Will Poland help defend Greenland against US Imperialism

Nonetheless, a typically misogynistic remark.
There's nothing wrong with my Polish that twenty or so years in Poland couldn't cure.

I grew up with German, not Polish.

Sorry for responding to a post that's days old... but this is not true.

Boris Yeltsin, and the idiots around him, organized the "independence" (from what?) of Russia - in part due to a mistaken belief that Russia was pulling on its shoulders the weight of the other republics and other socialist "brothers" around the world.

If you look at trade balances, and investment flows - the Soviet Union was a massive loser from its "empire".

We fed Cuba and half of Africa, and supplied all of Eastern Europe with dirt cheap fuel.

We weren't capable of making anything ourselves (that wasn't a tank or a rocket), so we had to buy everything from our "brothers". Polish furniture, German lederhosen, Czech radiosets, and so on and so forth.

-//-

Did we rape your oil fields? Leave your coal seams barren? Export all your forests? Settle millions of Russians in Prague and Warsaw and Sofia - while sending the former inhabitants to live in the fields?

-//-

The Soviet Union and its global empire were a failure not because we were "parasitic" and America was "symbiotic", but because the economic model we were pursuing was f*cking retarded.

Everybody that switched away from that model (China, Vietnam, and even us) - have since posted growth results that dwarf current Western growth - albeit this has come from a very low base...

But it shows that what was stopping us was a socialist structuring of the economy and fiscal policy.

But that was what the Sovietunion and the Eastern Bloc was all about, wasn't it? "The liberation of mankind2 under the bright red flag of socialism....wasn't it?

Without the alibi of "good people fighting for all was is good in this world", It would had been like any other imperial (and often enough foreign forced) dictatorship....I wonder if the "brothers" had then stood longer side by side....

Terrible times, I hope they won't happen again.

Maybe not; it was a more complex issue, and my take was simplified. Regarding the model of the economy and the assertion that communism doesn't work-maybe that's true. I think a more important factor in its failure was that the system was built on lies and hypocrisy. Even if it was supposed to be communism, it still retained features of your specific civilization, which doesn't encourage cooperation but coercion. It doesn't promote tolerance but dominance, and it doesn't allow for autonomy but embraces not just centralization but one supreme leader who is the law. While this is somewhat of a simplification as well, it is the best I can do in a short post.

man, my mom personally has seen freshly made steel grids in a steel mill near Opole that had letters on them saying "Sdiełano w SSSR" in cyryllic - I don't count all that coal you "imported" from Poland during communism

Absolutely true.

The October Revolution happened in the totally wrong place - in backwards Russia, instead of industrialized England or Germany.

The absence of a large industrial working class, meant that everything had to be stolen from the conservative and religious peasantry - and through selling of the national jewels - in order to industrialize.

The context in which the experiment was born - end of WWI/Russian Civil War - also left a permanent imprint on how the system was managed.

And obviously - we left an unmistakeable "Russian imprint" on the way we went about things. Swiss and Italian communists would have probably done things differently...


That is the East - not just Russia.

The East is ancient... and cruel. The East doesn't have any illusions about the nature of power.

Even in democratic Japan and enlightened Singapore - it's the same ruling party for 60+ years.

Not sure what your point was?

That the Soviet Union made you buy expensive heavy industrial machinery that you could have produced yourself?

That we needed your coal - while controlling the Donbas - the richest coal region in the world? Also we had the Kuzbas - a similarly gigantic coal mining area, though slightly less rich.

-//-

Of the few things Russians are good at - making steel is one of them. Metallurgy in general.

I bet that piece of machinery is still at that plant (if it hasn't shut down), and is still doing its job.

Besides, it wasn't like an army of Soviet bankers descended on Warsaw and saddled you with unbearable debt for acquiring this machinery. We built it - you sent us some cosmetics and furniture in return - and the balance was closed.

Western style welfare states like 1960s-70s Scandinavia or West Germany were far closer to what Marx had in mind than anything that happened East of the Oder or in China or anywhere else that claimed to be working toward communism.

And incremental social evolution was/is obviously a far more functional and better road to societal change than revolutions (which are mostly loser games as they usually end up with violent psychopaths in charge of them).

Even post WWII cccp was slowly evolving away from the worst Stalinist style repressions and growing economically until the late 1960s or early 1970s (which seem to have been its material peak) then the brezhnev doctrine of trying to keep up with the Jones (that is the US) in military spending and prevent any client state from detaching itself began dragging things down in ever faster ways.

Correct.


Wow - I find myself agreeing with Maf once again!


All the low hanging fruits on the race to modernization had been had.

The remaining work demanded heavy lifting - and we were not ready for it.

Not in research, not in infrastructure investment, not in development of human capital.


Constant Russian desire to «бросить пыль в глаза», or more banal «понты».

We entered a dick measuring contest with the wrong people.

I am not an economist, so just a little bit of a simple engineer's look at the issue...

Poland was ravaged during WW2, with 12 million people lost (including 6 million dead), most cities destroyed (with Warsaw completely razed to the ground) and pretty much anything of value stolen - someone calculated that if all wagons with what Germans looted from Poland were put in one line, the locomotive would be in Berlin and the last wagon in Warszawa Zachodnia station. Germans still haven't returned most of the stolen works of art. Add to this ruined industry and two of our four major cities (Wilno and Lwów) taken away from us.

This is where we started in 1945 - appallingly poor, culturally uprooted (out of our 4 major cities only Cracow more or less survived - Warsaw was nonexistent) and with 23 million people out of pre-war 35.

In 1989, at the end of the horrible communist era under "parasitic" Soviet Union, we had almost 40 million citizens and very decent industry (you can laugh but we were still making excellent ships and helicopters, decent cars, electronics and weapons, and in general we had very good metallurgy, machine building and chemical industry). Besides, we were pretty much a self-sufficient country: our farming could feed 150 million people, we took care of our own household goods, textiles and clothing, as well as food processing. As Bobko mentioned, all this industry was fueled by dirt cheap fuel from the Soviet Union.

Could we achieve similar results if we ended up in the western camp in 1945 (probably still without our Kresy but also without the regained Piast territories)? I shall allow myself the impudence od seriosuly doubting it.

What most of us cannot admit is that Joseph Stalin, willingly or not, rendered Poland a huge service. Regaining anything in the West was one-in-a-thousand-years chance, and in the East we lost lands with historical ties to Poland but with East Slavic and Baltic majorities. We emerged ethnically and culturally united, in a better and more defensible borders and with an ally (yes, ally) who - through their political and economic system imposed on us - managed to lift millions out of poverty, practically liquidated illiteracy, and transformed a country f*cked up beyond any recognition in WW2 into an industrial powerhouse, with enough potential that allowed us to develop into a modern state we are today.

Just my two cents.

Also - tremendously improved life expectancy through universal healthcare.

Gave Polish science an infusion worth billions of dollars - involving them in the most important research happening, including the exploration of outer space.

-//--

Look - I know it was a "prison of peoples"...

But here I am - super happy, and still not sure. You have here Torq and his family.

Even Ironside - he never said a bad thing, instead asked me to remind him about a pear sauce MRI he received once on army training.

P.S. - I think a key fact is that "Russia does not know how to exploit occupied territories". THIS IS A FUCKIN FACT. If it were Germans or others, they would have extracted a pound of flesh from the Poles. We never managed

All true.


How could we forget Mirosław Hermaszewski! :)


They said the same about Austro-Hungary but I'm still not sure either. Eh... history is complicated, and if someone tries to give simple answers and spread hate, it's the best indication of said person being a raging retard.


Don't worry. We have memories of elephants - we remember bad things about Russia, but the good ones too.

To be honest - the German plan for Poland's exploitation always sounded retarded to me.

In general - the Germans are autists who don't know what they want - but that was an especial example.

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"We'll starve them all, and the survivors we will force to emigrate beyond the Urals!"

Retards. Doing a disservice to our BB and Tacitus here.

They needed manpower. They needed technical talent. They needed administrators.

They decided to throw it all away, and "control it themselves as Lebensraum".

It all ended very sadly, with a certain someone shooting himself in the head in a bunker...

... and that's putting it very mildly.

Pomerania and Greater Poland - the lands of former Prussian partition - were populated with Poles who were practically Catholic Germans whose names ended in -ski, and in racial terms (eye and hair colour, tone of skin) practically indistinguishable from the Germans proper. Poles assimilated all the best German character traits but supplemented them with Slavic ingenuity, flexibility and resilience. Also, not even 20 years after the Soviet-Polish war, those "Catholic -ski Germans" were staunchly anti-communist. If Hitler had played it right, he would have had a hammer on the Soviet Union better than all his Finns, Romanians, Hungarians and Italians put together. Instead, he decided to tell Poles that they are untermenschen and exterminate them. Mind boggles.

....I might add that my horrible PF posts stem from my keyboard, not my brain....


He tried! Remember that photo with him during that polish funeral???

rarehistoricalphotos.com/adolf-hitler-memorial-pilsudski-1935/

He respected Piłsudski. Like a soldier respects a soldier. After the Good Marshall died, Hitler wasn't that willing to make any deals with Poles, and Piłsudski left as his legacy a doctrine that said - "keep away at equal distance from both Germany and Soviets - they are both bad news"; so the politicians who took over, still idolising him, decided to stick to this doctrine, for better or worse. The result was 1st Septemeber 1939 + 17th September 1939.

....doesn't fit somehow in that "Untermenschen"-thinking....I wonder everytime....

Exactly! When did it all end? When and why did he switch from "potential useful allies" to "a bunch of cattle to slaughter and/or expel"? His policies in Poland were absolutely brutal and ruthless compared to other occupied European countries.

Hitler, paradoxically, was actually a big appreciator of Poles, outside of his "Danzig" complex. You already said it - but he viewed Pilsudski as an "older brother" on the front against wokeness.

Of course it helps that Pilsudski was a stark, raving, mad fascist himself.

TRUE!

I would like to know what had happened in between too....maybe some secret brilliance from Moscow? In the end the Soviets were the big winner!

no that Poland made steel with "Sdiełano w SSSR" mark on it - how much do you think you paid for it and what kind of realities were your Soviet authorities willing to hide by resorting to such measures - from what I know most Russians still believe that they actually built up Poland - and they wonder why we are so ungrateful - hillarious - simply hillarious

Gold 😆


Yes, but with a distinct Sarmatian flavour and glory!


In many respects, they did.

You Poles are never grateful for anything - this we know.

But I understand now that you say we made steel in Poland and labeled it as Soviet? To be able to sign off on some numbers presumably?

I want to be clear with you, and make sure we understand each other - before I say anything else.

@Torq

in which respects, if you care to name them - I can only think of one: the Palace of Science and Culture which we would perfectly fine do without


no Bobko - Polish workers in a Polish steel mill made still grids with "Sdiełano w SSSR" on them - am I not clear enough by now? what do you make of such a development?

Dude... take a look at post #941. Quite a while ago I posted links to academic papers, by actual economists, proving that Poland had a trade surplus with Soviet Union. Couldn't be arsed to look for it again, use the search function if it's still here and not somewhere deep in polanda archives.

Our lovely Second Rzeczpospolita was a glorious country, no doubt, but also a country of huge contrasts (urban vs. rural gap), 20% of illiteracy and people emigrating to Romania (yes, f*cking Romania) in search for better life.

yes, mostly because they exporting not so many things of value to Poland - easy - there is no way for you to tell, if the trade with the USSR was actually economically viable


you know what my answer is: it was the hard work of the entire Polish nation: Polish workers, Polish farmers and Polish engineers who built up PRL - if you can prove otherwise, please do

There is no way for me, true. I can only tell you about basic facts, obvious even to a simple man like me. There are people, however, who dedicated their academic careers to researching the issue and their conclusions contradict your one-sided and, forgive my bluntness, primitive approach to the matter.


Indeed it was.

However, they could rozbić sobie tę całą ciężką pracę o kant dupy if they had to compete on a liberal capitalist market with companies from countries less destroyed by war, if they were - from the very beginning - burdened with unpayable debt of rebuilding the country from utter ruins, and if they had to purchase fuel for the industry for market prices. Also, we would have lost Kresy to the victorious Soviet Union anyway, but - being a part of the western camp - would most likely never have regained the Piast lands in the West.

I think these things are called girdles not grids, now
or maybe beams?

no they are giders or beams

Girders.