A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

http://jacquesmattheij.com/a-western-kid-living-in-communist-poland/

by ash • 11 years ago

135 86 11 years ago

tinbad2• 11 years ago

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 :)

x00546• 11 years ago

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 :)

V-26• 11 years ago

It's so awesome, why didn't all these Western fans of it flock in while they still could is beyond me ;)

Could be mil, could be beer, could be kvas (not sure how to translate)

Kwas seems to be just "kvass" in English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass

It's more popular further to the East (than Poland), still I remember we'd brew it at home back in the day, as a little boy I liked to pretend it was beer

Speaking of beverages, everyone from the former Soviet bloc surely remembers these machines :)

http://img.interia.pl/biznes/nimg/1/k/Woda_saturatora_534387...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Saturato...

usaphp• 11 years ago

It's called "Гастроном" not "Гастраном"

austenallred• 11 years ago

For what it's worth, that's how a lot of people get their kvas/milk today in eastern Ukraine. At least in the smaller cities I lived in (Gorlovka, Makyevka).

brc4• 11 years ago

So I'm genuinely curious - what's your attitude towards socialism and communism now?

da022• 11 years ago

Did you see the abacus being used in "stores" or restaurants back then? John Stossel visited a govt restaurant back then and the waiters were lazy even when the cameras were around. I do remember reading that many people who fled East Germany wanted to go back. I'm guessing it was mainly adults. One couple who left Soviet Russia mentioned on a daytime talk show the one thing they did not like about the US was the higher taxes. (Book: For Good and Evil by Charles Adams)

pandaman• 11 years ago

I've seen abacus being used. Most stores sold everything over the counter (as opposed to pick-stuff-up-and-bring-to-the-register-yourself, which was called "Self-service store") but often there has not been a cash register behind the counter. In order to buy something you had to stand in line to the counter, ask the clerk for the goods you wanted to buy and the clerk would put them aside and tell you the total price, then you had to go to the cash register line and pay the price to the cashier, then come back with the receipt to the clerk (they'd allow you to cut in the line for this) and pick up your purchase. In big stores there were multiple counters so you would get all the receipts at once by telling the counter's numbers and prices to the cashier.

Cashiers usually did not have to use an abacus since the cash register worked as a calculator but the clerk had to calculate the price of your purchase and for that she often used an abacus though some stores had an electronic calculator at the counter.

The whole system was very bizarre. I am not sure why they had to do this. One theory was that it was to prevent people who were handling food items at the counter from touching money but this also happened in the stores that sold non-edible goods. They did minimize the number of the cash registers I imagine, since one register could be shared between multiple counters. Could be easier to account for fewer registers?

dsmolovich• 11 years ago

Bananas were a common good sold in Moscow back in 80-s. Every time my grandpa was on his business trip to Moscow he brought a bunch of them. Green, but in a few days they go yellow and sweet enough to eat.

Lines formed nowadays for buying a newer version of iPhone remind me those days back in USSR. No kidding. :)

tinbad2• 11 years ago

They got more common over time indeed, but most things you could buy abroad just weren't available. Mostly tropical fruits and vegetables that wouldn't grow in most of Russia and since there was little import of anything... I remember tasting Kiwis for the first time after we moved to Europe.

As far as standing in line for the latest iPhone: no thank you indeed, been there done that :)

rokhayakebe2• 11 years ago

Oh man, I laughed at your story. I am amazed at how you are able to find irony in such a tough moment. Or perhaps kids are just able to enjoy even the smallest things.

This is definitely a story to tell (someday) your kids and grandkids during summer breaks, around the fireplace.

Thanks for sharing.

shas3• 11 years ago

Growing up in not-quite-communist-just-socialist India, we had 'ration shops' (they probably still exist in rural India). Similar principle, but most people used it for optimizing their budgets- buy certain things at ration shops and other things at privately owned grocery stores/farmers markets. For poorer people, ration stores were a very useful way of saving money. I think kerosene, which is a fuel used by low-income sections of the population is still rationed in this manner. It is not uncommon to find lines of people at parked trucks towing kerosene tanks with their ration cards and plastic containers for filling up with kerosene.

'Ration cards' were even the main form of government identification till they opened up the economy, streamlined tax, etc. in the 1990s. They still are, for older people and in rural areas.

kome• 11 years ago

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

ilaksh2• 11 years ago

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.

digi_owl• 11 years ago

On that note, if one go back to old guy Marx we find that he was no fan of centralization. His thinking was towards workers owning the factory they worked at.

Then again he also apparently had himself talked in circles to make his findings fit the labor theory of value.

Still, while mostly we hear about worker exploitation etc he did dial in on the issue of debt and banking. And how there was a second struggle between industrial capitalists and financial capitalists.

From that an later sources it may well help to think about a economy as a systems of flows. Goods in one direction, and money in the other.

And much like with all asynchronous flow systems, there has to be buffers to even out peaks and slumps.

Banks do that for the money flow via their issuance of debt.

ilaksh2• 11 years ago

Not sure what you are ultimately aiming at but although flows is a good way to think of traditional economics, economics as commonly understood is fundamentally flawed and unable to serve the purposes it is supposed to.

Effectively the money flow regulates ALL aspects of our society. The problem with this is that its like doing medical science where the only aspect of the body anyone really understands is the cardiovascular system.

We need to integrate more physical and social sciences and better values into our economic systems.

The moneyflow religion must be converted somehow into a dynamic technological decentralized automated system incorporating data and feedback loops ensuring human and environmental health. And this needs to enable freedom and the ability to evolve.

But elitist VC or technocratic engineers rationalizing the flawed, limited belief system around the one-dimensional money system is not constructive.

obrero2• 11 years ago

Then again he also apparently had himself talked in circles to make his findings fit the labor theory of value.

And what are the record and movie companies imploring us with, when they say we shouldn't copy ("pirate") songs, movies or software? They say that the value of the product came from the work of the artists or programmers, and they deserve to be paid for their efforts. Well what is that but the labor theory of value?

Even corporate America has cast off the subjective theory of value. The labor theory of value was and is correct, but more and more we see things with a new form. A commodity used to be a scarce thing, but nowadays people increasingly create "commodities" which once built are infinitely reproducible for almost no cost, or actually no cost. To where it is not even a commodity any more. So even Marx's theory of the 19th century commodity is upended. Not only that - these new commodities are reusable - from hiphop artists sampling older songs, to developers reusing components. Production is changing, so theories of production must change also. Neither the marginalists nor Marx described what is going on now and will be increasingly so. Although in the sense that Marx posited that production would be radically changed in the future from the 19th century factory system, in that sense he was correct.

coldtea8• 11 years ago

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).

V-26• 11 years ago

The worst thing he could say about Poland was a corrupt police.

It hardly means that this is the worst thing that could be said about Soviet-controlled Poland

Constrast with the hundrends of innocent police killings in the US

US police is notorious for its brutality, but are these killings ordered by top officials in chain of command?

If factory workers go on a strike in the US, are police troops sent in to "shoot to kill" them? They did in Poland 30 years ago, eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek

E.g. now nobody is guaranteed to have a job or a home

A guaranteed home for which you would wait 20 years :))

While earning 20 bucks a month.

For which you often couldn't even buy basic goods...

http://i.wp.pl/a/f/jpeg/22380/kolejka_prl_internauta_550.jpe...

http://i.wp.pl/a/f/jpeg/23333/puste_haki_550.jpeg

^ Equality.

stretchwithme4• 11 years ago

Fortunately, there a few of these paradises still available.

Productivity and creativity vary a great deal. It is only fair that compensation varies a great deal too.

We have systems to day that make it possible to deliver value to millions of people. Those who create and make use of those systems are the ones creating that value.

Those who do not don't have some inherent right to what others have produced. But they do get a great many things for a lot less money because of those technologies. And many things that wouldn't exist at all without them.

Which is why even the poor are better off escaping from communism and the foot traffic usually indicates that.

blumkvist• 11 years ago

Are you seriously suggesting that people living in the US have it worse than in the communist bloc?

x00546• 11 years ago

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.

hga• 11 years ago

Echoing others, the go-to source for democide tabulates an estimated 10,000 to 54,000 Poles killed by their government in the 1948 to 1987 period.

ericd• 11 years ago

I think you're forgetting the other bad things he mentioned - having to wait in line all day for the chance to get some bread, for example.

twqqis• 11 years ago

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...

idlewords• 11 years ago

You are missing out. It's a stressful experience but it will change your life.

ews• 11 years ago

I am in my fourth country, and I can't recommend traveling and especially living in a different country with a very different culture enough.

goodcanadian• 11 years ago

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.

dman2• 11 years ago

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

pixelcort• 11 years ago

It's hard to explain, but it helps get perspective of your own country more.

It's been two years now and I'm still learning new things about my own country as well as the rest of the world. (American in Japan)

rokhayakebe2• 11 years ago

Please, do it. Even if it is for just one year. Costa Rica, I hear, is a great place and you can live very comfortably for a modest cost, and it is close to the States (if you are in America).

I moved from my country to the states a few 15 years ago; I cannot imagine my life otherwise. I would move again to another country if the conditions are right (and the conditions are not even much).

rmchugh• 11 years ago

Sweet story.

V-26• 11 years ago

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).

stretchwithme4• 11 years ago

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

Maybe that Citroën has a flux capacitor!

jacquesm5• 11 years ago

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.

odiroot• 11 years ago

There was also a big issue of huge cooperation of the clergy. Don't know the concrete numbers but Anne Applebaum explains it in her "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe".

Our catholic church was the most penetrated one in the whole Warsaw pact.

This means people literally didn't have anyone to trust. Just try to imagine that. Three generations of people shaped by this feeling, ending up completely paranoid or indifferent/escapist.

stretchwithme4• 11 years ago

Great story, Jacques.

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

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.

V-26• 11 years ago

Of course you're right, but then again I believe it was obligatory by law to be employed somewhere.

Those who weren't used to be considered "social parasites" (official terminology, see eg. http://www.zielona-gora.po.gov.pl/index.php?id=36&ida=3790)

Now, whether or how this law was actually enforced is another matter, but at the very least not having a "normal" source of income was frowned upon, so I imagine already standing out as a foreigner you might prefer to keep a straight record.

jacquesm5• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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.

ajuc• 11 years ago

He would have to change on the black market, though, a little risky if you don't know Polish. The official rate was much worse. But yeah, the rate was absurd, especially when the inflation kicked in in late 80s.

My father worked for a few months as a farmer in Austria, and paid back 30-years mortgage for that money.

ekr• 11 years ago

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

jacquesm5• 11 years ago

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

_mgr2• 11 years ago

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.

krallja• 11 years ago

It's from 2014, and by an infamous HNer, so you've almost certainly had a chance to read it before.

bernardom• 11 years ago

It's even weirder clicking on the story, thinking "wait, I remember this," and then reading your name on the intro :-)

(Thanks again for writing this up, Jacques!)

viraptor2• 11 years ago

I can understand it. Moved out around 9 years ago and I really wouldn't go back for a longer period. Tech jobs I see are not that exciting, unless you work in some startup-like company. (although it got way better in the last few years, can't deny this) And there are just so many things I see every time I go back, that I don't want to experience in normal life. If you're successful after moving and don't have strong family/friends ties, it's hard to find good reasons to go back.

limaoscarjuliet2• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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

fapjacks• 11 years ago

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.

limaoscarjuliet2• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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/ for a movement that's trying to roll this back, with some success.

tallanvor• 11 years ago

The way you played wasn't much different than how I played growing up in the US less than 30 years ago. After school we'd be outside riding bikes or playing games with friends, often until dusk. We mostly stayed on the block, but our parents were fine with us wandering as long as we stayed in the neighborhood and didn't cross any of the busy streets.

I still don't understand the fear that's gripped much of the western world about not letting kids go play outside by themselves.

cafard• 11 years ago

A repost, but a charming story.

A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland (2014)

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