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“Communism doesn’t work”
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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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And I'm from Poland. The government reversed the decision to collectivize agricultural land in 1956, lowering the amount of state owned farms from 10000 to 1500 after Bierut died.
By 1996, when the last one was privatized, there were roughly 2000 of them at the start of the campaign in 1992 with a total of about 3750 thousands of hectares of a (current) total of 14630 - a quarter of farmland in the country.
Yet Poland, with its mostly private agriculture, was known for the worst supply situation in the Eastern Bloc. Gotta love the hand of the market, especially since the west imposed high interest rates on loans taken in the 70s (as countries do between each other). The government of the 90s, deciding that it was going to get richer faster with the market rather than a planned economy it was barely wanting to have it (as the "communists" of the PZPR were largely just nationalists), went through market reforms and what happened? Prices shot up, poverty increased to dramatic amounts, unemployment was over 20% for a part of the 90s (not even including those who had given up on looking for a job), organized crime started roaming the streets and doing stuff like killing mom's childhood friends... and of course the farmlands themselves, since this is the topic, became desolate towns with antisemitic graffiti, a 60+ year old average age and nothing going on for them to this day.
But you probably think this is cool and good. After all, the people there can work their asses off at more than 40h/week at a workplace they have even less say in than in the west, to pay German prices for goods of a quality you'd find in the bargain bin here, a food that will kill you over time, and come back home to froth at the mouth about how the "LGBT Lobby" is trying to turn their kids gay while then going on rants against the oh so free government and opposition because they're "all thieves" anyway... and against foreigners. After all, they're only following the logic of the market and doing what the west wants of them (i.e. keep the wages low and profits high).
Dude, I talked about (1) how they stole a small piece of land barely enough to feed a family and (2) the terror regime of the communist era. Then you starter rambling about all the foreign intervention.
In my original post I didn't say that it wasn't there. I just talked about the internal issues of communist Romania (and also USSR) which mostly was point 2. The state of constant fear that people lived in.
If you think that it was all good. Why does your country hate Russia so much? Do you think that the Russians sang lullabies to the Romanians and that they loved them so much?
Edit: let me add more context that you avoided on purpose:
The only thing on foreign intervention in my reply is the reference to loans, which were taken by the Polish People's Republic, and indeed the Romanian Socialist Republic - the 80s were a period of austerity to repay foreign debt to continue purchasing specialized goods from the west - that is undeniable.
"Stole a Piece of Land barely enough to Feed a Family". Anecdotal evidence, one of which I have no evidence of being true or not, and is besides the point of "Communism bad, because they 'stole' my grandma's land".
"The State of Constant Fear" is also anecdotal reference, one which is even harder to verify and can be claimed just as easily as "a very large amount of people are supportive of revolution to overthrow the government because they don't go and vote"
Aha, the classic. If "Russia" (you clearly mean the USSR, but probably think modern day Russia is the same thing) is so evil and despised across the former Warsaw Pact, why is it still popular in East Germany? In Bulgaria? In Serbia? Even, before 2014, in Ukraine? And besides, what does Russia matter? Does the viability of a political ideology depends on if a state is popular around the world or not? Were that the case, Kingdoms would have been abolished centuries before the French revolution and religion would be gone by now.
"context I avoided on Purpose" No, it's nonsense you added, and a common tale told around these parts of the world. What do you think Donald Tusk, the Kaczyński brothers, Lech Wałęsa and Bronisław Komorowski, all major political figures of the post-1990 era in Poland all have in common? They were in the opposition to the PZPR. And nowadays the most common political ammunition between parties in Poland is to accuse each other of communism. This is moronic! "Oh he was in the communist party and that's why he's corrupt!" is fucking nonsense - and what's communist about market reforms, joining the EU, befriending America, like the Alliance of the Democratic Left did in Poland in the early 2000s? (and lost 3/4 of their voters after that).
Blame all the problems on socialism all you want, and I know you will, but how long will this continue? 20 years? 50 years? And you want to dig further and uncover more and more "crimes". All this'll do is find out that to expand the "Crimes" of communism, you have to go "the fascists from WW2 are innocent victims, actually"