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Comment by Isinlor | Hacker News Reader

From Polish perspective I'm extremely grateful to my parents generation for starting the collapse of the Soviet sphere and very quick and decisive pivot to the west. Especially, when compared to Ukraine. Poland and Ukraine had the same size economy in 1991. Last year Polish economy was 3 times bigger than Ukraine. Personally, I can travel, study and work wherever I want in EU with zero trouble. I was born in Poland, studied in Belgium and Netherlands, work in Belgium and live in Finland.

Russia is a terrible partner. Russia sympathizer in Ukraine brought destruction on that country from Russia. It's really tragic that Russia is obliterating people that considered themselves Russians living in Ukraine.

There is zero comparison between modern western projects and Russia imperialism that did not change in the last 300 years.

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This reads like "Poland is so great, I chose to live elsewhere"

You could've studied and worked in Belgium/Netherlands/Finland and many other countries much richer than Poland even with the Iron Curtain in place.

Millions of people did just that.

No, millions of Poles have not had the chance to "studied and worked in Belgium/Netherlands/Finland" while under Russian occupation.

- You werent able to cross to the west unless on official Government delegation.

- You werent able to cross the border _at all_ unless Government decided to let you. It was a political decision by a party committee.

- Vacations abroad were only possible as an official reward from the Government, and never outside ~Comecon.

- You couldnt even keep a passport in your own house. It was given to you before departure, and you had 7 days to return it after crossing back.

You know who did work and study in the west? People who ran away https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_Miles_to_Heaven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ferry

My uncle actually planned stowing away on a ferry to Norway in 1981, but got caught in the port and landed in penal company.

Now do the same but for Poles with the wrong religion: Judaism.

You mismatching 70 years of global efforts to destroy communist state that include giving “freedoms” and “foods” to former v4 to the actual freedom. As soon as, for some reason, Poland wont be on trade route with Russia, have no gas and oil from russia, no slave labor from Ukraine, no EU billions of aids for decades, the magic of capitalism became much weaker. An if your “elites” happen to “disagree” with EU on something more than gays and abortions, you will know what is real capitalism. And you have no jews to blame now, so you will blame Russians.

Post-soviet sphere has plenty of examples of former SU-aligned countries that have since pivoted towards EU and have built democratic, free, and prosperous independent states, or are well on their way of building one. Even Ukraine was a recent example of being on such path, if it wasn’t for the malign efforts of, you guessed it, Russia.

No state is perfect, and one can always find this or that to pick at, but most of democratic ones have not unleashed armies of state-employed goons on their own people to keep them from speaking up.

You should work on your boot-licking addiction (and I am telling you that as a Soviet-born russian-speaking citizen of one of the former republics).

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