Agriculture was never collectivized in communist Poland, so private farms could exist. Those lucky enough to have fertile soil and good market connections could earn very good money through hard work and smart investment decisions. This farmer owns a house, a car, a dishwasher, and a color TV, and could even afford vacations in Hungary.
I don’t think you can have vacations if you are farmer. Maybe if you grow crops only, then late autumn- winter is free for you. But if you own any animals you are permanently tied to your farm. I don’t think he could employ people to his farm under socialism/communism.
I believe that was factory surplus from people’s workplace and they just brought it home to be used as building materials
Very interesting, its the successor of classic vernacular folk art in industrialised modern ages. A very nice architectural study could be made on the creative uses of these techniques
Similar to Hungary, where people working in heavy industry made decorative and artistic gates from all kinds of scrap metals and wastes during the socialist times
interesting how we(the socialist block) all had no lawns, just flowers and clean soil that required regular manual plucking of weeds, and then you go to the cemetery on Easter and do the same weed pulling
while the house is fancy and owning a dishwasher is impressive, but vacations in Hungary?
was that a flex? like "look at me I go to the neighbor country that looks exactly like ours but they call gołąbki töltött káposzta" ?
It was. The government taken away almost all of my family land in 1948. The officials have poisoned my grand grandfather horses at night and came the next day saying that my family cannot maintain the land anymore and just took it for free. My grandgrandfather committed suicide, and not only him. On the cemetery there are gravestones of a lot men before their 40s that committed suicide between 1947-1951 bc the government took their land giving nothing in return. My family was afraid to took it back after 1989, but also there is too many inheritors as families with 8 kids was common.
Forced land nationalisation was a thing, but after the very dubious success in actually utilising the land by state run PGR collectives PRL launched campaign to create a private farmer class of sorts.
You needed to be 18 years old and able to move to Shitty-small-backwater-szewowice Kolonia. That's it. You got land and usually some old crumbling house and barn.
Many failed, but hard working ones are pretty much the reason why many farmers in North east and East nowadays run 1k ha farms or rent them out - inheritance from their parent/grandparents doing high jump head first into unknown in the '70s.
We are speaking about early 50s, not medieval times.
I know for sure it was commies, they threated that they find the way to take the land before it happened.
And I don't know how powerful the spells could be to make five horses drop dead with foam on their mouth with commies conveniently coming the next morning.
Yes that's true. But if the land was cultivated, they couldn't take it. My family managed to do that alone post war, that's why the horses were poisoned first before the takeover.
State owned farms (PGRs) were not a competition for private farmers (małorolni, badylarze). They coopereted in most cases, and it was mutually beneficial. Post 1956 private farms were not discriminated against, actually Gomułka was a fan of them, and later on, in Gierek times, the state would not be able to produce enough food without them.
A dishwasher?! Man, he must have been the richest private farmer (badylarz) in the whole voyevodship. I don't think I know anyone who has seen a dishwasher in 1980s in Poland, not to mention owning one.
A car and a color TV I get, even vacations abroad, but not a dishwasher.
Well, no. Dishwashers were not that expensive, but availability was poor because they were sold for export.
The same goes with Polonez. There were succesful farmers or local entrepreneurs (without political capital) that had western cars (Mercedes were popular) and a summerhouse in Mazury.
Awarness was there, we were not a 3rd world. For example, in Warsaw, you could buy many such secondhand, imported products on Różyckiego or Skra bazaar.
As a Pole, if you'd say that photo was taken in any year between the 1980 and 2000, I'd believe that. I remember people still driving the same Polonez cars in the late 90s when I was a child.
Polonez was really the dream car of a lot of people back then. I remember as a kid in Szczecin that we were amazed about the fact it had a 200km/h Speedo.
My grandpa had a duży Fiat 125p from 1969 with the old steering wheel and the horizontal Speedo and always dreamed about the Polonez.
don't know, i grew up in hungary in the '80s, but the polonez had bad reputation. such as dacia 1310 of romania, one of my kind memory that we've changed the complete gearbox with my father in that shitbox in a day. there weren't two screws the same 😇
A not-quite-offtopic question from another Eastern Bloc member - which countries had the most nationalized agricultural lands and which had more independent farmers?
In Poland ca. 18% of agricultural land was managed by State Farms (Peasants are employed - PGR) and 4% by RSP(Farmer's co-op, Polish Kolkhoz).
In broader economy, ca. 20% of GDP in 1980s was made by private entrepreneurs.
De jure, Poland was democratic state with freedoms guaranteed in constitution. Technically everybody could open and run it's own company.
Problem was with the practice and state's control apparatus :)
But Poland was the only "communist state", where it's finance minister and long time party member was rich businessman, factory owner and millionaire. (Mieczysław Wilczek)
Rural areas were very interesting, multiple forces were crashing there. Some farmers were hard-working, lucky and could reinvest profits and cheap bank loans.
Others were struggling and living like in late 1800s. A lot of contrasts. No simple answer. Technically(and practically) communist party(PZPR) was ruling in coalition with Peasant Party(non-communist), which had considerable influences. Those with good standing in local community could get preferential access to tractors seeds etc.
"Times were poor, but at least people seemed to have more fun. Almost 50 people would come to someone’s name-day celebration, and nobody was jealous of anyone else’s wealth or promotion."
They had dishwasher, new car and she says they were poor? Also mention that nobody was jealous, lol. 50 people were coming to name day because they had their own meat...
Although I am surprised they were thay rich and looks like didn't colaborated with government, usually government tried to destroy such people or steal from them
> They had dishwasher, new car and she says they were poor
when I am meeting new people I like to ask "what year did your family get their first modern automatic washing machine?"
it's one of those things that everyone has today, but not everyone had in 80s or even in 90s, I heard answers as late as 2006 from someone from ex-ussr, I find it a good metric of wealth in the ex-socialist countries
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u/Pontiac-Fan-6980 14h ago
Polonez owner in typical for him position.