My own family's experience with Communism in Poland: please give opinions.

[Loony]

I am still very, very new to this forum so you must please forgive me if I use the incorrect terminology. I will try to explain as best I can.

I will give you an example of something which happened to my family in Poland during the Communist era.

You must please tell me your view on these particular incidents. I am not trying to be antagonistic (not at all!) but I'd like your input. All opinions welcome.

My great-grandmother in Poland was very ill with cancer, but could not see a doctor often because she was only allowed to see one a certain amount of times. She lay at home dying from cervical cancer, which can be a very smelly and messy business. It's horrible. She would go through six to seven bedsheets a day, and they could not keep up with the washing anymore. There were no hospital supplies, and another family member who was a nurse stole some supplies from the hospital to help her. She was in terrible pain but there was no medication. My family who were not living in Poland knew of this situation but were not allowed to visit her. So with the knowledge of the family doctor, he would prescribe and they would smuggle morphine into Poland via somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody. This was the only relief she had from the terrible pain and she died a long and painful death.

Her one son was a member of the KGB, and he would fly in and out of Poland and walk around in fur coats and bring the most expensive foods. He also never visited her even though they lived in the same building and he let his mother die, not going to see her or even bring medication to which he had access.

How can anyone allow another fellow human being to suffer like this? To let a member of the community die a terrible death like this. Where was the state that was supposed to be looking after its people? And this was by no means an isolated incident.

Also, they were allotted an apartment of land to live on and given two pigs. Someone with a hog would come around once a while to fertilise the two pigs. When they gave birth, the piglets (then also grown pigs) were taken by the state and distributed amongst the community to slaughter. If my family decided to lie about it and say that there were only 5 piglets when if fact there were 6 (one of which was hidden and kept for personal use) they were accused of stealing from the state. But these people raised the pigs, they sat with the mess of upkeep and cleaning the sty but the state took everything away.

My great-uncle used to work, but he said that after a while it became so pointless that he just never went to work and would go fishing instead. At least he could keep the fish he caught (if nobody saw) and the family would benefit more from his fishing trip at the river than if he went to work.

The reason I am mentioning these things is to question the effectiveness of how Communism was instituted. I say again that I am very new at this and would like your opinions. What do you think of this? How could it have been different?

[Offbeat]

Ok the main thing to understand here is that Poland was not Communist, and no self-respecting revolutionary will ever try to tell you that it was. The definition of Communism is a classless, stateless society, so the very fact that you talk about a state is enough to prove that Poland was not Communist. I would go into more detail but I'm tired and I'm sure others will be willing to elaborate on this.

[ArrowLance]

Ok the main thing to understand here is that Poland was not Communist, and no self-respecting revolutionary will ever try to tell you that it was. The definition of Communism is a classless, stateless society, so the very fact that you talk about a state is enough to prove that Poland was not Communist. I would go into more detail but I'm tired and I'm sure others will be willing to elaborate on this.

Sure, even it's even questionable to what degree all states under Soviet influence were Communist. I have never encountered a Communist who would say the implementation of Communism in the 20th century was perfect.


To the OP; horrible things happened worldwide and they still do. This is not an excuse and it is not a comparison but the implementation of Communism at the time was in decay from the very beginning. What it accomplished anyway is both tragic and wonderful.



Also, they were allotted an apartment of land to live on and given two pigs. Someone with a hog would come around once a while to fertilise the two pigs. When they gave birth, the piglets (then also grown pigs) were taken by the state and distributed amongst the community to slaughter. If my family decided to lie about it and say that there were only 5 piglets when if fact there were 6 (one of which was hidden and kept for personal use) they were accused of stealing from the state. But these people raised the pigs, they sat with the mess of upkeep and cleaning the sty but the state took everything away.

The piglets were social product, and withholding them from distributions was indeed a crime against the working class and the revolution. The pigs for fertilization, the initial pigs, the land, and all other systems were social product.

[Bostana]

Poland was never Communist.

It would take a world revolution to create a total Communist society. And in that there will be no nations in a Communist society. A Communist society, like stated above, is classless, and stateless.
Poland had both.

[Loony]

May I then venture to say that the problem with Communism lies in its implementation?

[teflon_john]

come on, you all know exactly what they mean by "communism" and being all nit-picky about it in this case isn't what the OP needs.

[Sendo]

I'm sorry for your family's hardships. There is no way to smooth over that.

I will say this, however. You're looking at a poor country that rationed out its healthcare far too equally it seems. (Applying limitations on those who needed more care than others)

In America, the richest country on Earth, your great grandmother would have suffered and died from a lack of funds.

I find more justice in dying on a waiting list in a poor country than dying from lack of funds in the richest country on Earth. That doesn't change the enormity of the suffering and pain she and your family endured, but it is something to think about. This doesn't boil down to Marxism-Leninism is worse than liberal capitalism. This is a bit more complicated than that.

My father's parents both died of cancer before I was born. My grandfather was an engineer/mechanic in a mine in New York state. However, the race to the bottom made other states remove all environmental/water/soil protections. All the companies packed up and left (there are extremes like West Virginia allowing coal companies to blow up entire mountains, for example).

Around that time my grandmother fell ill. My grandfather took the work he could find in town, which was janitorial work. He worked long and hard and he started his family late in life, so he was up in his years and had three kids to raise. As she was dying my grandfather himself fell ill and had to continue to work. The stress and hardship likely contributed to his rapid decline and death.

It's not like capitalism does a much better job here. I look at social democratic states in Europe though, who deliver children for free, give 100% salary to recovering cancer patients, and all that, and admire them. Sure, some of them must deal with waiting times, but America doesn't deal with that because so many people are not even eligible. When it comes to Emergency Room service waiting times, America is a third-world country. People die waiting in waiting rooms for the ER all the time. So Americans die from waiting as much as Canadians or anyone else.

Like I said, I'd rather the doctors tell me that they don't have the resources to save me, than to hear them say that they do have the resources, but only rich people who get sick will be saved.

Logic also dictates that insurance schemes only work if ALL people are involved. The clearest path to that is a universal system. It also has lower costs for overhead, which isn't surprising given that there is no money wasted on marketing and competing, and there is no profit motive. Competition and free enterprise is especially worthless here, since insurance systems don't provide a service; they merely allocate funds. A necessary job, but NOT a wealth-creating job (probably the farthest thing from it!) Medicare and Medicaid are great things. Their failures are from lack of funding and from the fact that hospitals are allowed to refuse Medicare patients and from the fact that drug companies have no price controls.

So some people complain that Medicare is too costly. Of course it is. The drug companies have monopolies from their patents and can charge whatever they want, because the government has to pick up the bill and because there are no competitive market forces.

[Loony]

Yes. Please. Anything at all. I'm still trying to find out the road where Marx will guide me:)

[Sendo]

Double post.

[Lanky Wanker]

Isn't communist symbolism and the likes banned in Poland due to "the crimes against Poland committed by the Soviet Union" or something?

[Lucretia]

There has never been communism or socialism in Poland.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

About the KGB officer: This is a good anecdote where i want to go with this.
For the transition to a global stateless, classless but above all moneyless, society, there needs to be a workers state so long there are still strong capitalist/imperialist states around. So, it is horrible what a state does to the individual. The military and all in all state apparatus is not a nice thing, at least we communists can take solace in knowing our state stands for a greater cause and the majority of people instead of the exploitative, greedy minority. The faster capital (here i mean especially western capital) is overthrown, the faster we can get rid of the corrupting state that manipulates the individual through state education, limitation on freedom and violence. It is not fun, but capitalism is, i am sure if you ask the 1 billion humans who live in slums and the billions of humans who suffer not meeting their basic needs like food, basic healthcare, clean water, housing; a lot worse.

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

I have some Polish friends; neither are leftist due to the same reason your family opposes it. What I've learned from my Polish friends is that they suffered during the reign of Stalin and the joint invasion by both the USSR and Nazi Germany, and the occupation that soon followed.

But I think it's fair to note that Communism isn't Stalin, the Soviet Union, or The Eastern Bloc, it was State-Capitalism and extensively authoritarian, which any Communist would agree is the contrary of Socialism or Communism.

I'm sorry to hear of their oppression, comrade.

[Zulu]

Technically, Poland trod the revisionist path since 1956, which in her situation was a mix of quasi-national-socialist and quasi-colonial of the quasi-imperialist revisionist Soviet Union path. That's, of course, one side of the problem.

The other, and the more important side of the problem is that while all those contradictions of high theory and ideology were present and increasingly aggravated and eroded socialism on the inside, in the day-to-day life of the populace of the socialist camp many aspects remained (if only by inertia) from the times of pure Stalin-approved Bolshevism, and among those there were some brighter aspects and some gloomier ones, which were unavoidable due to the class struggle continued during the socialist transition. Some people just tend to remember, recall, bring up in arguments, etc. more of the brighter aspects, and some people tend to recall the gloomier ones. That only tells us on which side of the class struggle they are on in these times of capitalist reaction. Simple as that.

[Veovis]

There has never been communism or socialism in Poland.

Finally, someone said it.

Poland wasn't socialist/communist because the workers neither held the productive forces in common, nor did they control the state. The bureaucratic party apparatus did.

It was simply an authoritarian state-capitalist régime that used socialist imagery and rhetoric to legitimize itself.

[Zealot]

Of course there will be "problems" trying to implement Communism (which Poland wasn't even trying to do) like there is with any system. Capitalism took hundreds of years to implement and mostly through force and imperialism. The implementation of Capitalism is still being carried out that way right this very moment. I think really, with a lot of people who make arguments like this, they are requesting things that the state simply did not have. They harp on about famines in the Soviet Union as if the state could magically pull a loaf of bread out of their ass. But things don't work that way, unfortunately.

[seventeethdecember2016]

It should be pointed out that Poland was ranked 33rd by the UN's 1986 Human Development Index (http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/datasets/humandevel) with a score of .910. This is comparable to the USA's .961 and the Soviet Union's .920.
The Human Development Index is used to rank countries by their life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living.

Although Poland was a terrible country, at the time, it was comparatively a reasonable place to live. It was also a pretty resourcefully limited place to live, as there were massive economic problems, which should be noted. This story of yours touched me, but it was unlikely that your great-grandmother would have lived very long anyway. It is not uncharacteristic of doctors to use their medicine for patients that are more likely to live. She deserved some pain killers however.


A Revisionist country like Poland should not be considered Communist. For some odd reason Socialism and Communism are equated with government ownership of the means of production by the West. We, as intelligible Socialists and Communists, know that this is nothing more than a strawman. A Vanguard that has a share of control over the Means of Production to discourage cartels can be considered Socialist. Note: Vanguard control should be viewed differently from Government control, as the former exists for the proper emancipation of the workers in the workers' state, while the latter exists to maintain some degenerate state.

[hashem]

May I then venture to say that the problem with Communism lies in its implementation?

its true that establishment of a communist society is not simple. its not easy to destroy all of beliefs and relations which are based on class differences and have ruled human society for thousands of years.

but the ruling class of Poland never meant to establish such society. bourgeoisie was ruling in the name of proletariat. they have committed worse crimes. in afganestan, army of social-imperialists killed thousands of true communists in order to install a puppet government.

[Offbeat]

May I then venture to say that the problem with Communism lies in its implementation?
Poland had single-party rule imposed on it by the Soviet Union. Communism can only be achieved when the workers rise up in a revolution, so clearly it was never going to happen in Poland as the Communist Party only had power because of the Red Army's occupation.

[maskerade]

This has already been stated but I'd like to reiterate it: can everyone please stop being so fucking pedantic with 'communism' definitions? 'Communism' of the 20th century is indicative of the communist movement whether we like it or not. When we complain about the current form of capitalism, how would we react if someone said 'but that's not real neo-liberalism! state regulation, unfree markets, lack of slavery! ETC'?

That being said, the problems of the Eastern Bloc states should not be dismissed; we have so much to learn from the mistakes of the past. Conversely, the communist movement of the 20th century also achieved (relatively) miraculous things, and any reasonable person could ascertain such a fact as true. To say that the negative things disqualify the achievements would be just as incongruous as saying that the positive things can dismiss the negatives. More often that not the negatives had nothing to do with the positives.

[Catma]

Part of the problem is in how we leftists relate to those trying to learn. We basically have entirely different views of history, production, and many other things, than are taught in schools. There is so much information that has to be understood, and it simply can't be crammed into someone's face. So we boil it down to the most pertinent fact, in this case, the definition of communism. Otherwise, we have to answer every question with a 20 page treatise that begins: "at the dawn of civilization..."

It's also an easy answer. Most sophomore leftists can point out the semantic stuff. What about the obvious ensuing questions? If it wasn't communism, what was it? How would communism be different, and how would it come about? These are the right questions, and the answers are long and sometimes we disagree on them.

Being largely a beginner myself and lacking clear answers, I'd just like to point out that every simple question like this should be answered in a way that brings out more questions, which we must then be prepared to answer as well.

[Omsk]

Poland was in a hard position after WWII,and it only got worse after Khrushchov removed the leadership of the party and replaced it with a revisionist and bankrupt leadership which was very happy to go down the road of capitalism and the 'national paths' as planned by Tito and Nikita S.

[Grenzer]

Poland was in a hard position after WWII,and it only got worse after Khrushchov removed the leadership of the party and replaced it with a revisionist and bankrupt leadership which was very happy to go down the road of capitalism and the 'national paths' as planned by Tito and Nikita S.

How is this not subscribing to the Great Man theory?

[Omsk]

It's not,because the focus is on the complete reorganization of the party,(In the negative sense) and the installation of hostile anti-socialist elements as the leadership of the party.Those things only made reality worse.

And what am i supposed to say,"Things only got worse when the Soviets removed the progressive elements in the country" ?

[TrotskistMarx]

Hi, my friend, from what i have read about the different political systems, there has never been a socialist-country, and there has never been a communist-country. From my own knowledge of political systems, Poland was a state-capitalist country, not a even a socialist-country (workers-government with all its large businesses owned by workers). And there has never been a communist-country (an anarchist-communist country, without money, without classes and a more psychologically advanced behaviour patterns of each citizen of a communist-anarchist society, living in an altruism behaviour pattern. Most people in this world are still living within the *egoism* paradigm.

.



I am still very, very new to this forum so you must please forgive me if I use the incorrect terminology. I will try to explain as best I can.

I will give you an example of something which happened to my family in Poland during the Communist era.

You must please tell me your view on these particular incidents. I am not trying to be antagonistic (not at all!) but I'd like your input. All opinions welcome.

My great-grandmother in Poland was very ill with cancer, but could not see a doctor often because she was only allowed to see one a certain amount of times. She lay at home dying from cervical cancer, which can be a very smelly and messy business. It's horrible. She would go through six to seven bedsheets a day, and they could not keep up with the washing anymore. There were no hospital supplies, and another family member who was a nurse stole some supplies from the hospital to help her. She was in terrible pain but there was no medication. My family who were not living in Poland knew of this situation but were not allowed to visit her. So with the knowledge of the family doctor, he would prescribe and they would smuggle morphine into Poland via somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody. This was the only relief she had from the terrible pain and she died a long and painful death.

Her one son was a member of the KGB, and he would fly in and out of Poland and walk around in fur coats and bring the most expensive foods. He also never visited her even though they lived in the same building and he let his mother die, not going to see her or even bring medication to which he had access.

How can anyone allow another fellow human being to suffer like this? To let a member of the community die a terrible death like this. Where was the state that was supposed to be looking after its people? And this was by no means an isolated incident.

Also, they were allotted an apartment of land to live on and given two pigs. Someone with a hog would come around once a while to fertilise the two pigs. When they gave birth, the piglets (then also grown pigs) were taken by the state and distributed amongst the community to slaughter. If my family decided to lie about it and say that there were only 5 piglets when if fact there were 6 (one of which was hidden and kept for personal use) they were accused of stealing from the state. But these people raised the pigs, they sat with the mess of upkeep and cleaning the sty but the state took everything away.

My great-uncle used to work, but he said that after a while it became so pointless that he just never went to work and would go fishing instead. At least he could keep the fish he caught (if nobody saw) and the family would benefit more from his fishing trip at the river than if he went to work.

The reason I am mentioning these things is to question the effectiveness of how Communism was instituted. I say again that I am very new at this and would like your opinions. What do you think of this? How could it have been different?

[Grenzer]

Hi, my friend, from what i have read about the different political systems, there has never been a socialist-country, and there has never been a communist-country. From my own knowledge of political systems, Poland was a state-capitalist country, not a even a socialist-country (workers-government with all its large businesses owned by workers). And there has never been a communist-country (an anarchist-communist country, without money, without classes and a more psychologically advanced behaviour patterns of each citizen of a communist-anarchist society, living in an altruism behaviour pattern. Most people in this world are still living within the *egoism* paradigm.

.

My friend, egoism and greed shall be the basis of a communist society.

[TrotskistMarx]

My friend, I thought that greed, selfishness, ultra-individualism and egoism are part of the behaviour patterns of most people in this capitalist whole world. I mean I acknowledge that healthy doses of egoism are good, and can work fine in a communist-anarchist world political system. But the way people behave today, like in America where most people in their residential communities hide in their houses and have this sort of evading, avoidant anti-people, anti-neighbor personality behaviour pattern, will not exist in a more advanced way of living in an anarchist-communist global system.

I suspect that people in a world anarchist-communism will be a lot and a lot friendlier, more sympathetic to each other, and more *communicative* between each other.

The USA is the total opposite, most americans suffer from ultra-shyness and are scared of others, scared of people, scared of socializing, and scared of open outdoor spaces (Agoraphobia)

.



My friend, egoism and greed shall be the basis of a communist society.

[LulzPID]

Poland was not communist to my knowledge. Also, the term itself has been corrupted over the years. :o

[Zulu]

This has already been stated but I'd like to reiterate it: can everyone please stop being so fucking pedantic with 'communism' definitions? 'Communism' of the 20th century is indicative of the communist movement whether we like it or not. When we complain about the current form of capitalism, how would we react if someone said 'but that's not real neo-liberalism! state regulation, unfree markets, lack of slavery! ETC'?

That being said, the problems of the Eastern Bloc states should not be dismissed; we have so much to learn from the mistakes of the past. Conversely, the communist movement of the 20th century also achieved (relatively) miraculous things, and any reasonable person could ascertain such a fact as true. To say that the negative things disqualify the achievements would be just as incongruous as saying that the positive things can dismiss the negatives. More often that not the negatives had nothing to do with the positives.
Agreed.

Never forget to add though, that a lot of (if not all) what the pro-labor movement in the capitalist countries managed to achieve even without overthrowing the bourgeois order happened actually due to the successes of the communist movement in the socialist countries and the necessity the capitalists felt to keep up with them or face their own downfall.

[Babeufist]

Sorry, but this story is total bullshit.
The KGB was Soviet not Polish political police.
Medical assistance was well developed (better than in capitalist Poland of today), nobody needed to "smuggle" morphine.
About pigs... Only in the Stalinist period (1950-56) a farming was state-owned. My grand-father was a farmer and had several pigs, nobody confiscated his animals.
Peoples Poland was not any paradise on the Earth but was better place to live than the capitalist Third Republic of today. Bullshit again.

[Loony]

I know that the KGB is Soviet. Totally stupid I am not.

BUT, before telling other people that their stories are bullshit, make sure they are first. Did you smuggle morphine? Nope. But my mother did and she is well and alive and we had this discussion two days ago.

So exactly how things looked in Poland then, NEITHER you or me can say, unless we were there then. We have written accounts, photographs and some film.

No report of any incident is 100% correct. Take 20 witnesses to a crime. You will get 20 different reports. Doesn't make them all wrong, but it doesn't make them all right either. If you witnessed the same crime as me but you were on the other side of the pavement, our reports are different. You saw the incident from the left and I saw it from the right. Same crime, different view. So any report to anything is purely subjective. Especially history.

Now, if my great-grandmother was dying and my mother helped smuggle the stuff to Poland, I believe her. What does she have to gain from lying?