
A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014) - ash
http://jacquesmattheij.com/a-western-kid-living-in-communist-poland/
======
tinbad
Growing up with my grandparents in the 80s in Moscow, I remember standing in
line in front of a place literally called 'Store' for hours. Nobody knew what
the line was for or what it was the store was getting in that day. Some people
spend the night waiting just to be in front. After standing in line all day,
finally by dusk a truck pulls up. Everybody looking in anxiety and worried
about not being enough merchandise, still not knowing what was inside. A few
men start unloading the boxes inside the store. All of a sudden people at the
front of the line start spreading the rumors, "it's bananas!", "what is a
banana?" I thought to myself. I was 5 years old and had no idea what it was.
We made our way from outside, into the store. The store was full of empty
shelves, there was literally no inventory. Finally we got the cashier, it was
our turn and my grandpa got handed a big box and he handed the clerk money.
"Hurry" my grandpa said, we rushed out of the store and started walking back
home. "There's no more!" I heard somebody shout out of the store. There were
still at least a hundred people in line. We kept walking, not looking back. We
got home and opened the box. It was full of green bananas. We tried to eat
them, I loved it. Only later in life I found out bananas supposed to be yellow
and not bitter :)

~~~
x0054
Yes, indeed, the "магазин" or the "гастраном" :) I also still remember the
experience of having to bring a 3 liter pickle jar to buy milk from a barrel
on wheels. It's funny because sometime we would see the barrel pull up, but we
wouldn't know what they were selling. Could be mil, could be beer, could be
kvas (not sure how to translate). We would rush in, because what ever it was,
it's better than nothing ;)

I also remember a really funny story from my friends dead about his visit to
Cuba. He went there in the early 80s, I am guessing. He went there with a
delegation on some kind of diplomatic mission. Up on arrival he bent over to
pick up his bag, and, as luck would have it, ripped his pants. Now, as you
might imagine, being a proper Soviet and all, he was only traveling with that
one pair of dress pants. So he asked their translator if there is any way they
could go to a store of some kind to purchase another pair, before his fancy
diplomatic meeting.

So they went to the store, supposedly the main fashion store in the center of
the city. When asked, the clerk told them: "Oh, no, we haven't had dress pants
in for at least 3 weeks." My friends dead, desperate, asked: "Well, what about
just needle and some thread?" Clerk: "Well, we have thread, but needle? Hmm,
we haven't had those in years now." Eventually they ended up finding a
seamstress who fixed the pants, but it was all very hush hush, because it was
a crime for her to offer a private service, or for them to solicit it.

Yeah, so communism rocks indeed :)

~~~
usaphp
It's called "Гастроном" not "Гастраном"

~~~
x0054
Thanks, yeah, no Russian spellcheck here, and it's been so long, not that I
was ever good at spelling :)

------
rasz_pl
The bit about getting a work permit is a little weird. At that time average
monthly salary was ~$5. His Dutch parents could literally just send him lunch
money, and it would be enough to for an upper class lifestyle at the time.

Flower/grape/whatever picking for a month in the west was enough to finance
rest of the year.

It was as bad as in Greece right now, everything worth something got sold to
multinationals for pennies on the dollar. All the famous polish brands
absorbed into mcdonalds/cocacolas/pepsis of the world.

~~~
jacquesm
> The bit about getting a work permit is a little weird. At that time average
> monthly salary was ~$5. His Dutch parents could literally just send him
> lunch money, and it would be enough to for an upper class lifestyle at the
> time.

I've never depended on anybody for my living expenses after I turned 17 and to
ask my parents for money simply never even occurred to me.

Also, once you were legally employed you could drop the exchange requirement
(which in terms of western money was substantial, you are looking at the $5 as
the black market exchange rate, unfortunately for westerners living in Poland
the exchange rate was _substantially_ worse which meant that doing this
legally would cost many 100's of $ per month).

> Flower/grape/whatever picking for a month in the west was enough to finance
> rest of the year.

Yes, because the money brought in from the west was exchange piecemeal on the
black market.

> It was as bad as in Greece right now, everything worth something got sold to
> multinationals for pennies on the dollar.

The rape of Poland by the Western countries was - and is - an absolutely
horrific crime. Not that anybody will ever by punished for it but it is
incredibly bitter that the first contact between Eastern and Western economies
led to yet another round of those people being taken advantage of. The damage
from this lasts to this day. If that story interests you research 'polinvest'
and several other nasty schemes that were pulled off just after the change.

> All the famous polish brands absorbed into mcdonalds/cocacolas/pepsis of the
> world.

And the Philipses, Volkswagens and Siemenses...

~~~
S4M
What made me curious in this story is the fact that you and your wife decided
to move to Poland. I thought life in Netherlands would be much better. You
must have had a strong reason to want to live in Poland.

~~~
jacquesm
G. did not like living in NL all that much so we decided to move to Poland. I
sold my company, packed all our stuff into/onto an old trailer that we bought,
hooked it up to the car and drove to Poznan.

~~~
nextos
My girlfriend is Polish and, to my own surprise, I don't think I dislike
Poland that much right now. Why are you in Romania?

~~~
jacquesm
I was in Romania, now back in NL. I was there for a job.

------
fapjacks
When I was just a couple months into being a teenager, I went to Russia in
1993. We were the first group of Americans allowed into the Udmurt region, and
we traveled from Saint Petersburg to Izhevsk to meet our host families for a
short stay, and then to Moscow before leaving the country. It was the first
time in my life when I saw anything like that. I remember a few times when I
said things that I still cringe at saying to this day. Prior to entering
Russia, we stayed in Stockholm. Stockholm was a shining jewel compared to
Saint Petersburg, which itself was a shining jewel compared to Izhevsk. I
remember I asked out loud if a hotel was going to "be like Sweden", completely
oblivious that I was embarrassing the Americans and Russians around me. Things
like this that still make me cringe today. The city of Izhevsk was famous for
being the home of the inventor of the AK-47, as well as the Baikal munitions
plant, which supplied a lot of the world's Soviet ammunition. I remember
seeing a group of children, perhaps six or seven years old, running through
the street and drinking from a bottle of vodka. A few months later, our
Russian host-family counterparts came to stay with us in the States for about
as long as we were in Russia. My grandmother gave me a hundred dollars (kind
of a big deal in '93 heh) to take my counterpart shopping. When we were at the
store, I remember talking about buying some toys and taking my counterpart to
the toy section at Walmart. You know what he did instead? He bought Levis and
cans of coffee for his family. I still cringe every time I think about how I
behaved back then, but for sure it taught me an enormous amount about the
world in a very short time.

------
limaoscarjuliet
I'm from Poland, born in 74, so I remember that time well.

1987 was 3 years before bankruptcy of the communist government and fall of
iron curtain. It was still bad as author described. I remember the long lines
to bakeries, I remember the grey block of flats (these are still there, and
even though painted in other colors are dull as hell!).

But... we, children, did not know there is a "better life" out there. Sure,
everybody had someone in the West (mostly in US), we got an occasional package
for Xmas with chocolate and some clothes.

But we, children, did not care for the West that much. We were outside playing
stupid games like hanging out on carpet hanger next to block of flats (and
screaming "cinema!" when one of the girls revealed her underwear while doing
some risque maneuver). We jumped rope and "rubber". We played war (zee Germans
vs us). I would come out in the morning or right after school and stay until
dark, at which time my mom would call "comeeee baaaaaack!" from the window.

So yes, it was dark middle ages, but somehow simple and pleasant. This is in
contrast to my children today rarely venturing outside and playing some phone
crap all day long.

For adults that might have been whole another story. The promise of the West
likely has been large. But I still want to bet guys were busy chasing the
ladies, the family was the focus, and people who wanted to be happy were
happy.

So not romanticizing the system too much - I am a successful software engineer
working all other the World for "the man" and like it - it was not that bad as
people might think. Some of us were quite happy, despite system's
shortcomings.

Strange for sure, but not hopeless.

~~~
jpatokal
Your description of life for kids in Poland reminds me a lot of my own
childhood in Finland -- except that I was on the other side of the Iron
Curtain, and there were no bread lines. (Quite few grey blocks of flats
though...) I also remember driving through East Germany and visiting East
Berlin in the mid-1980s and getting thoroughly freaked out by what a even
child could recognize as a monochrome totalitarian dystopia.

It's the US, with its pervasive fear that kids must be supervised at all times
or they'll immediately be kidnapped and sold into sex slavery or something,
that's the real outlier here. See
[http://www.freerangekids.com/](http://www.freerangekids.com/) for a movement
that's trying to roll this back, with some success.

------
twqqis
For as long as I can remember I've had an interest in going to live in another
country. But the older I get and the more I get to understand people and the
more I travel, the more I start to hold myself back from actually moving to
another country. Even if just for a year or two. I think I realise more and
more that cultures really are different, vastly more than I once thought. It
has me wonder what I would actually end up gaining from such a move, countries
with language barriers even more so. Yet, I cannot stop thinking that by NOT
doing it, I'm missing out greatly...

~~~
goodcanadian
We're on our fourth country, and we've traveled to many more. I think what you
learn is that there are many ways to do different things. Other cultures get
some things very right that your home culture gets wrong. Your home culture
gets some things right that other cultures get wrong. But overall, the main
takeaway is that it broadens your view of the world and it opens your eyes to
possibilities that you would not otherwise see. You get some of this from
travelling, but not nearly as much as what you get when you go and live in
another place with a different culture.

~~~
dman
Could you elaborate on some positive differences where witnessing a different
culture improved your outlook towards life in a meaningful way?

~~~
SimpleMinds
I would like to add here a bit if I can.

I'm from Western country and I was/am living in Eastern culture (China)

I'm still learning about Chinese concepts of family and "filial piety". Thanks
to long (and sometimes hot) discussions with gf, I feel now that my behaviour
towards family and close friends have changed in better way - I
understand/feel without thinking that there are situations where my concept of
being adult and self sustainable person with own opinions should give way to
another person even if I'm right (and they are wrong) because they are elders
in the conversation. I understand in better way that there are social
constructs that even if not best, they keep people close to you (that's
important part) in greater mood than if you constantly try to set your
opinions on them.

Sometimes you don't want to tell people close to you that your tooth hurst so
they are not worried.

Even though there's a lot of wrong with social behaviours in China on a
greater scale (look up problems with "good Samaritans" for simplest examples),
the family scale I feel is much better and greater than what I learned/grow up
with in West. I feel that if we could learn from Chinese concepts of family,
we would be much better in West.

While saying above, I have to think that it still can be coming from my
raising and history and I'm still learning about historical/philosophical
entires in our social life, so I hope I didn't offend anyone with above.

~~~
dman
Thanks for sharing your personal experiences.

------
V-2
> The Polish secret police (the UB or MBP) was quite active and if you didn’t
> know someone personally you could not trust them

I don't mean to nitpick, but UB was renamed to SB in 1956. MBP ceased to exist
in 1954.

And by the way, knowing someone personally didn't mean you could trust them,
either.

Pretty much everyone could be a police informant, especially if you were a
person of interest : your husband, or your doctor...

The number of informal collaborators approached 100 thousand people in the
80s, which means about 0.5% of the nation (only counting adults).

~~~
stretchwithme
Perhaps Jacques was actually there 30 plus years earlier than he claims :-)

Maybe that Citroën has a flux capacitor!

~~~
jacquesm
It had a ton of hydraulics but I never noticed anything like that. Even so the
DS was way ahead of its time and in many ways still is.

------
_mgr
I've read this before. Has this already been posted to HN?

I am trying to convince my native born Polish girlfriend to move back for a
year to live/work/travel. I figure I will pick up the language far quicker
than my current pace.

She's a little apprehensive about our earning potential there. The Polish
Zloty does not appear to be the strongest currency and the average wage is
half of some of it's other EU cousins.

~~~
limaoscarjuliet
Poland is still very closed society. You will be fine in large cities
(Wroclaw, Krakow, Poznan, Warszawa, Gdansk), but unlikely to do well in small
and medium cities.

Wages are way smaller than in EU countries, prices are pretty much the same.
Real estate might be the only exception, but not by much.

Polish is a very hard language to pick up. Not only tongue twister, but full
of exceptions and mind twisting rules. A pretty good example is counting
objects, e.g. apples: 1-4 jablka, 5-21 jablek, 22-24 jablka, 25.. jablek. Yes,
good luck with that!

The good news is most young and some mid-age people speak English, large
cities welcome foreigners, and - if you have decent profession - you will do
ok.

~~~
nekkoru
Actually, 1 - jabłko, 5-21 jabłek, 22-24 jabłka, 25-31 jabłek, 32-34 jabłka
and so on and so forth.

~~~
_mgr
I was discussing this with my partner last night trying to understand the
pattern/logic behind it. Would you see this similar pattern when counting
oranges or coffee cups?

------
ekr
Jacques, may I ask what brought you to Romania (are you still there)?

~~~
jacquesm
A contract job. I'm back in NL right now.

------
cafard
A repost, but a charming story.

------
stretchwithme
Great story, Jacques.

------
kome
ouch... I must have something in my eye...

------
rmchugh
Sweet story.

------
ilaksh
I think its important for Hacker News readers to read this because techno-
communism is becoming a very serious force in western politics. It needs to be
tempered with a historical context.

The problem we should focus on is over-centralization, which comes easily out
of a competitive OR cooperative society.

Yes to holistic measurements, efficiency and equality. But do that on a meta,
protocol level that allows for diverse decentralized systems to evolve while
still integrating information.

~~~
coldtea
> _think its important for Hacker News readers to read this because techno-
> communism is becoming a very serious force in western politics. It needs to
> be tempered with a historical context._

Tempered why? The worst thing he could say about Poland was a corrupt police.
Constrast with the hundrends of innocent police killings in the US, or the
hundrens of thousands incarcerated for BS charges (like drug pocession or
three-strikes) and it's not that different. Widespread surveillance? Check,
and even more detailed.

Of course there are differences too. E.g. now nobody is guaranteed to have a
job or a home, and inequality can be much higher than in those old times
(where a party functionary just made something like a few times more, not
several orders of magnitude more, like a CEO does).

~~~
x0054
Come on! Did you live through Soviet style communism? Please don't glorify
that BS unless you have. A party functionary would be entitled to free
servants to help them move, clean there garden, do all kinds of physical labor
for them. Those servants were called enlisted soldiers. A party functionary
would be entitled to a yearly, 3 month vacation on the black sea, where they
would live, in a palace by the sea. And when I say a palace, I mean literally
a fucking palace. There were very privileged people in the Soviet union. Now
it's true that even those people would constantly live in fear, because on
minute you could be on top, and the next you are dragged off by the secret
police.

And guaranteed house? Like the house that my best friend grew up, with his
mom, his dead, and his sister, all sleeping in the same bed in their 250 sqft
studio.

~~~
coldtea
> _Did you live through Soviet style communism?_

No, but I lived through a military dictatorship sponsored by the US (though,
admittedly, 30+ years later Clinton on an official visit did say the US was
sorry for its support of it) imposed on my country so that a large percentage
of my countrymen who preferred socialism wouldn't attempt to try it.

Oh, and it was preceded by a prolonged civil war (provoked by the UK, and with
the right-wing side given arms and support by the UK and US in a typical Cold
War scenario), followed by 15+ years of imprisonment, exile and even torture
for tens of thousands of the most prominent left sympathizers, among them war
heroes who had just before fought heroically against the nazis, like this guy:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manolis_Glezos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manolis_Glezos)

So, yeah, there was that side too.

> _And guaranteed house? Like the house that my best friend grew up, with his
> mom, his dead, and his sister, all sleeping in the same bed in their 250
> sqft studio._

And in our modern day and age, in advanced countries, there are tons of people
living all 4-5 of them on the same trailer house. Or even worse, being
homeless. And that's in a place like the US. In Mexico, Latin America, Africa,
Asia etc it can be much worse.

So, while bad in itself, I'd say a guaranteed 250 sq ft studio for 4 people,
plus a job for all of them, plus the basics, plus education, etc, sure beats
people living in the slums in 1/3 of the modern world, e.g. as in:

[http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/19/shopping.societ...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/19/shopping.society)

~~~
x0054
So you lived through a military dictatorship sponsored by US and UK, and
during that time tens of thousands of your countryman died due to the
government. So obviously the Soviet system, which under the rule of Stalin
killed millions of people (as in close to 50 million) during that same time is
much better. Yes a job for everyone, even if that job is digging up ice dirt
in the Siberian Gulag until you die from exhaustion. Come on, have some
perspective, both systems are totalitarian regimes with horrible outcomes for
the populations. In your case they were killing, torturing, and exterminating
the left leaning intelligentsia. In the Soviet Union they did exactly the same
thing to all the right leaning intelligentsia, actually all intelligentsia,
because smart and educated people might see through all the bull shit the
party was shoveling down people's throats. At the end of the day, in both
cases a ton of people died horrible deaths simply because of what they
believed in. How is one system better then the other? Well, other then in
absolute terms, because at least in your case they didn't manage to killing
quite so many people, but the outcome is the same. I am amazed that someone
who lived through one totalitarian regime would be so in favor of another! Any
system that subverts the rights of an individual under some bullshit pretense
that it's for the "good of the nation" is absolutely wrong!

~~~
coldtea
> _So you lived through a military dictatorship sponsored by US and UK, and
> during that time tens of thousands of your countryman died due to the
> government. So obviously the Soviet system, which under the rule of Stalin
> killed millions of people (as in close to 50 million) during that same time
> is much better._

As an aside, the oft quoted “50 million” number is BS. It counts famines,
deaths in the war, etc. That said, the regime did execute a million or so
directly. OTOH, it was a period of revolution and turmoil (even if it was
skewed by the rise of bureacrats, etc). Death toll should be compared to
things like the Civil War, not to peacetime statistics.

That said, I never mentioned USSR, and the “soviet system” (or rather
“socialism” is not a single thing, nor where the conditions the same in every
place. Poland was different, Czechoslovakia was different, East Germany was
different etc.

> _Yes a job for everyone, even if that job is digging up ice dirt in the
> Siberian Gulag until you die from exhaustion._

Are you really familiar with the history of those states, or just repeat what
you’ve read or seen in movies about very specific periods and very specific
countries? Because that reflects a tiny percentage of the Eastern Europe
population, and for a specific period of time. If we’re allowed to cherry pick
periods, we can say “yeah, land of the free, unless your job is picking cotton
under Jim Crow laws”, etc.

> _In the Soviet Union they did exactly the same thing to all the right
> leaning intelligentsia_

Actually they did it more to the left leaning intelligentsia there too.
Because the problem with USSR wasn’t that it was “too left” and thus despotic,
but that it wasn’t left enough (e.g. the revolution turned right into a self-
preserving regime). Those who were in the right (mostly wealthy families etc)
had mostly immigrated to the west early on. It was the "more leftists" that
got the shaft from Stalin and co (of course usually undersevedly labeled as
"right").

> _At the end of the day, in both cases a ton of people died horrible deaths
> simply because of what they believed in. How is one system better then the
> other?_

Well, with that metric no system is good. Capitalistic colonial powers, for
example, have enslaved 2/3 of the world, hundreds of countries and billions of
people, and have caused more deaths than Hitler and Stalin combined (including
the genocide of native americans).

> _Any system that subverts the rights of an individual under some bullshit
> pretense that it’s for the “good of the nation” is absolutely wrong!_

Well, and what about individuals in other countries, bombed, killed, having
dictatorships imposed upon them by the same government?

Just a case (there are countless others, in Latin America and elsewhere):
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-
role...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-
role-1953-iranian-coup)

Or are only citizens “individuals” and foreign people don’t matter? Even so
there are a million black people in jail in the US, aren’t they individuals or
don’t they have rights? Or its that they are disproportionally criminal to the
white population (which again has a disproportionate incarceration rate
compared to the rest of the world). I won’t even mention the death penalty,
which the civilised Europe has left behind.

Maybe we should chalk that system as “absolutely wrong” too?

~~~
x0054
> As an aside, the oft quoted “50 million” number is BS. It counts famines,
> deaths in the war, etc.

The number I quoted is adjusted for the war related deaths. As for the famines
engineered and caused by the Soviet Government, please do not minimize those
deaths by saying they do not matter. Members of my grandfathers family died
during that time because of the famines and because of how the Soviet
government was literally stealing the food from Ukraine.

> Poland was different, Czechoslovakia was different, East Germany was
> different etc.

I did not live in Communist East Germany, Poland, or Czechoslovakia, but I am
sure many people on this board have. And I am sure that most of them have
stories to tell about how terrible those governments were. You haven't lived
though any of those regimes either, so please do not pretend like you know
best.

> Are you really familiar with the history of those states, or just repeat
> what you’ve read or seen in movies about very specific periods and very
> specific countries?

I was borne in Ukraine in 1984. I lived through the tail end of it, but my Mom
and Dad, as well as my grand parents, lived through the thick of it. Not every
one was send to Siberia, but many people were. My grandfather was a Ukrainian
military doctor, so he was part of the "party," but he was a very
conscientious man, and his hart would bleed for the poor conscripted soldiers
he was treating. The Soviet government would literally use them as slave
labor. When Chernobyl meltdown happen, my grandfather was sent to triage the
injured. He was stationed miles away from the reactor, treating the injured
soldiers coming back from the power plant. They were dying from radiation
poisoning, and the Soviet government would just send new once in there, to
die.

You see, in the communist country, a human life is worth nothing. If it's
easier to send a 1,000 soldiers to die, they will do that, no questions asked.
I know, soldiers are sent to die all the time, but these poor guys didn't have
a chance, not a chance. I realize that US did the same in Vietnam, and it's
wrong. But 2 wrongs don't make a right.

> Or are only citizens “individuals” and foreign people don’t matter? Even so
> there are a million black people in jail in the US, aren’t they individuals
> or don’t they have rights?

Again, you can't argue that because US has it's problems, and is doing a lot
of really wrong things, now and in the past, that somehow this makes all the
horrible things that the Soviet government did just pitchy. I lived through
the tail end of communism, my parents lived through a lot of it. We moved to
US as soon as we could. And with all it's problems, I would take US over USSR
any day of the week.

I understand that you lived through a dictatorship, that Greece is right now
in a complete financial ruin, in large part due to the idiotic way the EU is
setup, and that you probably want to blame EU and US for all of it. But don't
look to Russia and the olds style USSR for answers, the answers they have are
the wrong answers. My fear is that if Greece does not recover from it's
problems soon, they will be tempted to do a deal with Russia and Putin. Your
opinions are not unique in Greece, I believe. I really hope that doesn't
happen.

In any case, you are not going to see it my way, and I am not going to see it
your way. So let's part here.

