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this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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Mhm. I get that your country is hostile to the world and its own citizens. I do. But that doesn't make Stalin - or any era USSR - good. This dichotomy of white vs black, good vs evil is the most USian brainwashing that is afflicted on your people. From your post I can see you preemptively dismiss any critisizm or argument and while you said MLs don't idealise Stalin, it seems that you do.
I'm from Poland. To us, to a country betrayed by the Allies and sold to Stalin, their occupation did not bring prosperity, or equality, nor socialism. We were systematically robbed by the USSR from the wealth, intellect and industry (as noted by then governments and listed as a plea for USSR to stop), and even lives. We were made to take loans to invest in the Empire, while staying a satelite country and tying our planned economy to better native Russian territories. We did call then the Red Army - Red Locust. You need to realise that when you glorify it, you automatically dismiss our traumatic past. It is like getting told by a stupid child that if we're hungry we should eat cake.
Since USA wages war outside its territory and was never invaded nor conquered, you might not know that trauma - especially from war and being a conquered nation, worse nation - is transgenerational https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma
Were there people who thrived under USSR occupation? Yes, but they are thriving currently too, both politicians and capitalist leeches. Did Poland progress under the occupation? Yes, like every damn other country in Europe. We would progress more as free people, no historian thinks differently.
When I read your comments I can't not see you as anything else than a guilt feeling nepo baby. Or at least someone so privileged, that they never ever thought about other people lives outside of statistics. An empty headed academic.
Tl; dr; the revolution was made into abomination of itself and claiming otherwise is blindness
The USSR was good based on its own progressive merits.
I don't.
I've spoken to people from Poland that have the opposite to say. The fall of socialism in Poland brought a dramatic collapse in any kind of left, which is why Poland is so far-right today.
Again, I've heard much the opposite. That's why anecdotes are terrible measures of truth. The collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe brought skyrocketing poverty rates, prostitutuon, drug abuse, homelessness, and 7 million excess deaths.
I'm aware.
And yet Poland is now in a far-right spiral with far greater disparity.
Cool story, you know nothing about me. Believe it or not, statistics and historical fact do outweigh simple anecdote, and the idea that I have never thought about people's lives outside of statistics is deeply wrong.
Splitting this to a separate comment because it was too long:
I mean dude, not even close. Polish leftist parties were antiworker from the 90s. Anything further left was dismissed as "USSR was saying the same lies". Fool me once kind of thing.
Add to that the short time where there was upwards mobility in the country when it first became "capitalists", as well as fhe fact that in the past 20 years median personal real wealth grew.
Yup. The current generation is seeing that the wealth is unequally distributed (1% owns 45% of wealth), as well as all those rentier leeches, banks making record profits year after year, and the Facebook/Tiktok ( or generally USA right wing) propaganda is turning like 10% into MAGA-style idiots, and the rest is also slowly radicalizing. We do see that in the below 35 age group the left-leaning is still strongest, but the PIS and Konfederacja are following Repulican party strategies and gaining tracktion.
So in other words, the far-right used the standard red-scare playbook to purge communists and socialists, and now Poland has immense disparity and is entirely controlled by the far-right.
No, don't hyperbolize. This isn't your narrative.
No. It was everyone in the free Poland. We were rebelling constantly under USSR occupation.
No. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=PL&start=1985 But we do see foreign corporations leeching from us and actively enshittifying. The home ownership rate is decreasing.
That depends what you mean by far right. I'd call the current political landscape of Poland as right-centrist PO in coalition with centrists (the rest of the coalition) vs (oppositon) right-centrist PiS with (growing) republican-clone Konfederacja
No, it was not "everyone in the free Poland." Many Polish people opposed the dissolution of socialism. Further, disparity in Poland is high, and the foreign companies plundering Poland is a direct consequence of the dissolution of socialism, purging of the left, and the dominance of the far-right.
??? We're famously the only country in the EU that wasn't affected by it. Please be critical of what you read.
What a garbage article you sent here.
I literally send you a credible source that shows its similar to 1985 year. Are you saying that it was high during USSR occupation or ignoring the source?
What anecdote? I've made no anecdotes? The only person mentioning any anecdotes is you, e.g.
Regarding USSR stealing industry:
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grabie%C5%BC_i_przejmowanie_mienia_poniemieckiego_na_Ziemiach_Odzyskanych#%3A%7E%3Atext=Grabie%C5%BC+i+przejmowanie+mienia+poniemieckiego+na+Ziemiach+Odzyskanych+%E2%80%93+Wikipedia%2C+wolna+encyklopedia
(I'm sorry wo don't really translate that to English). But you can try to Google for sources in English.
You might've spoken to people who remember the late 80's fondly. Not 50-70s. Or ZOMO (secret terror police) or similar, they always had privileged lives.
Unless you were in the Party, Army or Zomo, life was not roses at all, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_October
Poland is not Eastern Europe
prostitutuon, drug abuse, homelessness <- you might be confusing that with what is common in the USA.
Excess deaths https://wol.iza.org/articles/mortality-crisis-in-transition-economies/long#%3A%7E%3Atext=Features+of+the+transition+mortality%2Climited+changes+in+family+stability.
skyrocketing poverty rates
Not really, no? After we detached from the ZSSR everything had to be restarted and the first decade was hard. We had to start from little, figure out export routes, rebuild a damn lot of industries etc? We were economy attached and made dependant on USSR, how could the split not be hard?
Poland, prior to socialism, was 2/3rds controlled by foreign capital, and was severely lagging behind the rest of Europe industrially. By 1948, Poland's industrial output was 153% of what it had been in 1938. Post-war, the economy grew over 300% from 1945 to 1948.
In the 1930s, Polish life expectancy was ~46 years old. After the introduction of socialism, and improved healthcare, it reached 70. Before socialism, literacy rates were ~80% in urban areas and ~30% in rural areas. With socialism, total literacy rates were 98%. With socialism came legalized abortion and greatly expanded women's rights.
The dissolution of socialism, as I said, brought ~7 million deaths around the world. You didn't dispute that, the argument seems to be on your end that these were necessary for economic growth. What Poland could have done is remain socialist.
Everything else tomorrow, its 1am
I literally added a link it was 8400. You gave no sources. Trust me bro is not a source.
7.7 million excess deaths in the first year. Stop minimizing millions of deaths.
Why did you send me a link to https://www.academia.edu/1072631/Review_Red_Plenty_by_Francis_Spufford review of Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, where reviewer names the genre science-fiction? The fuck?
Because Paul Cockshott is an economist, and references real facts in his review. Just what I had on hand. Here's a grab from the PDF:
Dude. It is a review of a fictional book with no sources attached. How do I know it's fiction? Author says so on Goodreads.
We were talking about Poland being conquered by the USSR and that it was better without it. The excess Russian deaths you're quoting - if they were true and not from a fiction book - still wouldn't matter for Poland being better off without USSR? Do you see the distinction between those 2? One is USSR, the other is Poland, and the excess deaths (I linked before) in Poland were 8400?
The review is of a fictionalized socialist scenario. The author of the review is an economist that opposes the fictional allegories. This isn't complicated.
The source is not Red Plenty, which is fiction. The source is the economist Paul Cockshott's review of Red Plenty, which makes mistakes in its presentation of alt-history. This is not a difficult concept to grasp. Further, the point about the dissolution of the USSR causing deaths everywhere holds true, you see the 8400 people that died due to abandoning socialism as "necessary costs."
My bad. Still no sources for his claims in the review? Just a graph.
If you think that excessive deaths at the level of 8400 can be attributed to anything, you're wrong. I mean how would you even attribute them? The winter was cold, it could've been flu.
Btw. USSR flavour of socialism was nationalism/imperialism with extra steps. Forcing subjected satellite states to produce in favour of the Russia.