians attempt to flip the script and say that they are the true Russians, and we are a mongrel finno-ugric race. Is this what you mean? That Ukrainians are the true Russians?

Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]


Eggxactly.

I apologize.

But really, it is annoying. They see you getting dumped on constantly, or even do it themselves and extract no small amount of pleasure from it. You humor them, expecting reciprocity. They laugh, and they laugh and laugh. Then you make one comment - it's: "Goddamit I knew that every Russian is a chauvinist aggressor!"

Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]

@jon357

No comments on my racial theory of humor?

Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]


Yes, but who cares what the lumpenproletariat thinks? They don't pay taxes, rarely vote, and most importantly rarely travel outside of their zip code which limits embarrassment with outsiders.

They believe stranger things than Poland running death camps, and it is their god given right.

Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]

@Novichok

If a Russian was to react every time to any perceived slight, we would have no time to do anything else. At least Poles are just "Dumb Pollacks". We replaced the Nazi's wholesale as America's bad guys, pretty much since 1945. Also, we're alcoholics, hookers, slaves, orcs, mongols, etc. Then, there is the beloved argument of Cojest and Pawian - Russians don't even exist!

We just don't care anymore, and take it in stride - trying to make the most of it.

Same situation for more or less all the other countries with nice humor listed.

Poles invite even more ridicule through their constant outrage.

Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]

@pawian

Most people with a non-idiot's understanding of history, know that these camps were merely located in Poland and hence Polish only through geography. This is in contrast to an Austrian (Mauthausen) or German camp (Dachau).

Off-Topic / Why do people here fight so much? [128]

@RussianAntiPutin

It has been clear to me for some time, that an ethnicity's propensity to poke fun at itself, is inversely proportional to the degree of success they achieved in history.

This is why Russians, Americans, Jews, Brits (I have to admit) - have well developed rubrics of humor which are dedicated to making fun of themselves.

Now, on the other hand - you have countries which are very sensitive to any implication that they are a joke. Poland is the number one example in the world - it will sue you for implying in a newspaper article that the death camps in Poland were Polish, or it will write long letters to Hollywood complaining about insulting representations of Polish culture.

Another country that takes itself incredibly seriously is Ukraine. They'll fight you over authors, composers, military leaders, inventors, etc. A word said sideways about their shallow culture and funny language, and they will launch into monologue about Great Russian chauvinism and reach for all the family jewels.

A third example, of a very unhumorous people - are Belgians. To some extent, it's an understandable defense mechanism against constant French ribbing, but it does make them less than satisfactory drinking companions.

Off-Topic / Best posters [886]

@jon357

Sort of odd for me to think of Vonnegut as an sci-fi writer, but I suppose it applies to some works - Galapagos specifically. But Slaughterhouse Five, for example, was autobiographical. I think you will really enjoy his stuff, based on what I know of you. Funniest man to write in the 20th century, imho, and I even read Jaroslaw Gasek and Mikhail Zoschenko.