Renata

🚨PART 1: Life under communism/socialism rule. Growing up during the communist era in Poland. I saw the Polish People's Republic being shaped and changed daily to a different more limited life. It affected social behavior, and the psychology of millions of Polish people. Poland and across the Eastern Bloc was a daily grind of scarcity, surveillance, and lost agency that turned ordinary existence into a series of humiliating calculations. Central planning eliminated price signals, so factories and farms could only produced what communistic bureaucrats ordered rather than what people needed. The result was a permanent shortage of food, other daily essentials, labor and extremely bad economy. Stores were routinely stripped bare. Iconic memories from the 1970s–80s include entire shops stocked with nothing but vinegar and tea. I know that many of you today can even imagine how it felt being in that situation. Basic goods—meat, butter, flour, sugar, toilet paper, soap, shoes, even matches—were either absent or available only sporadically via “rzuty” (sudden deliveries that triggered stampedes). By the early 1980s, ration cards (kartki) covered meat, butter, flour, rice, chocolate, alcohol, cigarettes, and petrol. An average adult might be allotted roughly 2.5–4 kg of meat and meat products per month (miners got more, office workers less), but even that was theoretical: high-quality cuts were severely limited (often only ~400 g), lower-grade meat, offal, and processed items made up the rest, and shops frequently ran out anyway. People spent hours or days in queues; some estimates put average daily queue time at around three hours. Informal “queue committees” kept lists, and retirees or children could be hired as stand-ins. Money itself became nearly useless when there was nothing to buy. Housing was another long wait—often years or a decade-plus for a small apartment in a prefabricated block, frequently shared with many family members or completely overcrowded. Getting a private landline 📞 phone could take up to ~ 20 years. Cars, appliances, and decent clothing required connections (“dojścia”), bribes, or the black market. Special hard-currency stores like Pewex existed for the elite and those who may have dollars; everyone else made with poor-quality substitutes. Freedom was tightly constrained and limited to almost none. Travel aboard required rare passports and exit permissions. Travel from city to city required special permission from authorities. Media, books, and education were censored. The secret police (SB) and a network of informers created a climate of caution—neighbors reported neighbors. By the end of 1978 my father was killed by them. He was only 38 years old. He didn’t wanted to become a communist so he was killed on the sidewalk walking home. I was 9. Three years later in the middle of the night my mother left me and my younger brother behind in this big city. She escaped to America. Every day I continue to live by myself and making sure that my brother and I are safe. We went to school every day and pretend that our mom is at home. I learn how to cook from whatever I could get at the vegetable market, because stores were always empty by the time I got home from school. One day in the morning I woke up to the news that Poland was under martial law (December 1981–1983), and everything intensified: curfews (often 10 p.m.–6 a.m.) no one was allowed outside their apartments or house, sealed borders and no travel outside the country. Internment of thousands of Freedom Solidarity activists, militarized workplaces, restricted intercity travel, and suspended civil liberties. Official propaganda still claimed record harvests and full employment while shelves stayed empty and people pretended to work at idle factories. State television and newspapers offered heavily filtered propaganda. Phones were frequently tapped, public gatherings were restricted, and….