NotMs Parker writes how “it is quite painful to be confronted with often negative and disparaging comments about what life in Eastern Europe before 1989 must have been like.”
There is a great BBC film included about life in East Germany which provoked NotMsParker’s post.
A little Communist, Notmsparker, in Poland in April of 1980.
What happened in Europe in the late 1980s – the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of communism in Poland, perestroika in the former Soviet Union as well as the collapse of a whole social and political system east of the Iron Curtain – had immense consequences not only of political and economic but also of very personal nature.
Suddenly your world was no longer there. All of a sudden, none of the rules you lived by or traditions you followed mattered. It was by all means a good and welcome change but also one which, as always, came at a price.
For those born in those lost countries, even today, it is quite painful to be confronted with often negative and disparaging comments about what life in Eastern Europe before 1989 must have been like. “Grey” is the…
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AuntyUta 
A good post and so true, Aunty.
People still managed to make a life, no matter how or where. It often amazes me how in the most miserable of circumstances, people’s spirits still survive and at times thrive. It is a cliché I know, but wealth and poverty seldom determine how we feel.
I am always annoyed when people push their dogmatic belief on how a country ‘is the best’ in the world. Our PM is now promoting to improve Syria so that those millions of refugees can go back home. That is a sensible thing to achieve, he said. “No one wants to leave their own homes voluntarily’, he said.
Yet, that wasn’t even thought about when Australia actively promoted for people to migrate to Australia, hundreds of thousands left home and hearth in the fifties and sixties from European countries. Many of those countries soon became far more progressive and achieved levels of well-being, possibly better than here now in Australia.
The ‘best country’ is relative, isn’t it?
Gerard you say: The ‘best country’ is relative, isn’t it?
I can only agree with this.
Thanks very much for commenting. 🙂