Poles to knock down Reds, put up Gipper.

[mears]

I can't believe how stupid the question is. Well that's not true actually.

My question in depth for you?

 

[Dissident Junk]

I would say many more Poles starved under the Soviet system. It's just that they did it in gulags, and prisons, along with their kids - who had to eat grass because there was nothing else.

And then their kids died. And they died.

 

[exosculate]

For God's sake . . .

why should the Poles revere the Red Army? Particularly when russian soldiers under Stalin massacred most of the Polish intelligentsia in 1940 (including those radically dangerous goddamn boy scouts), and deported millions of innocent Polish civilians on the borderlands to gulags in the Archangel province?

Have you ever heard of the Polish holocaust? Of Katyn, Karkov, Mednoye, Starobelsk, Ostashkov?

Sometimes, it infuriates me just how glib and obnoxious and 'unread' - yes, 'unread' - some urbanites are.

How dare you, Joe Politix, say that as the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, that that in some way redeems the soviet system for operating its own fucking Auschwitzs in Siberia.

Some of the comments on this thread make me sick.

You fucking idiots.

I hear what your saying mate - But RONNIE FUCKING REDNECK REAGAN!

 

[Dissident Junk]

Quite a few Poles may feel that Reagan never gave an order that led to half their family 'disappearing'.

So, comparing the actor and the red army, naturally Ronnie comes off best.

 

[exosculate]

Quite a few Poles may feel that Reagan never gave an order that led to half their family 'disappearing'.

So, comparing the actor and the red army, naturally Ronnie comes off best.

A mouldy sock would come off better.

 

[Dissident Junk]

Yes, but the mouldy sock is not the choice.

I very much suspect that given the choice of a) red army, b) Reagan, c) mouldy sock, d) piece of cheese, most Poles would have gone for 'sock vs cheese'. But no-one asked them, so the whole concept is utterly redundant.

 

[exosculate]

Yes, but the mouldy sock is not the choice.

I very much suspect that given the choice of a) red army, b) Reagan, c) mouldy sock, d) piece of cheese, most Poles would have gone for 'sock vs cheese'. But no-one asked them, so the whole concept is utterly redundant.

I'm with ya.

p.s - The first enigma code crackers (who were Polish) or something like that might be a good choice,

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Reagan may have helped displace Stalinism in favour of neoliberalism (although this was mainly due to the colapse of the USSR because of its own internal weaknesses) but the Red Army liberated Auschwitz and that is far more worthy of tribute in my opinion.

Sure they threw out the nazis, but then they wouldn't leave for fifty years. They sort of wore out their goodwill.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Quite a lot of Russians have now come to conclusion that we shouldn't actually 'done our best' and help to destroy Warsaw but save Krakow (another polish city), help to save Prague but destroy something else etc

In other words, we should've just kicked off the nazis from Russian (and maybe Ukrainian) lands and that's it! How many Russian lives did we lose in Poland, Chechoslovakia etc and what for? Those nations should've asked Yanks for more help. No doubt loads of european cities could've been hiroshimed just as effectively as the japan ones

It was a race by the western allies to liberate as much as europe as possible, instead of letting the Russians do it, because they had an idea that Stalin would do what he did, namely set up an empire of satellite states.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Gee, no comment on Katyn from the pro-russia group. What a surprise.

Oh Joe, Where Art Thou?

 

[JoePolitix]

For God's sake . . .

why should the Poles revere the Red Army? Particularly when russian soldiers under Stalin massacred most of the Polish intelligentsia in 1940 (including those radically dangerous goddamn boy scouts), and deported millions of innocent Polish civilians on the borderlands to gulags in the Archangel province?

Have you ever heard of the Polish holocaust? Of Katyn, Karkov, Mednoye, Starobelsk, Ostashkov?

Sometimes, it infuriates me just how glib and obnoxious and 'unread' - yes, 'unread' - some urbanites are.

How dare you, Joe Politix, say that as the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, that that in some way redeems the soviet system for operating its own fucking Auschwitzs in Siberia.

Some of the comments on this thread make me sick.

You fucking idiots.

For all your condescending bluster about people being “unread” you don’t seem to have read the responses your fuming against. I never suggested that the crimes of the Red Army were inconsequential or justifiable on any level nor did I say that the Poles should revere the Red Army.

The issue in the thread is about the proposal to replace a memorial to the Red Army with one for Ronald Reagan. I opted that the Red Army’s role in the destruction of the Nazi war machine was more worthy of commemorating than Reagan’s role in the dismantling of Stalinism. I see a difference in commemorating soldiers who died in just struggles to cynical political leaders like Reagan.

Incidentally Johnny’s taking shit when he says the “Poles” what a statue of Reagan. In fact the article he links to merely mentions that a handful of anti-communist activists have sent a letter to the mayor of Katowice requesting this.

 

[nino_savatte]

Why don't you people have the courage to answer simple questions?

Like you, you mean? You're a fine one to chastise someone for avoiding questions.

 

[nino_savatte]

Really?

I've got him down there with Rentonite, although Travis is at least entertaining.

Actually, I can believe how stupid he is. No wonder he hangs out with the likes of JC and mears. Together, they form the Urban Brains Trust.

 

[nino_savatte]

Sure they threw out the nazis, but then they wouldn't leave for fifty years. They sort of wore out their goodwill.

Still peddling more narratives, Johnny? This post wouldn't be out of place in the archives of US propaganda. Have you no real thoughts of your own or must you have them uploaded into you by some central facility?

 

[Lock&Light]

Actually, I can believe how stupid he is. No wonder he hangs out with the likes of JC and mears. Together, they form the Urban Brains Trust.

I always love to see the way nino and VP so much need each other's constant support and comfort. It's almost as if they both are equally stupid, yet everyone can see that, compared to nino, VP is a cerebral giant.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Quite a lot of Russians have now come to conclusion that we shouldn't actually 'done our best' and help to destroy Warsaw but save Krakow (another polish city), help to save Prague but destroy something else etc

In other words, we should've just kicked off the nazis from Russian (and maybe Ukrainian) lands and that's it! How many Russian lives did we lose in Poland, Chechoslovakia etc and what for? Those nations should've asked Yanks for more help. No doubt loads of european cities could've been hiroshimed just as effectively as the japan ones

Not like you (the Soviet Union) would have ceded Ukraine though, is it?

Too easy to use us as a milch cow to feed the rest of the Soviet Union.

Oh, and I presume that where you say "Russians" (and "Russian lives") you do actually mean "Soviets"? Otherwise what you're saying looks somewhat Russo-centric (not that I'm surprised, Russia has often proved that the largest egos reside within the smallest minds ).

 

[ViolentPanda]

Why don't you people have the courage to answer simple questions? Do you believe the Polish system of one party communism was better than the current system?

Yes or no will do.

I will say yes, the current system is better. What say you?

As usual I say "mears, you're full of shit".

You may well live in a world where all answers are derived from "simple questions", but in my experience the world is too complex to be reduced to the cretious binary oppositions you appear enslaved to.

Oh, and nice use of the word "courage". Do you often use words you don't understand?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I would say many more Poles starved under the Soviet system. It's just that they did it in gulags, and prisons, along with their kids - who had to eat grass because there was nothing else.

And then their kids died. And they died.

I haven't actually come across much material on post-war Poland, any recommendations for reading material? I've read the usual stuff about Katyn, but very little abbout what life was actually like in Soviet Poland.

My own researches have been mostly on Ukraine, where at least the post-war system of food rationing gave people enough to eat, a better situation than we enjoyed in the 1930s when if we weren't being murdered by the Russian Bolsheviks as "kulaks" or "enemies of the revolution" we were dying in our hundreds of thousands from starvation because our grain harvests were "commandeered" "for the good of the people".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Gee, no comment on Katyn from the pro-russia group. What a surprise.

Oh Joe, Where Art Thou?

If only life were that simple.

 

[nino_savatte]

I haven't actually come across much material on post-war Poland, any recommendations for reading material? I've read the usual stuff about Katyn, but very little abbout what life was actually like in Soviet Poland.

My own researches have been mostly on Ukraine, where at least the post-war system of food rationing gave people enough to eat, a better situation than we enjoyed in the 1930s when if we weren't being murdered by the Russian Bolsheviks as "kulaks" or "enemies of the revolution" we were dying in our hundreds of thousands from starvation because our grain harvests were "commandeered" "for the good of the people".

Aye, Russia and Germany/Prussia both regarded Poland as 'theirs'. I've never seen a country's borders shift so much as those of Poland.

 

[Andy the Don]

Quite a lot of Russians have now come to conclusion that we shouldn't actually 'done our best' and help to destroy Warsaw but save Krakow (another polish city), help to save Prague but destroy something else etc

In other words, we should've just kicked off the nazis from Russian (and maybe Ukrainian) lands and that's it! How many Russian lives did we lose in Poland, Chechoslovakia etc and what for? Those nations should've asked Yanks for more help. No doubt loads of european cities could've been hiroshimed just as effectively as the japan ones

After twice being attacked from the west in the previous 30 years the Soviets wanted a buffer zone between it & the west (actually read a resurgent Germany). Hence the Soviets pushed as far & as hard as possible.
You can understand why the Poles do not like either Germany or Russia. Due to a fluke of geography they are middle of these two giants & have regularly fucked by both countries over the past five hundred year. But if any one should have a statute built for their contribution demise of soviet domination over Poland it should be Gorbachev.

 

[rekil]

Why don't you people have the courage to answer simple questions? Do you believe the Polish system of one party communism was better than the current system?

Yes or no will do.

The people who benefited most from the collapse of communism were former party apparatchiks and the church. And criminals of course. Everyone else got shafted. Eg, a teacher makes about €300 a month, the same amount as the cost of renting a small apartment in Warsaw. Hence the mass emigration and voter apathy, 40% turnout in the last parliamentary election.

I will say yes, the current system is better. What say you?

I say you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and any Polish person I know would laugh at you.

 

[nino_savatte]

Mears has taken the collapse of the communist government as a sign that all is well in Poland. It doesn't matter to him if Poles are taking advantage of their membership of the EU and leaving the country in their droves. The fact that a neo-liberal system is in place and the country has 'opened its markets' to US corporations is, in his eyes, the end of the story.

 

[Dissident Junk]

The issue in the thread is about the proposal to replace a memorial to the Red Army with one for Ronald Reagan. I opted that the Red Army’s role in the destruction of the Nazi war machine was more worthy of commemorating than Reagan’s role in the dismantling of Stalinism. I see a difference in commemorating soldiers who died in just struggles to cynical political leaders like Reagan.

You are talking of a memorial in Poland. You say so yourself.

Why on earth do you think that a memorial to the Red Army's 'role in the dismantling of the Nazi war machine (only to replace it with something just as bad, that lasted for a lot longer)' is more worthy of being commemorated in a Polish town than a statue of an American president? I very much doubt that your attitude would be shared by many Poles.

And your idea about a 'just struggle' is - well, knowing what I know about the Soviet war machine at that time - I wouldn't use the phrase 'just struggle' whatsoever.

I'd say using the opportuntity of a pact with Hitler to co-opt vast tracts of land, ethnically-cleansing it, sending thousands of children to gulags, massacring the majority of the intelligentsia of a country - including all their policemen and army officers (so when Hitler turns against you, you've stupidly destroyed any buffer force between yourself and his forces, and therefore sulk for a fortnight) - is hardly a 'just struggle'.

Who can differentiate those 'just struggle' Russian soldiers that liberated Auschwitz from those 'just struggle' russian soldiers that herded entire Polish villages onto cattle trucks in 1941? And shoved sawdust into boy scouts' mouths so they couldn't scream while they were waiting to be shot?

Do tell me Joe; I am intrigued.

 

[mears]

The people who benefited most from the collapse of communism were former party apparatchiks and the church. And criminals of course. Everyone else got shafted. Eg, a teacher makes about €300 a month, the same amount as the cost of renting a small apartment in Warsaw. Hence the mass emigration and voter apathy, 40% turnout in the last parliamentary election.


I say you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and any Polish person I know would laugh at you.

I have been to Poland - Warsaw, old city in Krakow, Pozan etc. I know the country well. You think teachers were thriving in communist poland

You think Poland was better with communist rule? You could just reply "yes" or "No"

Seriously, it is a yes or no question. Have a little pride, show some back bone. Besides I would answer any question from you.

 

[rekil]

I have been to Poland - Warsaw, old city in Krakow, Pozan etc. I know the country well. You think teachers were thriving in communist poland

If that's true then your ignorance is all the more inexcusable.

 

[lobster]

i am not sure why nobody has mentioned it, polish people find it really hard to get a tourist visa to the usa, all they want to do is visit the country and yet the us have built a us defense base in Poland, in return the polish government , which is not the polish people have decided to put a statue of a us president.

The same situation exists in the czech republic.

I would take a good presumption that the statue is done on purpose to make it look like the government have accepted the defense base agreement.

I really feel sorry for the polish.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Actually, I can believe how stupid he is. No wonder he hangs out with the likes of JC and mears.

Rentonite lives in Seattle, Mears, somewhere in the eastern US, maybe St. Paul. I live in Vancouver British Columbia.

In the real world, 'hangs out' implies actual contact with one another.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Still peddling more narratives, Johnny? This post wouldn't be out of place in the archives of US propaganda. Have you no real thoughts of your own or must you have them uploaded into you by some central facility?

Ok, I take it back; the soviets didn't stay in Poland for fifty years post WW2. My mistake.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I always love to see the way nino and VP so much need each other's constant support and comfort. It's almost as if they both are equally stupid, yet everyone can see that, compared to nino, VP is a cerebral giant.

VP at least has actual things to say from time to time.