This is /xcom/, a general dedicated to ex-Communist countries, their peoples, and their cultures. Here we discuss our shared experience under socialism, our histories, current affairs, and the future. Emigrants from the former Communist world are welcome, as well as any posters who happen to live in Communist countries today (like China, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea). Honorable mentions go out to countries like Finland, which narrowly avoided being absorbed into the Soviet Union, and Greece, which fought a brutal Communist civil war and managed to remain free.
Please try to be respectful. All of our countries went through hard times, and all of us now share a bond that can never be broken because of it. We will endure.
Niech żyje Polska! Lang lebe Deutschland! Ať žije Česko! Éljen Magyarország! Naj živi Slovenija! Neka živi Hrvatska! Živjela Bosna! Heкa живи Cpбијa! Heкa живи Цpнa Гopa! Shqiperia gjate jetes! Дa живee Maкeдoнијa! Дa живee Бългapия! Trăiască România! Trăiască Moldova! Хaй живe Укpaїнa! Жывe Бeлapycь! Tegyvuoja Lietuva! Ilgi dzīvot Latvija! Elagu Eesti! დიდხანს ცხოვრობენ საქართველო! Կեցցե Հայաստանը! Yaşa, Azərbaycan! Дa здpaвcтвyeт Poccия!
I'll get the thread started with my own family's story.
>grandfather born in 1921, in Katowice >parents were factory workers, former farmers >grew up in an independent Poland, grew to be a patriot >lied about his age to join the Polish army in 1938 >fought with the Polish army in WW2 >joined the resistance after Poland's surrender, eventually went to Britain as a volunteer in exile >fought until the end of the war >at the end of the war, the British government offered him (and other Polish veterans) the choice of returning to Poland or staying in Britain (or going anywhere else) >grandpa chose to go back to Poland, before he figured out that Poland was going to become Communist >suffered through it, found a wife, got married, had kids (including my dad) >finally got tired of soul-crushing poverty, food shortages, misery, and slavery >applied for an exit visa to go to the United States >finally got out in 1964 >moved out to Ohio, got a job at an airplane manufacturing plant, made enough money to send his kids to good schools >kept working until his 70s >retired, now lives in a nice house with my grandmother and works hard on his garden
He tells me stories about his experiences sometimes, and I'm always so thankful that he got out, and that he's still alive to share his knowledge with me. The things he experienced under Communism were truly harrowing.
Thank God I don't live like that. It's all thanks to him.
Dylan Bailey
My grandfather from China >was a headteacher at a school >communist party wins civil war >refuses to teach some communist propaganda >reeducation >thrown in prison for ten years >now loves 'mao ye ye'
Charles Jenkins
Nice story. Shieet.
Noah Price
How did you get to HK (if you're not using a VPN)? Was there any trouble after the commies got ahold of it? How is it now?
Bentley Ross
This is a strange thread. I hate commies with passion. Honestly too much reason to hate commies, but let's put a snippet from family history. >WWI erupts and after commies taking over, local populace capture property in Ukraine, murder polish people incited by Bolsheviks etc. Great grandmother escapes with wagon full of polish children from orphanage taking them with her thus saving their lives.
Just an example.
Julian Gray
>Дa здpaвcтвyeт Poccия! The Russian is wrong. It means yes hello Russia(literally)
Juan Adams
I hate communism because it ruins all it touches and like a religion (because when you think about it, it kinda *is* one) it keeps getting new converts to it's stupidity and keeps fucking up things over and over.
Josiah Bell
>applied for an exit visa This is the first time I hear about this for any Warsaw pact country.
Brayden Edwards
Communism was a disaster. There were positive sides (industrialization, literacy), but negatives were far worse, especially in the sense of how it affected the mentality of people. Not to mention communist remnants are still in power in many of these countries. Awful awful people who now just pay a lip service to democracy and neoliberalism, which is also bad in a different way.
But I guess we're over that...or are we? Shit like communists winning 15% in Czech Republic are kinda scary. Friendly reminder to be vigilant. Bolsheviks were seen as too extremist before WW1. Okhrana actually supported them covertly to discredit anti-Tsarist opposition. And look how that ended up. Never underestimate extremists.
Jason Thomas
Sorry. I don't speak Russian. How would I fix it?
I thought it was a good idea, though. It's good to share stories and talk about common issues, so I figured I would try to start a general for it.
Parker Walker
>There were positive sides (industrialization, literacy), but negatives were far worse, especially in the sense of how it affected the mentality of people.
This is what gets me too, yeah it's nice you industrialized things....did you have to murder a gazillion fucking people though? Fuckwit?
>Not to mention communist remnants are still in power in many of these countries.
This too, terrible in Germany. They even let them join the government instead of doing what the Romanians did with Chaushesku.
WW2 was a mistake, should have let the Axis annihilate the bolsheviks, then knocked over the axis.
Easton Barnes
>Sorry. I don't speak Russian. How would I fix it? Дoлгo жить Poccии I guess like this but I'm not sure should the y be added between life and Russia.
Owen Williams
>be yugoslav >great standard of living >mandatory paid vacation every year >strong independent country forms it's own bloc with highest population in the world >strong independent military >t i t o
Fuck you burgers.
Isaiah Jackson
Kill yourself communist shit. Kill yourself too, you deluded imbecile.
Both were socialist fucks and should've been genocided.
Hunter Turner
Well, they had to. Collectivization wasn't accepted by peasants that easily, so they had to force them into it. Of course collectivized agriculture was terribly inefficient. >WW2 was a mistake, should have let the Axis annihilate the bolsheviks, then knocked over the axis. Problem with that is that Germans would be too powerful to knock out in that scenario m8. I mean Overlord only had a chance of succeeding because 80% of Wehrmacht was tied in East. That's what's tragic about WW2, East had a choice between Stalin and Hitler.
Hunter Rogers
What part of >then knocked over the axis.
did you not understand?
Luis Garcia
Never ever ever trust a Communist or a Communist sympathizer. If they get the chance, they will always take control, destroy the country, and ruin lives. It's their nature.
That's what he's always told me when I ask him how he got out of Poland. He says he was given a number to be able to leave, and he had to wait for years until he finally got permission from the government and from the US. For all I know, he could be lying about what really happened, but that's what he tells me.
Everyone industrialized and improved literacy rates and living standards in the 19th/20th centuries. That isn't exactly a plus for Communism. Really, it doesn't even have that to go on. It was just a miserable totalitarian slog which tried its hardest to destroy our cultures.
Tyler Davis
Industralization was better with Napoleon. But yea literacy is positive example
Zachary Phillips
It wasn't sustainable and Tito totally failed in creating a ''strong'' state. State started collapsing even before he died. ''Strong independent military'' you speak of did literally nothing or even backed people like Milošević. Yugoslavia was a lie. A prettier lie than WP states, but still a lie.
Ryder Murphy
>Problem with that is that Germans would be too powerful to knock out in that scenario m8.
I don't know, I think they would have been too depleted after finishing off the USSR.
>I mean Overlord only had a chance of succeeding because 80% of Wehrmacht was tied in East.
It was even worse than that, if they had the balls to wake up Hitler he'd have sent his best toy soldiers to position and Normandy would have been a slaughter and Ike would have been disgraced.
Liam Gutierrez
salut fratele mei alb, hajde pe chanon punct ro imageboard romanesc
Jace Reyes
Well communism achieved it quickly. But yeah it would happen anyway, but they did it so I guess you have to count it as a positive. What many people don't know however is that pre-Bolshevik Russia had the fastest growing industry in the world.
Levi Ward
They would've been depleted but they would have at their disposal vast slave army of laborers and huge resources. But your starting point is contentious, I mean Nazis literally had no chance of defeating Soviets after Moscow. And Moscow happened before any significant Western aid came. Soviets did it on their own.
Jack Foster
I'm not a Communist. Communism is inherently evil and it destroys people unless it kills them first.
At least Yugoslavia managed to be slightly less miserable than the rest of the Eastern Bloc when it broke with Stalin
Jeremiah Gray
Yeah we're getting into weeds here, you can spend a lifetime thinking of the "what ifs" of WWII, like what if Hitler's generals told him to f.o at the start of Barbarossa and they burned Mosscow and executed Stalin....the USSR may have crumbled like a cookie.
Charles Diaz
My great granddad saved a "commie" in 1956. He was a 80-something years old guy, who joined the communist party, since he was poor as fuck, but party membership provided him extra gibs, which was enough for everyday life. The rebels wanted to hang the old guy, but my great granddad told them to fuck off and go kill some bastards from the secret police if they want to play revolution that much.
Parker Jones
One funny thing about the DDR was that when they announced they would "officially" discard the death penalty to get some +points in the west the citizens were suprised to hear it had existed before in the first place as it was all dealt over with a shadowcourt and a secret executionside. Absurd.
Parker Young
Why the fuck is Macedonia before Bulgaria?
Kevin Hughes
At a certain point, everybody who wanted to be anybody joined the Party. It was just the way it worked. That old man just wanted to make a better life for himself and his family. Your great-granddad did the right thing, I think.
Luis Evans
rip yugo, you were too pure for this world
Joseph Brooks
I wasn't going in any particular order (except Poland first because I'm Polish, and Russia last to avoid butthurt), except vaguely geographical as I moved from country to country. No offense meant to Bulgaria, you guys are cool.
Owen Campbell
My Parents are both from Romania, quite a story of how they got here desu >Father was a bus driver for 10 years in Cluj >Met his first wife and had 8 boys >Frequently would be told to move supplies to Govt stockpiles Decent life but still very poor as most were >One day his buddies tell him they are escaping Romania to Yugoslavia >He leaves after leaving money for his wife and kids to survive for some time >Manages to cross the Danube but is caught by Yugos and imprisoned Here's where it gets really interesting... >His wife was a hardcore Christian that did not agree with modern medicine >Her last pregnancy the doctor told her she had a cyst in her uterus that was growing along with the baby >After birthing him she ignored the doctor's advice to remove the cyst >When my Dad was away she passed and the kids were orphaned >She died days after he left Continued in a bit...
Owen Reyes
>hur hur hur communism is great No it's not Come to Romania we poor as fuck, steal your wallet and maybe even beat the shit out of you. Without competition humans dont do that well. Without sharing of ideas and trading humans actually go backwards. Without strong,wise leaders a nations dies. Putting normal plebs as leaders, will just mean they will fall pray to their instincs and succum to abuse of power, where are those that were kings and officials in gov usually had a genetic background oftentimes higher inteligence which allowed them to be better leaders. Not all humans are created equal and expecting one will be as good as a worker if you just train him it's just stupid. We shouldn't allow the weak and the retarded to have the same rights as everybody else, they'll just push the average down and force everybody else smart to be stupid.
Communism is a jewish creation to take power from the Kings and Queens by using the hunger and poverity of people. Then you maintain control by briding them with stuff such as home,school,work.
Stop spreading lies Jews are the true enemy.
Persians figured it out, and mass expelled them Egyptians figured it out took them as slaves, got rekted later Romans figured it out and rekted them, and got rekted later Mohammad and the Islam world figured it out, Mohammad got rekt and the later started rekting them Europeans figured out and didn't allow Hapburgs to split europe in two and create a Jewish paradise Kings,Popes would deal with them, and then rekt them for being faggots and leeching off the economy. And later Hilter and Stalin rekt them knowing how bad they were.
More jews died through the great Purge then actual jews true numbers killed in camps by nazis, most jews died because of force labour under the nazi watch.
Noah Myers
>everything the commies told about communism was wrong >everything the commies told about capitalism was right
worst feel
Camden Parker
Exactly.
Nathaniel Price
He was a good man. He lost all his teeth during the commie "interrogation" after WWII. They forced him to drink piss and beaten him for 2 hours. God knows what else they did to him, the shock was too big, so he avoided talking about his post-WWII years. Despite this, he still saved someone from the communist party. If I was him, I'd have wanted to take revenge.
Henry Martinez
>communism is great No. But we, the peoples of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, are great, even more now that we've triumphed over soulless red tyranny.
Cameron Powell
>Great-grandfather was a president of a local farmer's council before the war >villagers loved him, he worked hard to keep everyone happy >In 1942 most of his close relatives die in a village Germans burn down after partisans forced the villagers to host them for a while >(today that event is considered "a glorious battle" by communists) >Great-grandfather moves to the capital, where he managed to build a house before the war >in 1945 he thinks of escaping to America due to reading stories about pre-war officials getting killed all over Slovenia by communist partisans >changes his mind due to his young daughters who would be without a father (grandma included) >stays, survives the red terror, but is carefully observed by secret service most of the time >my grandma is being followed by a secret agent every time she visits >he gets depressed due to being isolated from most of society, goes out drinking a lot >eventually is ran over in a freak traffic accident in the 1970s >driver gets off with 2 year prison sentence
Ian Moore
>mfw our communist leader took a helicopter ride to his execution But for real now I think we had the hardest transition from communism, thus the fact that we are among the shit tier countries in eu( but i still love muh country)
Angel Phillips
When did you realise we need an Intermarium to combat EU's xenophilia and Russia's imperialism?
Dominic Wood
I'm still pissed the soldiers didn't wait until all the cameras were there before blasting him.
Camden Brooks
>The kids were taken by the Securitate to their grandparent's home where their grandfather was told to wait for a call from my Dad who had recently heard the news >Phone rings and he is told to tell my Dad that he will look after the kids and should just start a new life >Dad calls bullshit and writes a letter to Ronald Reagan asking for a Visa for him and his kids >Gets to US and kids are finally reunited two years later Fast forward 2 years >My Mom has a dream that God told her to marry my father (Whom she never met) >She contacts him and tells him vision >Dad writes Reagan again and gets Visa for her >Me and my sister born
Joshua Myers
>When did you realise we need an Intermarium to combat EU's xenophilia and Russia's imperialism? Always knew it Ulmas we are too fucking small.
Landon Hall
What went so wrong?
Xavier Perez
My father is russian came to france at the end of soviet union. His father was a party member and an officer in soviet air force. Had to hide all his life that he was captured during WW2 when he was a child because of Stalin's retarded : Captured people are traitors
Joseph Thompson
>extend V4 to include Croatia and Slovenia >let the baltic states and Finland form their own V4 over shared culture and cultural values instead of forcing ours of them and let them freely associate with us. >maybe other balkan states can unfuck themselves >keep away the EU jew and the drunk bear >maybe "liberate" parts of ukraine >keep european culture alive till we have to fight the western caliphates
Caleb Stewart
>Captured people are traitors Aren't they?
David Bailey
yeah especially kids, he should have been shot on sight by the red army, during his liberation
Kevin Hall
>>keep european culture alive till we have to fight the western caliphates Raid western Europe and steal their women. Caliphs go mad and start selling non Muslim people. Buy those people.
Wyatt Clark
The day Piłsudski was born, desu
And now one of your own is in the White House must feel pretty good
Hungary had a bad time after WWII, I feel for you guys. My grandfather says he wishes he could have stood with Hungary in 1956, so it could have its freedom.
James White
> 8 boys > poor Are you some kind of gypsy?
Robert Richardson
It's not wrong.
That is, unless the Soviet anthem meant to say "yes hello Soviet Union".
Or Eisenstein's movie "Da zdravstuvyet Meksika" actually means "yes hello Mexico".
Zachary Roberts
>yeah especially kids, Especially kids. WTF you think that kids can't be fascist. Some kids don't share their food it means they are fascist.
Juan Thompson
Дa здpaвcтвyeт Poccия! is right
Aaron Gutierrez
>WW2 was a mistake, should have let the Axis annihilate the bolsheviks, then knocked over the axis. That's the Buchanon solution, which is not only pragmatically smart for an Empire on the decline, but in the long-run would have spared more lived that were robbed in the decades grinded under the Soviet bloc. Read Gulag Archipelago lads, I know Russianbros get it as part of their curriculum. It will fuck you up and give you an undying hatred for everything Marxist.
Angel Murphy
Nah senpai, Communism forces people to have kids, you get free shit. Otherwise you starve
Adam Ramirez
Communism
Did you ever meet him? What did he think about all of it?
Michael Bailey
Kek
Justin Robinson
Ok thanks Ivan. Now tell me how many Russians are still Sovoks?
Robert Fisher
We dont have to raid, they are moving here already.
Yeah my grandfather had two kids, had moments when it was old bread and dried fish, but no starving after 45-46
Thomas Phillips
Piłsudski was lithuanian and german spy. >tfw every of our leaders wa a foreigner How one country can be this cucked?
Alexander Hill
I didn't think so, but I figured a Latvian would know better, I guess. I still don't speak Russian.
that hits too close to home
>mfw captcha wants me to pick shitty apartment blocks
Connor White
Eternal Magyar kicks in...
Anthony Miller
>Ilgi dzīvot Latvija
Lai dzīvo Latvija would be more correct
Jeremiah Lewis
Destroying imperialist swine when?
Angel Davis
My Russian is becoming worse everyday I live here more.
Levi Bennett
>Destroying imperialist swine when? it will be hard to destroy Germany.
Carter Hill
>using russian >ever
its like you have no self respect
Parker Diaz
Romania was one of the crazier blocs, Chaushesku was truly ruthless. The Securitate would steal shit from everyone and would report you if you stood up for yourselves. Romanians are fucking scum when it comes to integrity, was recently discovered a major church pastor was an agent that reported his own members
John White
1/2 diaspora.
Cameron Ward
I find it curious that Baltic languages have such slavic sounding words. Where do the Balts originate?
Isaiah Adams
Didn't fucking work though, by the end of the Soviet Union the abortion rate had climbed above the actual birthrate.
Something the Romans noted prior the loss of half their Empire, a high abortion rate is never the sign of a prospering society.
Charles Moore
fui
Cooper Jones
Also my family story:
>born 1980 in Warsaw >parents good positions in communist party >ffwd to 1989 >father decides to flee to Germany because CIA imperialists take over >escape with our lives while democratic hordes are destroying what generations of socialist workers built >get asylum in west germany >living in heart of capitalist swine-tiger >be german citizen now >be in Landesvorstand of MLPD NRW >revolution soon!
Brayden Wright
I tried, forgive me It's the thought that counts?
I keep meaning to learn it eventually, but I haven't started yet
insightful
My grandfather says people were starving in Poland as late as the 1950s, mostly because the Party was stealing all the food that wasn't being sent to the Soviet Union. But he was poor anyway, so who knows?
Jack Roberts
Because communism doesn't work and commiefucks dropped nationalism after WWII >Be me >Young shitty sports gear wearing young dude >Go to protest in 1989 >Wave Lithuanian flag >Captured by police (was called milicija back then) >They take me to 3 angry KGB dudes >Have to spend a week in a secret KGB prison under the old town of Vilnius >They beat me and offer rewards for shilling and telling names >Release me after they understand that I am just a random dude that came to a protest
I still fucking remember how cold and damp that prison cell was. I still get nightmares from time to time about that place.
Our redpill levels are off the charts. While I'd really like to raze and pillage some french and german cities, someone else is already doing it, so might as well take in the few redpilled enough wanting to live in a white country,
Jacob Walker
Just jugos, greeks, bulgars and romanians getting their shit together in some kind of peninsula-union adequate to their own economic speed would already do some good. Without the muzzie parts that would still amount to an (overaged, partially useless) population of 49 million people which isnt that great but if under some common denominator at least a bit more resistant agains EUpoz, Russian thralldom and turkish demographic imperialism. They get fucked by everyone atm with their lands barren.
Intermarium seems neat, but even with all of Visegrad being in aside from the vulnerable baltics rather fragile-taking in ukies would already be a strain after all as their burdensome corruption, demographics and economy would need to be evened out by the rest.
Jose Kelly
Yes that is why Romaina went from having 25 thousand gypsys at the end of ww2 to todays at least 3 MILION,because they took advantage of communit gibs for kids.Thankfully ove half of them fucked off to western europe for gibs,literal human locusts.
Dominic Perry
None of those words sounds slavic
The Balts or Baltic peoples, defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the lower Vistula and southeast shore of the Baltic Sea and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers. Because the thousands of lakes and swamps in this area contributed to the Balts' geographical isolation, the Baltic languages retain a number of conservative or archaic features.
Landon Bell
I think people still living in the Union by then had realized that bringing more kids into shit was pointless
Jack Turner
Happened in Poland. My father had to bribe some people with USD to get our visas + passports. (Passport were held by the state and only given out if you had permission to leave. Also the whole family couldn't leave at once. Hence the bribes).
Henry White
Your grandpa was commie spy
Lucas Rivera
Also when you returned you were interrogated by secret police. (Happened to my mom who was 13 years old and visited a relative in Switzerland for Christmas with her mother).
Elijah Hernandez
Yeah nah it's alright, your translation was almost correct. Ilgi dzīvo, Latvija would be correct as well, its just that Lai dzīvo is the right one
Jason Gutierrez
Its my personal belief, that although the Russian led communist occupations of our countries was a terrible crime, communism served as preservative of some sort, shielding us from the decadence of the West.
That is the reason why socially New Europe (as I like to call Eastern Europe and West Europe is Old Europe) is socially more conservative.
Pic very much related
Austin Scott
No Gypsy blood in my family, just Ukranian and Transylvanian. Mom was an engineer in Romania, Dad is not very smart though, hence the bus driving. Fuck these shitskins that ruined our namesake though
Jackson Hill
The Baltic and Slavic languages have a recent common ancestor, Proto-Balto-Slavic. They're more closely related to each other than either are to any other Indo-European languages. They also borrowed a lot of words from Slavic languages (mostly Polish and Russian) because of contact and history.
It was disgusting how easy it was to get abortions in the Soviet Union, especially before and after Stalin
Jesus, dude. Was it worth it?
Liam White
Yeah when I was kid, I spent most of my summers in Russia, since my parents divorced and my father went back to russia around 2000. But kind of a language barrier when it comes to serious topics, but yeah he is old, and I absolutely must talk about it the next time I see him. Also want to know what he did as an officer, heard he was sent to Egypt and Yemen
Christian Wood
dzive/dzivot sounds very similar to our own život/živjeti.
Noah Nelson
>muh degenerate west
your preservative managed to preserve our economy as well, everyone's still ahead of us because of that
Caleb Gray
If Russia hadn't been a major player in WW2, Germany would have won and degeneracy would be outlawed. Garda De Fier Romania, best Romania
Blake Powell
Basically, those two groups are among the closest you can find, seperation between those two linguistic groups has probably happoened in late antiquity or early middle ages. Before that, they were no real difference between slavs and balts
Christopher Ross
Yes that's right. But we do have some borrowed Slavic words due to our shared history. Just like how we have taken such words as monitor and computer from English. Fun fact we have a fully Lithuanian word for computer monitor 'Vaizduoklis' but people made fun of this word due to how similarly it sounds to the word ghost 'Vaiduoklis' so it is not in use anymore and isn't popular.
Caleb Lee
>degeneracy would be outlawed Just as speaking certain languages in the east. They wouldnt have had it good either under us.
Jordan Bell
You should definitely talk to him while you still can. I'm lucky that my grandfather is still alive well into his 90s, and I can still talk to him about his life and his experiences. Don't take it for granted.
You win some, you lose some, I guess You can fix a bad economy easier than you can fix a bad society, though
Jose Peterson
>over shared culture the only culture we share with Latvians is that they sell us cheap booze and cigarettes
Thomas Jones
it doesnt though
zhivjot and dzīvot dont sound that similar when you speak it out loud
>Proto-Balto-Slavic meme "language" that may have existed 5000 years ago. Latvian language has been heavily influenced by German. German priests created literal Latvian and Latvians only a hundred years ago spoke German and Latvian on a daily basis for 700 years due to the northern crusade. While we do have some loan words from the slavs (like baznīca), the German language has influenced Latvian more than the latter