Underdog Nation A (start of a) heritage project by Julka
What’s the project about? This project is about looking for patterns in the contemporary Polish society, about recognizing the influence of hundreds of years of oppression on how this society operates now. The main focus in this project is on the period between 1945 and 1989, seeing as I have family that has lived in this period in time and I can interview them about it and discuss it with them. I will only be interviewing the women in my family. I want to put the spotlight on them, because for years they have been living in the shadow of their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. Constantly underestimated and talked over. I want to do it in this medium (interview), because usually in the portrayal of this period, facts stand as the main framework of the story, and if there is some focus on emotions the protagonist is always a man. I want to look at the subjective story of an individual. The way that women in my family perceived that time in their life, how they processed it and how they look at it in retrospect, now. I find that this approach helps me understand what we think of as history, as the past. And I want to understand so I can make sense of what is happening in Poland right now. If it helps me, then maybe there are some people that will find it helpful as well. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
A short history lesson 1795- 1918 Poland’s partition ~ there is no independent Polish state, it is divided between Prussia (modern Germany), Austria and Russia 1918 - 1939 Interwar period ~ II Rzeczpospolita Polska ~ Poland is independent 1939 - 1945 German occupation 1945 - 1989 Polish People’s Republic ~ Poland is not a part of USSR but is under Soviet influence 1989 - 0000 III Rzeczpospolita Polska ~ Poland is independent again
How I started
The questions I prepared
Interview with my mum How would you define how communism worked in practice, for you? […] Marysia: …because…so for me in practice it meant that going abroad and seeing the west wasn’t possible, right? So look, you could travel to East Germany [laughing] or to Russia or somewhere, but you couldn’t get to the real world and this world was only known through some messages, maybe there was something on TV already, maybe not yet actually, through stories, through packages, because there were these packages that people sent from abroad with all that colourful stuff. That was one thing, another thing was that, you also had that, that jump, that there was nothing in stores really, oh, and this window to the world was Pewex, right? That was the only thing that showed you what was maybe sold abroad. So that. At my house we didn’t really, you know, battle communism, in a sense that, we didn’t organize underground education or printing of flyers, nothing like that. And the queues, queues for everything, that’s what I remember, you stand in the queue and there is nothing [in stores]. [both laugh] Marysia: And the rationing, you couldn’t buy more than, for example, two blocks of butter if they already bought the butter. The whole family had to stand in line and each buy one block of butter. Julka: Couldn’t just one person get butter for the whole family? Marysia: No, well one person could maybe…there were restrictions, so you could get maybe one or two blocks of butter but not more than that. Absurdities like that. […]
Interview with my grandma How would you define how communism worked in practice, for you? […] Jola: Well, you know, by the time I was born we didn’t have that defined communism anymore. Because this kind of communism, it describes an ideology that took shape in the Soviet Union, or Russia, some time ago and then it came to us, but by the mid 50s it was over, there was the so-called thaw and I guess you could call that socialism? Yes, probably socialism, so everybody got an equal amount, you know, salaries were equal, they didn’t differ much between a physical worker and a doctor, a teacher. Everybody was equal but they couldn’t buy anything, so this small amount of money didn’t bother anyone, because you couldn’t go and spend a lot of money, go shopping for nice things, because you didn’t even know there were nice things to buy. We just lived in this, I’m not sure what to call it. Dead end? Surrounded by wire, not barbed, or maybe almost barbed. They called us the funniest barrack in the socialist camp, Poland I mean. Yes, people used comedy or laughter to escape. On the other hand, you look at it differently when you’re young, because from the perspective of my old age I see that it was really bad. But when you’re young, when you’re twenty then whatever’s there is more than enough. Because I think we were, us women, we were socialized, the same way we are now, maybe it’s even worse now, socialized to play our role. Of-course you had to go to work because one salary was not enough to support a family, so back then women still went to work without some uproar from the gentlemen’s side, because it was necessary. So, children ran around with keys dangling from their necks. They went to school by themselves, the school was always close by. They just walked around with the keys around their necks until mum came home from work and cooked dinner. And you know. And when I think about it now in retrospect, I think that we were shaped, women in PPR, shaped from the clay of Catholicism and socialism. It was, it was so similar. One was a religion and the other one was a religion. The woman has her role to play, she has to birth children, raise them, without any male help, none. And mothers raised their sons like little kings, like princes. And I think that now they raise boys the same, they step into the same role. […]
Do you think PPR lead to generational trauma? […] Jola: I’m not sure. Generational trauma, I don’t know what to call it, you know, because apart from Poland a similar thing happened to a lot of Slavic nations, or even something identical and do they have trauma because of it? I think that trauma here, between Bug and the Oder, is here. PPR caused, or rather deepened it, but that generational trauma comes from the partitions, II Rzeczpospolita. It all repeats itself and PPR added to that. […] PPR is in us, what else is there to say. […]
Do you see characteristics of a post-colonial country in Poland? […] Jola: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. I don’t know how, you know, mentality is the hardest to change, it takes years of work, generations. And here, you see, not much has changed since the partitions, these minds are warped. I don’t know, I don’t know how to fix it, because, you know, everybody together with that ruling group that divides us, they’re wondering, writing on Twitter or somewhere, how did it come to this, that we let the partitions happen in Poland? How come? They didn’t want to divide any other country but us, why? And looking at these, you know, actions, warped minds, you can see why now. We are not able to govern ourselves. And that’s in those little minds. That’s what I think. […]
[…] Julka: Yes, that mentality of a victim. Jola: Mentality, yes, the mentality of that serf that has to have a master, if he has choice he’s unhappy, because, you know, he doesn’t know how to decide for himself and when somebody tells you what’s what, you have to do this and this, it’s easy. It’s a lot more simple to live like that. […]
1. Did you understand everything that was mentioned in the interviews, or would you need a more detailed historical background? 2. Do you think educating people from western Europe on the eastern bloc will bring anything fruitful?