Hi from Poland. For the January theme we need to talk about historical events, so I will tell you a bit more about communism in Poland. Poland was called "La république populaire de Pologne" during which the country was governed by a Marxist-Leninist regime, dominated by the Polish United Workers' Party. After the second world war, as you know, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia won. The whole of Europe was destroyed. Poland was very affected after the Shoah and the extermination of the Jews, 80% of the capital was destroyed following the Warsaw uprising, and the population had decreased enormously.
The 1945 Yalta conference determined how Europe reconstruction should be organized: Western Europe under American influence and Eastern Europe under Soviet influence. The communism present in Russia was installed in Poland and in Eastern Europe.
What is communism? It's a regime that aims to bring equality between all citizens and everyone gets the same salary which is supposed to be enough to purchase what people need. The population needs are planed by the state and produced in state owned companies. But what is very complex for the state is to define the exact needs of the people. In this regime everyone has the same things, so everyone is the same and there is no freedom to be different. During those years, life was very hard. Very little food compared to the habitants' needs, poverty, the apartments were very small, difficult to earn money, the inhabitants lacked everything: food, toilet paper, cars, meat too… The buildings were very big, but with very small apartments inside and their facades were all the same. Even today we can find these buildings in some districts of Warsaw. After many years under this regime, people were more and more fed up. There was no freedom, there was a lack of everything, no positive things.
In the city of Gdańsk in Poland, Lech Wałęsa set up the Solidarność movement on August 30, 1980, so that Poles could rebel. This revolt was peaceful, without weapons, without violence, just people demonstrating for an important cause. Thanks to him, Poland was freed from communism. For this act, Lech Wałęsa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and was elected president of Poland in 1990. Solidarnosc was at the root of the fight in Europe against communism that really came to an end in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall. So this is communism in Poland. I hope you have learned more about this hugely important period to understand.
- Clémence Palanque - Poland
Lech Wałęsa (with logo of the movement Solidarność in the background)