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> 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
by V-2 11y 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).
- stretchwithme 11y agoPerhaps Jacques was actually there 30 plus years earlier than he claims :-) Maybe that Citroën has a flux capacitor!
- jacquesm 11y agoIt 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 11y agoThere 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.