Communist party supporters carry Andy Warhol-style portraits of Cuban Revolution hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Soviet leader Josef Stalin, during a demonstration marking the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Moscow. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
A recent poll found that fifty percent of millennials say they would rather live in a communist or socialist country than in a capitalist democracy. These numbers can’t be laughed off -- they should frighten you. Maybe they don’t know what communism means.
I do. I lived in Communist Poland.
Perhaps those fifty percent of millennials were not properly taught about communism in school. That’s too bad, and dangerous. So here are some examples for those misguided millennials to ponder, all of which I experienced in communist Poland.
Unreliable electricity
Do you millennials enjoy having electricity on demand to charge your devices? Then you would hate Action “O.” Action “O” stood for “Oszczednosc,” which translates to “Savings.” Poland’s communist government would notoriously turn off electricity to various areas of the city to “save” energy.
They had an interesting system which they described as “customer oriented”: they would turn the electricity off for one minute and turn it back on for five minutes as a warning that a shutoff was coming. You had exactly five minutes to find your matches and candles, because after that electricity would shut off for several hours.
If that wasn’t bad enough, we suffered under a shortage of matches.
Fake equality
The most demoralizing part of the communist system was that “all were considered equal.” This was a big lie.
It didn’t matter if you worked hard -- your pay was equal to the guy who barely showed up for work, or came to work drunk. The only way to advance was to join the political elite: the Communist party.
Imagine a system where the key to success wasn’t hard work or merit, but conniving and politics. If you sold your soul to the devil, you were rewarded.
My father worked at a water company in one of the major cities in Silesia Region. He was approached several times by the “party” PZPR with an offer of a promotion to a director’s position. But there was one small requirement.
He would need to first denounce his religion.
Yes, they asked him to become an atheist devoted solely to the communist ideology if he wanted to get a raise or promotion. Neither him nor our family would be able to attend mass or practice our religion in any manner.
Imagine a system where job success comes not from your productivity or character, but from the degree to which you adhere to party orthodoxy.
My dad is a religious and honorable man. He declined the offer and therefore never got promoted, and our lives never got better -- and I am so proud of him for his strong beliefs and integrity.
But the idea of “equality” under communism was a lie.
Needing “connections” to buy simple goods
Imagine a life where you couldn’t buy anything without first getting the approval of the political elite.
Those who joined the party had many, many privileges that an average person never had. To the most reliable zealots, the communist party distributed special“talony” stamps to purchase cars. If you didn’t have the stamps, you could wait years “in line” before becoming “eligible” for a car.
The party members even had special stores to purchase food -- and this higher quality food was often imported from the West. Instead of a Costco card, you needed a communist party card to shop there.
(DP: Further excerpts will post next 2 days--go to link for entire article)
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