5 ms·

It was similar in Poland, but fortunately not all interesting records were gone, so in fact a lot of the scum got exposed.

jgilias 6y ago
I think the difference is probably in the fact that Poland was a USSR satellite nation, much like DDR, while in Latvia after occupation they didn't set up a puppet state, but directly integrated us into the USSR. The implication here is that the regime secret services in Latvia not just collaborated extensively with Moscow, but were in fact part of the same organization. Meaning, that it is very likely that there existed instructions for emergency situations in which the most sensitive documentation needs to be shipped to Moscow.
arethuza 6y ago
I wonder how in a situation like that you can check the authenticity of archives. It must have been tempting for the KGB to plant incriminating material once they realised they were going to lose control of an archive - though they probably didn't have a huge amount of time to do that.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  In Poland the transition happened quite quickly (the authorities barely had time to burn a lot of the documents) so I don't think there was time to do any widespread document planting. Plus, if you plant some documents they'd had to be consistent with all other records or it would be found out upon investigation (there's a special state-run institute in Poland which hires a bunch of historians who analyze those records, so it's a real possibility).
  - arethuza 6y ago
    Yeah, I can't imagine that the KGB or the local security services ever thought they would really lose control of their archives. Though I imagine there would have been some effort to pull the files on anyone they wanted to keep as an intelligence asset in the long term.
  - p_l 6y ago
    The transition was fast enough that there's reasonable suspicion that the former opposition did some document planting.
  - ajuc 6y ago
    Sadly the institute (IPN) became a political weapon for fighting between all the factions that grew from Solidarity movement (You're in bed with the communists! No - you!). These factions later became PO and PIS - the 2 biggest parties that rule Poland interchangeably since 2006. There's been some archives that were hidden for decades (for example Kazimierz Kujda or Lech Wałęsa), there's been manipulation of which exact offices require check with the archives, there were blackmails and misleading lists of "communist agents" published by politicians and journalists (lista Macierewicza, lista Wildsteina). Fun fact - mother of Kaczyński (who currently rules Poland and is famous for McCarthy-like policies and calling everybody a communist) - is in IPN lists. If they treated her like political enemies they should already declare her a public enemy/traitor/spy/etc. And just like they declare any political enemy with communists in family tree "regime's children" - that should be enough to remove Kaczyński from politics by his own logic. But they didn't (and probably correctly - lots of people were on these lists without actually being a spy, it could just mean you were considered or interesting to communist security for a variety of reasons - like being related to opposition activists, being a homosexual, a priest, having family abroad, whatever). In the end I think we should just have had full transparency since day 1, because smart people realize being in the documents doesn't prove anything without interrelated evidence, and stupid people believe it's all a huge conspiracy anyway, no matter how many proofs you show them.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      > ... and calling everybody a communist I have to admit, when I read that a pole (old enough to have firsthand experience with both) claimed that gay ideology be worse than communism, it made me reevaluate my prior estimate of how bad communism must have been in poland. https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/06/20/gay-ideology-is-worse-than-communism-says-polands-president https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/06/20/gay-ideology-is-... PS. thinking of the Solidarity poster: Amy Kane, or Helen Ramirez?
      - ajuc 6y ago
        > Amy Kane, or Helen Ramirez No idea who these people are? The only famous Solidarity poster I remember was with High Noon: https://d-pt.ppstatic.pl/k/r/1/1d/96/5cefdcae73cef_p.jpg?1559223972 https://d-pt.ppstatic.pl/k/r/1/1d/96/5cefdcae73cef_p.jpg?155... > claimed that gay ideology be worse than communism They basically believe (or pretend to - it's hard to distinguish what is paranoia and what is political calculation at this point) that are the alt-right conspiracy theories are true. Gender/feminism/lgbt is cultural marxism, Soros wants to replace Europeans with Muslims from Africa, Jews and Germans want to change history and make Poles responsible for Holocaust, LGBT is a conspiracy to destroy the church and turn our kids gay (so that these leftist pedophiles may get them), ecology is a conspiracy to destroy our economy by renewable energy equipment producers and leftists in Brussels. And besides global warming is bullshit of course. Recently government promised miners that we will mine coal till 2060 (despite having to store more than 2-years' worth of it already because our coal is much more expansive than imported coal and nobody buys it except for national powerplants that are forced to buy it :) ). Even pedophilia in Catholic church is leftist's fault because most of it is male priest to male child so they are actually members of LGBT ideology. Hard to argue with such "logic"... Sad thing is - it's not just politicians and tinfoilers, decent people start believing parts of that after years of propaganda in state media and church. Basically there's 30% who believe all of it, 10% who believe parts o it, and about 20% who don't but vote them anyway because of social spending. And it's been that way since 2015... > reevaluate my prior estimate of how bad communism must have been in poland that's the fact not many people want to speak about :) 5% of population was in the communist party. In 70s few people were protesting - economy was ok and who cares about these crazy oppositionists. Communism sucked for people who wanted to be free or cared about historic truth or wanted to have a career, or to achieve something in life without becoming a spy. But for your average person that only wanted to have a job, a flat, and a family it was OK for most of the period. So what if it killed 20 000 people that didn't wanted communism? As long as you're behaving like everybody else it's very unlikely you'll have any problems. Solidarity was formed because the regulated prices for many kinds of food went up (because they weren't sustainable with the inefficient economy).

jgilias 6y ago

I think the difference is probably in the fact that Poland was a USSR satellite nation, much like DDR, while in Latvia after occupation they didn't set up a puppet state, but directly integrated us into the USSR. The implication here is that the regime secret services in Latvia not just collaborated extensively with Moscow, but were in fact part of the same organization. Meaning, that it is very likely that there existed instructions for emergency situations in which the most sensitive documentation needs to be shipped to Moscow.

arethuza 6y ago

I wonder how in a situation like that you can check the authenticity of archives. It must have been tempting for the KGB to plant incriminating material once they realised they were going to lose control of an archive - though they probably didn't have a huge amount of time to do that.

burntoutfire 6y ago
In Poland the transition happened quite quickly (the authorities barely had time to burn a lot of the documents) so I don't think there was time to do any widespread document planting. Plus, if you plant some documents they'd had to be consistent with all other records or it would be found out upon investigation (there's a special state-run institute in Poland which hires a bunch of historians who analyze those records, so it's a real possibility).
- arethuza 6y ago
  Yeah, I can't imagine that the KGB or the local security services ever thought they would really lose control of their archives. Though I imagine there would have been some effort to pull the files on anyone they wanted to keep as an intelligence asset in the long term.
- p_l 6y ago
  The transition was fast enough that there's reasonable suspicion that the former opposition did some document planting.
- ajuc 6y ago
  Sadly the institute (IPN) became a political weapon for fighting between all the factions that grew from Solidarity movement (You're in bed with the communists! No - you!). These factions later became PO and PIS - the 2 biggest parties that rule Poland interchangeably since 2006. There's been some archives that were hidden for decades (for example Kazimierz Kujda or Lech Wałęsa), there's been manipulation of which exact offices require check with the archives, there were blackmails and misleading lists of "communist agents" published by politicians and journalists (lista Macierewicza, lista Wildsteina). Fun fact - mother of Kaczyński (who currently rules Poland and is famous for McCarthy-like policies and calling everybody a communist) - is in IPN lists. If they treated her like political enemies they should already declare her a public enemy/traitor/spy/etc. And just like they declare any political enemy with communists in family tree "regime's children" - that should be enough to remove Kaczyński from politics by his own logic. But they didn't (and probably correctly - lots of people were on these lists without actually being a spy, it could just mean you were considered or interesting to communist security for a variety of reasons - like being related to opposition activists, being a homosexual, a priest, having family abroad, whatever). In the end I think we should just have had full transparency since day 1, because smart people realize being in the documents doesn't prove anything without interrelated evidence, and stupid people believe it's all a huge conspiracy anyway, no matter how many proofs you show them.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    > ... and calling everybody a communist I have to admit, when I read that a pole (old enough to have firsthand experience with both) claimed that gay ideology be worse than communism, it made me reevaluate my prior estimate of how bad communism must have been in poland. https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/06/20/gay-ideology-is-worse-than-communism-says-polands-president https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/06/20/gay-ideology-is-... PS. thinking of the Solidarity poster: Amy Kane, or Helen Ramirez?
    - ajuc 6y ago
      > Amy Kane, or Helen Ramirez No idea who these people are? The only famous Solidarity poster I remember was with High Noon: https://d-pt.ppstatic.pl/k/r/1/1d/96/5cefdcae73cef_p.jpg?1559223972 https://d-pt.ppstatic.pl/k/r/1/1d/96/5cefdcae73cef_p.jpg?155... > claimed that gay ideology be worse than communism They basically believe (or pretend to - it's hard to distinguish what is paranoia and what is political calculation at this point) that are the alt-right conspiracy theories are true. Gender/feminism/lgbt is cultural marxism, Soros wants to replace Europeans with Muslims from Africa, Jews and Germans want to change history and make Poles responsible for Holocaust, LGBT is a conspiracy to destroy the church and turn our kids gay (so that these leftist pedophiles may get them), ecology is a conspiracy to destroy our economy by renewable energy equipment producers and leftists in Brussels. And besides global warming is bullshit of course. Recently government promised miners that we will mine coal till 2060 (despite having to store more than 2-years' worth of it already because our coal is much more expansive than imported coal and nobody buys it except for national powerplants that are forced to buy it :) ). Even pedophilia in Catholic church is leftist's fault because most of it is male priest to male child so they are actually members of LGBT ideology. Hard to argue with such "logic"... Sad thing is - it's not just politicians and tinfoilers, decent people start believing parts of that after years of propaganda in state media and church. Basically there's 30% who believe all of it, 10% who believe parts o it, and about 20% who don't but vote them anyway because of social spending. And it's been that way since 2015... > reevaluate my prior estimate of how bad communism must have been in poland that's the fact not many people want to speak about :) 5% of population was in the communist party. In 70s few people were protesting - economy was ok and who cares about these crazy oppositionists. Communism sucked for people who wanted to be free or cared about historic truth or wanted to have a career, or to achieve something in life without becoming a spy. But for your average person that only wanted to have a job, a flat, and a family it was OK for most of the period. So what if it killed 20 000 people that didn't wanted communism? As long as you're behaving like everybody else it's very unlikely you'll have any problems. Solidarity was formed because the regulated prices for many kinds of food went up (because they weren't sustainable with the inefficient economy).