wersy
13 Jul 2013
History / A view of Poland from far far away [14]
Well, I don't know whether the original poster will read this thread after all this time, ut one thing made me curious:
I fortunately was ***** enough not to live during the Cold War, but I honestly thought the US/Western propaganda at that time was kind of different, presenting Eastern Europeans as the poor people enslaved by communists, but not exactly "enemies". Was it really that bad? Were Americans supposed to hate Poles, Czechs or Hungarians and consider they their foes?
I know that the communist propaganda did indeed try to make people hate America but it didn't really succeed, all my relatives I asked said they had rather positive or at worse neutral view of the Americans and didn't really thought of them as the enemies. Of course there was some resentment towards the West, but it was of quite different kind - I'll try to give you an example by the way of a poem wrriten by A. Waligórski in 1980s:
"For the Allies"
YET
Sorry, I my not be the best at translating poetry, but I gues I managed to convey the mening. One more fameous poem would be probably "Raport z oblężonego miasta" ("Report from the besiged city") by Z. Herbert, but it is more peoetic and less straightforward. In any case, I hope you see what I mean.
Well, I don't know whether the original poster will read this thread after all this time, ut one thing made me curious:
In the 1980s during the Cold War, I was stationed in Germany in the US army and we were supposed to think of the Eastern Europeans as our enemies
(...)
I believe there is still an amazing amount of residual prejudice in the West toward Eastern Europe
(...)
I believe there is still an amazing amount of residual prejudice in the West toward Eastern Europe
I fortunately was ***** enough not to live during the Cold War, but I honestly thought the US/Western propaganda at that time was kind of different, presenting Eastern Europeans as the poor people enslaved by communists, but not exactly "enemies". Was it really that bad? Were Americans supposed to hate Poles, Czechs or Hungarians and consider they their foes?
I know that the communist propaganda did indeed try to make people hate America but it didn't really succeed, all my relatives I asked said they had rather positive or at worse neutral view of the Americans and didn't really thought of them as the enemies. Of course there was some resentment towards the West, but it was of quite different kind - I'll try to give you an example by the way of a poem wrriten by A. Waligórski in 1980s:
"For the Allies"
YET
Sorry, I my not be the best at translating poetry, but I gues I managed to convey the mening. One more fameous poem would be probably "Raport z oblężonego miasta" ("Report from the besiged city") by Z. Herbert, but it is more peoetic and less straightforward. In any case, I hope you see what I mean.