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We had something like this in 1968 in Poland with communist propaganda condemning intelectuals and cosmpolitans and workers activists beating students on the st
by chewz 7y ago
We had something like this in 1968 in Poland with communist propaganda condemning intelectuals and cosmpolitans and workers activists beating students on the streets (like they do in HK these days).
Sztoptanski called that Dictatorship of Dishrags. Generally the best weapon against such times is irony and a sense of humor and grotesque.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Szpota%C5%84ski https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Szpota%C5%84ski
- madez 7y agoAfter reading that article, I'm happy for the polish to live in a better state now, and I immediately started to think where people are now oppressed by their government whenever they are deemed 'harmful to the nation', and China came to my mind, and not just for the Chinese state cooperating with the organized crimes triads to attack protesters in Hong Kong. The situation there is different for now, because China is economically developing, so that may stabilize the government, but eventually China will get rid of its oppressive regime. I wonder when and how.
- blfr 7y agoWe weren't really oppressed by our government. The March events, as they're know here, were mostly homegrown commies pushing out the Jewish wing of the party with decent people getting caught in the purge and following protests. But it was all happening with two hundred thousand Soviet soldiers stationed in the country. The communist government wouldn't have lasted a month without the Soviet support. The situation is different because China is not being occupied by a foreign power. Neither is Turkey.
- madez 7y agoGiven that history, are there common opinions and feelings in Poland regarding Russias ongoing war with Ukraine?
- blfr 7y agoI don't know anyone who would support Russia in that conflict but Ukraine itself isn't very popular with many due to unresolved Volhynia massacres[1]. Mostly though people just don't care about a low intensity war that feels far away (even if it isn't). [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia...
- TeMPOraL 7y agoMe, my relatives and some people I know were scared during the first weeks of the invasion, as we feared Russia will steamroll through Ukraine and we'll suddenly find ourselves facing tanks on the eastern border. Over time, we realized that the Russians aren't even trying to advance too far past Crimea, so as the whole thing fell off the media cycle, we all slowly forgot about it over the years.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- motohagiography 7y agoRemarkable thing about satire is that it truly is the province of the underdog. The contempt people had for their communist rulers was funny ("kicking up"), but the humour would not work if they used the same caricatures downward at the same kind of coarse people ("kicking down"). The irony of the communists was that by being the revolutionary people, "kicking up" became an attack on their "down," identity.
- hindsightbias 7y agoKundera’s The Joke comes to mind.
- petre 7y agoSimilar things happened in other Soviet occupied countries that would become part of the Eastern Block. Otherwise transplanting a political and ideological system from the USSR wouldn't have worked, not without replacing the then current intelligentsia with a new one, ideologically aligned with the USSR. I'm always thankful to the Polish because they sparked the 1989 revolutions with Lech Wałęsa's Solidarność movement.