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In that case, try Poland. It was destroyed very thoroughly and methodically, with all the famous German attention to detail, so to say. And the subsequent occup
by inglor_cz 4y ago
In that case, try Poland. It was destroyed very thoroughly and methodically, with all the famous German attention to detail, so to say. And the subsequent occupation by the Soviets didn't help either.
Looking at contemporary Poland, one would hardly believe that the country was a heap of ruins and dead bodies mere three generations ago.
- epolanski 4y ago> Soviets didn't help either They literally built everything after the war and transformed Poland in a country where no one was jobless or homeless a decade after ww2. Socialism was a godsend (socially and economically) in after-war Poland and so was getting rid of it 4 decades later and later joining the EU.
- superchroma 4y agomaybe godsend is too strong a term for a repressive, corrupt military occupation that only ended in 1992.
- epolanski 4y agoWe have never had a soviet military occupation. You're thinking about Hungary and Czech Republic.
- inglor_cz 4y agoI grew up next to the Polish border. In the 80s, the grocery stores were literally empty and everything had to be bought on the black market. In a country that is fairly agriculturally productive no less. Don't lecture me on "socialism being a godsend". I saw it with my own eyes. It was a dirty, suffocating, ossified structure where prosperity was a crime, and so was any freedom.
- epolanski 4y agoMan I'm Polish, grocery stores have never been empty. We had martial law between 81 and 83 which made life difficult, as you can imagine a martial law can do, but no one was starving.
- inglor_cz 4y agoI visited places like Cieszyn, Katowice and Sosnowiec when I was a kid, and anything beyond the most basic things had to be bought on the black market. You could have bread and milk in the official grocery stores, as long as you were willing to rise early and stand in queue. By 10 am, already sold out. Buying meat, IIRC, was already somewhat of a challenge. The authorities tried to "re-educate" people towards canned fish. But the black markets were huge. Impressively huge. You could buy a lot of stuff there, plus sometimes peddlers went door-to-door selling stuff from their backpacks.
- epolanski 4y agoYes, it's true. Meat has always been highly trafficked on the black market. Queues existed, this is also true, but again, those were limited to certain rare periods.