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Comment by dreta | Hacker News Reader

there's no bias, the photos represent the general state of the whole country

No they don't. Source: growing up in said country during that era. There weren't that many horses then, even in the countryside.

And they did have tractors. Plowing with a horse was a curiosity even in the eighties.

i grew up in Poland too, east, and south-east looked like like this, or worse. where did you grow up? not everybody had a tractor, still had plenty of horses around, doesn't mean everybody used them, that'd be ridiculous

...which means that the pictures have a bias, and they don't represent the state of the whole country at the time.

(not that there is anything wrong with it)

Warsaw, with parts of family near Ciechanów and near Piła.

No, not everybody had a tractor - that would be ineffective, given how many small family-owned farms there were. But they did use tractors and combine harvesters. TBH I don't know whether they were shared between neighbors or just unofficially borrowed(#) for a bottle of vodka from the state farms (PGR).

(#)There's this Polish verb "załatwić" which I cannot properly translate to English. It means obtaining products or services using ones connections, cunning and possibly transfer of a usual token of appreciation as in "załatwić za flachę" (obtain something in exchange for a bottle of vodka).

Kind of "to sort out", but the more specific meaning is lost. The history has filled our vocabulary with quite a lot of such terms that don't lend themselves well to translation. Eg. "chałtura".

I think the most direct English translation for this word is "finesse". I had only ever known this word as a noun before recently hearing it used as a verb in US prison slang from a documentary.

EDIT: Then again, maybe not. When I hear people in Poland use that word, I'd maybe translate it as "organise" or "arrange", but only in the sense of arranging the acquirement of something.

you grew up in the country's capital, and had family in the north-west, no wonder you have no idea how life really was

Both - as they're commonly referred to - "Poland A" and "Poland B" comprise of significant portions of the population. I can't see why life in one should be considered "real", while in the other, not. There are two sides to this picture.

Because capitals are show off places in oppressive countries. The reality is outside. I grew up in a small city in USSR and sometimes speak to people that grew up in Moscow or Leningrad. The difference is huge... They often owned cars, had frequent access to bananas and oranges, and the stores were generally adequately stocked. Not for us and the rest of the country..

That's true, but my parent commenter referred to the entire North West (which is, generally speaking, more well off in Poland) not being "real". Not just Warsaw. Ciechanów or Piła, both rather small towns, could hardly be considered show off places.

Overall the gap was more along the lines of big cities vs. province as you say; rather than geographical. In a centrally planned economy large urban centers were overprivileged in the pecking order.

This plays nicely to the Western stereotype, though. (Not the pictures in and of themselves, but pretending the outliers to be the typical).

I remember the outrage over Microsoft Encarta which used photos similar to the Barbey's ones to illustrate the "Poland" entry in 2003 :)

See http://of19.internetdsl.pl/bzdury/encarta/

Two can play that game, http://www.landoverbaptist.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/... - life of an American citizen, 2016.

And two did play it indeed :) Communist propaganda would actually pull a similar trick on the West, focusing the coverage on the stuff that was, well; weird or creepy at best.

For example the "This is America" documentaries (by Romano Vanderbes) were broadcasted on the communist TV in 70s/80s in prime time. An average viewer would assume it to be an accurate representation of the prevalent lifestyle.

Nope, when I was young and visited my family in Rzeszowskie district many farmers did plough using horses. Countryside that I remember looked like this. Ofcourse there were tractors, but A LOT of people were using horses - even in the beginning of 90's it depended on how poor a region was.

Harvesters and tractors were often rented for specific tasks.

I was plowing with horse when I was 5 years old in 1995 in south-east Poland. This is when we switched to self-made tractor and anyway farm was gone in 2000s when my grandpa stopped to care. Things changed a lot but south-east outside cities is still relatively poor.

What are you talking about and why are you lying?

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