Mastodawn

The Polish People’s Republic bestowed miners with truly outstanding rewards

The Polish People’s Republic bestowed miners with truly outstanding rewards - Lemmygrad

(This takes four minutes to read, but the paper itself is thirteen pages long and it can take nearly two dozen minutes to read.) >After the Second World War, the seizure of power in Poland by the Communists resulted in the dominant ideology of the superiority of the working class over all social groups. Even the name of the party of the Polish communists contained the term ‘workers’ — the Polish United Workers’ Party. > >The miners were elevated to the status of élite amongst the workers. Just as in the inter-war years, […] coal was the main Polish export commodity. Its sale provided the […] economy with foreign currency, which is why — as was often said — coal was ‘the most important Polish currency’. > >At the same time, the Soviet Union demanded ever greater supplies of coal. The pressure on coal was so great that as much as possible was extracted at all costs. During the entire period of [the Polish People’s Republic], miners working in hard coal mines were, on the one hand, over-exploited, while, on the other, they were granted numerous social benefits. > >The profession of miner was considered the most important and valuable for the country, and the miners themselves were treated as national heroes. On average, Polish coal mines collectively employed a total of around 400,000 miners. > >Over time, miners’ social privileges were increasingly extended. In November 1949, the government adopted a document called the “Miner’s Charter” (Karta Górnika), containing special privileges for miners in the coal mining industry. It provided numerous entitlements for those working in the mining industry. Underground workers and coal mining technicians and engineers received a special quarterly wage of 10 to 20% of their basic salary. > >The employees of the coal mines were decorated with state orders for their faultless and continuous work underground. The type of decoration, from the Bronze to the Gold Cross of Merit, was dependent on the length of service. > >In 1949, the “Distinguished Miner of Socialist Poland” (Zasłużony Górnik Polski Ludowej) decoration was introduced, then changed in 1955 to the “Distinguished Miner of the People’s Republic of Poland” (Zasłużony Górnik Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej). This was a distinction for those who, during their many years of work in underground mining, stood out by their achievements in the field of productivity, increase in output, initiation, and development of labour competition. > >The “Distinguished Miner” received a ceremonial traditional miner’s dress, together with a badge, free of charge. He was entitled to 21 days paid holiday, and once a year he and one member of his family received a free train ticket to any destination. > >At the age of 55 and after 25 years of work in the mining industry a miner could receive a pension which was much higher than the average level of statutory state benefit. The pensions of miners who received the “Distinguished Miner” award were raised by a further 10%. Sick pay in mining was also much higher than in other industries (M.P.1949.A-100.1175). > >In 1958, another amendment to the Pension Act introduced further financial allowances for holders of the honorary title “Distinguished Miner”. Gradually the retirement age for miners was lowered. > >From 1986 it was set at 50 years, with a total service of 25 years, including 15 years in mining. From 1989 meritorious miners received a special bonus equal to 25% of their current pension (Przybyłka 2018: 48‒58). > >### 1970s — the period of success propaganda >In the era of the People’s Republic of Poland, the toil of miners was elevated to the status of a national hero. In December 1970, Edward Gierek became the leader of the Polish Communists and, therefore, the most important person in the country. Not only did he himself come from Silesia, but in his youth, he worked as a miner in the French mines in the Lille region. That is why, during the 1970s, miners were treated by the authorities as celebrities, eagerly venerated by artists. > >Miners had a better life than other social groups. They were carried on people’s shoulders, given privileges, glowingly praised in the press, and shown on television. Every year on Miners’ Day on 4th December, there were grand ceremonial galas attended by the most important people in the country. The miners’ banners were decorated with, for example, the Order of the Banner of Labour of the First and Second Class. There were also concerts of miners’ orchestras and marches through city streets. > >The holiday was also a good opportunity to commission housing estates, streets, or other important buildings, and to establish the coal mining plan for the next year — for example, 200 million tonnes of “black gold”. Thanks to these efforts, the rôle of miners in socialist society grew; even children in schools were taught about the demanding work of miners. > >[…] > >Many mines had canteens, separate shops, and service outlets. The mines organised the delivery of staple food products at lower prices (e.g., potatoes). Miners and their family members had swimming pools, sports clubs or libraries dedicated for their exclusive use. An important privilege of the miners was the organization of their own health care. > >Initially there were only doctors at each workplace. Then the Provincial Coal Industry Health Clinic (Wojewódzka Poradnia Ochrony Zdrowia) was established in Katowice. In 1952, the Central Outpatient Clinic for Health Care in the Mining Industry (Centralna Przychodnia Ochrony Zdrowia w Przemyśle Górniczym) was established, to which all mining health centres were subordinated. Subsequently, it was replaced by the Provincial Miners Clinic (Wojewódzka Przychodnia Górnicza) and regional clinics for miners. > >This solution was changed in 1974, when the Mining Health Care Complex (Górniczy Zespół Opieki Zdrowotnej) in Katowice was established, to which field health care teams were subordinated. The mining sector also had its own rest homes and miners’ sanatoriums. These were modern facilities of a high standard. This situation lasted until the end of the People’s Republic of Poland (Przybyłka 2018: 55). (This author is definitely not a communist, so it is surprising what little tosh I had to redact.)

Anarcho-Bolshevik Mar 5

Italian communists helped Ethiopians resist Fascism

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10916993

Anarcho-Bolshevik Jan 17

The Red Army and Wehrmacht POWs, 1941–1943

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10406048

The Red Army and Wehrmacht POWs, 1941–1943 - Lemmygrad

>Building on several careful studies transcending linear accounts of piecemeal Soviet brutalization,¹² as well as on approaches that posit the unleashing of an “integral brutality” inherent either in the Soviet system¹³ or in Soviet society,¹⁴ this article shows that there was a dynamic that at first glance seems counterintuitive. At the beginning of the war, prisoner executions were frequent, but not universal. > >The fall and winter of 1941 and early 1942 saw an escalation of the practice, partially because from November 1941 onward many believed that Stalin had given an order to “kill each and every German.” This signal was reversed only in February 1942. From then on, a process of normalization set in that decreased the likelihood that [Axis] captives would be executed. > >Meanwhile, throughout the early part of the war, inside orders—from Stalin all the way down to field commanders—were inconsistent, demanding either the taking or the execution of POWs: Soviet policy was contradictory during this period and so were the results. Moreover, orders alone do not explain many of these acts, which occurred in complex local situations. Perceived military necessity was reinforced by the relentless atrocity propaganda of the Soviet side from the outset of the war, which itself drew on broader traditions of violence in word and deed. > >As far as the frequency of prisoner executions is concerned, this article concludes on the basis of both Soviet and German archival materials that the murder and mutilation of prisoners by the Soviets was less common than Germans at the time and some later historians believed. > >By analyzing Soviet behavior in a comparative context encompassing not only its German counterpart but also that of other belligerents in both the Second World War and beyond, I conclude that while Soviet war crimes cannot and should not be denied, they have more in common with prisoner executions in other times and places than with the [Axis’s] premeditated war of extermination. > >[…] > >[W]hile the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention Relating to Prisoners of War (1929), the government indicated early in the war that it would feel bound by the Hague Convention (1907), which the tsarist government had ratified. Shortly after the war started, on July 1, the Supreme Soviet had passed a set of regulations for POWs (Polozhenie o voennoplennykh) that laid down a detailed policy for the treatment of enemy captives.²³ [Axis] counterintelligence obtained a copy at the front line²⁴ and judged it to be in rough correspondence with the Hague Convention.²⁵ > >On July 9, the Political Administration of the Red Army issued a directive to organize propaganda among German POWs,²⁶ and a Soviet High Command (Stavka) order from August 3 demanded that all captured officers, noncommissioned officers, and pilots be forwarded “immediately” to the General Staff’s Counterintelligence Administration in Moscow.²⁷

🍃Carkner🥺Nov 1

Huh in my research for Wikipedia Asian Month just now I realized a partial run of the Indonesian communist magazine Bintang Merah were digitized and added to @internetarchive about a year and a half ago.
https://archive.org/details/bintang-merah/

Probably a bit of a dry read for the average modern Indonesian, but very useful for research purposes! In general those of us who've worked with these had to order microfilms & scan them ourselves.

#BintangMerah #Jakarta #PKI #CommunistHIstory #IndonesianHistory

cornishon Oct 15

The Crowning Gem of Soviet Urban Planning (Lazdynai, Lithuania)

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9446853

The Crowning Gem of Soviet Urban Planning (Lazdynai, Lithuania) - Lemmygrad

Lemmy

Anarcho-Bolshevik Oct 1

Over thirteen thousand Belgian communists resisted the Axis

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9303323

Anarcho-Bolshevik Apr 30, 2025

Reminder that the Soviets helped reconstruct Poland after WWII

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7732241

Reminder that the Soviets helped reconstruct Poland after WWII - Lemmygrad

Quoting Dorothy W. Douglas’s Transitional Economic Systems: The Polish–Czech Example [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=F3B68ABFAED9A7454C7F602977C15848] (a work by an economic anthropologist), page 66: >In foreign trade the pre-war level had now been surpassed,² and on a per capita basis it was two-thirds above pre-war. A trade agreement concluded with the Soviet Union early in 1948 had ensured the importation of investment goods to the value of £112,000,000. In general, trade with the Soviet Union had risen from 0.4 per cent in 1938 to 21.5 per cent in 1948; and trade with her and the other countries of planned economy now accounted for over a third (37.8 per cent) of [the Polish People’s Republic’s] total foreign trade. Page 130: >Much the largest piece of industrial construction listed for the Six-Year Plan was the great steel combine of Nowa Huta (‘New Foundry’), near Cracow. Deliberately planted in the most poverty-stricken and probably the most traditional-minded province in Poland, a region of dwarf farms, the new ‘socialist city’ when completed was to house 100,000 persons.³ > >Another characteristic note was that the entire equipment of the foundry and its related works had been furnished out of the proceeds of the 1948 long-time investment loan granted Poland by the Soviet Union, and that all the major parts were actual imports from the Soviet Union, complete with all their technical documentation. Pages 310–311: >The Polish–Soviet Trade and Investment Agreement of January 1948 referred to above by the Economic Commission for Europe, was stressed in after years by the Poles as a landmark in their industrial history. Besides providing for the exchange of goods, it extended to [the Polish People’s Republic] credits for great amounts of industrial equipment to be sent during 1948–56. Payment was to be over a period of ten years, chiefly in goods, at 3 per cent interest. > >This credit, the Poles later stressed, was the largest that Poland had ever received. The investment credit amounted to some £112,000,000, and enabled [the Polish People’s Republic] to start carrying out her Six-Year Plan in more than thirty industrial branches. The investment goods were destined for plants of both heavy and light industry. > >In heavy industry the Poles made much of the new steel plant of Nowa Huta that, when completed, was to double the country’s existing steel capacity: they pointed out that it was wholly Soviet financed and was built mainly on Soviet deliveries. > >The next most important items were several large chemical factories. Pre-war Poland had had no chemical industry. In light industry the Poles made a dramatic showing of the Soviet Union’s contribution in 1951 by having a series of plants in different parts of the country start production within a few days of each other close to 7 November. > >These included a factory producing the first passenger motor-car in Poland, a new lorry factory, a new textile factory, and a large transporter for the mechanical loading of ships. Ail of these, the press emphasized at the time, had been not only Soviet financed, but had been erected on the basis of Soviet plans and machines and with the aid of Soviet specialists. > >In 1950 [the Polish People’s Republic] received further increase of credit from the Soviet Union. By the close of 1951 not all of this had as yet been used. The new agreement to run from 1953–8 provided that nearly 40 per cent of all Soviet exports to [the PPR] would be capital goods. > >The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance > >For the smaller planned economies plainly a double process had been at work. From the Soviet Union came major investment credits, technical equipment and industrial raw materials, as well as, especially in times of stress, grains and feeding stuffs. [https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6320253] Page 359: >Assistance from Soviet specialists was used. And technical delegations of all sorts from the two countries visited the Soviet Union. The Polish Government, stated President Bierut at the end of 1950, in discussing innovations under the Six-Year Plan, had asked for and received the services for several months of groups of Soviet specialists. > >‘The Soviet specialists made an analysis of our Plan in those branches which are of foremost importance to us: coal, metallurgy, machinery, chemicals, and power; they gave exceptionally valuable advice to our engineers and industrial managers; they corrected individual mistakes and made important suggestions. […]’ > >He added, significantly enough, a note on personal contacts: ‘In the course of exchange of professional views and experience. […] Polish engineers and industrial managers […] were thus able to become acquainted with the talents, science, and style of work of a new intelligentsia. […]’¹ > >Several different notes were struck in regard to the interdependent progress of the planned economies. Emphasis was laid, as above, upon Soviet aid. :::spoiler [Click here for further examples of communist reconstruction.] Pages 40 & 46: >The writer in 1948 saw the salvaged farm and industrial equipment in use once more, restored with great patience and ingenuity, the buildings going up with enormous use of hand labour, new heavy machinery of Polish manufacture beginning to fill the half‐reconstructed factories, and industrial products emerging at the other end. […] The dominant political patter of the 1945–7 period was undoubtedly formed by the Communists quite as much as the Socialists. Pages 50–51: >In order to accelerate agricultural rehabilitation of the country and to satisfy the Polish peasants’ age‐old hunger for land, the Polish Committee of National Liberation will immediately proceed to carry into effect, in the liberated territories, agrarian reforms on a large scale. Page 57: >In addition, general co-operates of a new type were looked to, to furnish social amenities in the country-side and to protect their members against speculation and fraud. Mentioned in only the most general terms in the Reconstruction Plan, this type of organization subsequently had a rapid and important growth. > >In handicraft and small industry production, the co‐operative sector had the advantage of a post‐war start: ownerless small enterprises were sometimes turned over to co‐operative groups, among them often the remnants of the surviving Jewish population. ::: Quoting Sultan Barakat’s Russia’s Approach to Post-Conflict Reconstruction: The History, Context, and its effect on Ukraine, page 40 [https://books.google.com/books?id=f2foEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA40]: >And, “[immediately] after the end of the war, the USSR transferred 15% of the German reparation payments to Poland. The amount was equal to the U.S. assistance to France under the Marshall Plan” (Zatsarin, 2016). The Soviets also forgave Polish debts. Quoting Adam Zwass’s The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance: The Thorny Path from Political to Economic Integration, page 22 [https://books.google.com/books?id=2db3MMq1W70C&pg=PA22]: >Khrushchev […] stopped deliveries at prices which were not always able to cover the costs of transport (between 1945 and 1954 Poland delivered 50 million tons of coal at a price of 1.28 U.S. dollars per ton, which was only one-tenth of the price [that] it could have had on the world market). Khrushchev was willing to write off a portion of the credits granted from the books as repayment for the damage caused, including 3.2 billion złotys and 22.3 million U.S. dollars of Poland’s debt.

Anarcho-Bolshevik Feb 25, 2025

1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment: Tank-destroying teenage girls

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7099924

1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment: Tank-destroying teenage girls - Lemmygrad

>When the [Axis] invaded Stalingrad from the north in 1942, the Soviets were caught off-guard. They’d expected the enemy to come in from other directions, and had no infantry in place to guard against the oncoming attack. The only soldiers in place were the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment — a young all-female volunteer unit with little to no combat experience. > >Without much in the way of options, the women of the 1077th lowered their anti-aircraft guns to the lowest elevation and began firing at the oncoming tanks. Their ammunition, primarily flak rounds, was likely fairly ineffective against the Panzer unit, but according to Soviet records, they held off the oncoming troops for two days, although all 37 guns had been destroyed by the end of that, and they had suffered major casualties. > >It was only after the [Axis powers] had finally overrun the 1077th that they realized all this time they’d been fighting girls who were barely out of high school.

Anarcho-Bolshevik Nov 23, 2024

Communists prevented famines in Poland, Czechoslovakia, & Korea

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6320253

Communists prevented famines in Poland, Czechoslovakia, & Korea - Lemmygrad

Quoting Dorothy W. Douglas’s Transitional Economic Systems: The Polish–Czech Example [https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=F3B68ABFAED9A7454C7F602977C15848] (a work by an economic anthropologist), pages 63–5: >The other and more devastating difficulty was the extraordinarily bad weather of 1947: first a destructive winter freeze immobilizing traffic, especially of coal, then spring floods destroying great areas of cropland and tearing down bridges, finally extreme summer drought ruining harvests and fodder and giving a head start to weeds and pests. > >The Soviet Union sent in large grain supplies, and famine was averted, but the losses had still been very great and the effect upon the meat and milk supply especially could not soon be made good. > >Reconstruction, nevertheless, went forward rapidly in 1947 and it was announced that the industrial portion of the year’s Plan had been fulfilled 103.4%. > >[…] > >During 1948 both industry and agriculture did better than planned. Industrial production exceeded [the] Plan by some 10%. Agriculture exceeded [the] Plan in all fields except pork production, doing particularly well in the rate of reclamation of idle lands, and in horse and cattle raising in spite of the previous bad years. Page 105: >The first year of Czechoslovakia’s first Plan was marked by the same catastrophic drought that struck Poland. > >Agricultural production for 1947 was down to only about two‐thirds of [the] Plan, in the case of sugar‐beets to half, and, most serious of all, the lack of fodder brought a great slaughter of livestock in the ensuing autumn and winter. (Milk was down to 40% in the latter half of the year, while meat was momentarily abundant.) Famine conditions had to be averted by importation. > >The Soviet Union granted a five‐year trade agreement, under the terms of which large amounts of grain and fodder were furnished at once, and Yugoslavia and Rumania also sent large immediate supplies. Subsequently the Soviet Union sent additional amounts. > >Altogether Czechoslovakia’s crop and animal losses were estimated at about £125,000,000. > >[…] > >Soviet Union: 200,000 tons each of grain and fodder, and subsequently another 200,000; Yugoslavia: 300,000 altogether; Roumania: 150,000. Quoting Professor Charles K. Armstrong’s The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950–1960 [https://apjjf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/article-2488.pdf], page 2: >To escape the bombing, entire factories were moved underground, along with schools, hospitals, government offices, and much of the population. Agriculture was devastated, and famine loomed. > >Peasants hid underground during the day and came out to farm at night. Destruction of livestock, shortages of seed, farm tools, and fertilizer, and loss of manpower reduced agricultural production to the level of bare subsistence at best. > >[…] > >By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for U.S. planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. > >In the spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to the North. > >Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans. Only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine. (Emphasis added in all cases.)

Anarcho-Bolshevik Sep 11, 2024

The Battle of Chile: documentaries on Chile during the early 1970s

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5646084

The Battle of Chile: documentaries on Chile during the early 1970s - Lemmygrad

cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/377427 [https://lemmygrad.ml/post/377427] > >Documentary film in three parts: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (1975), The Coup d’état (1976), Popular Power (1979). It is a chronicle of the political tension in Chile in 1973 and of the violent counter revolution against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. It won the Grand Prix in 1975 and 1976 at the Grenoble International Film Festival. In 1996, Chile, Obstinate Memory was released and followed Guzmán back to Chile as he screened the 3-part documentary to Chileans who had never seen it before. > > (Mirror of part one. [https://yewtu.be/watch?v=_69sNztBFSM] Additional mirror. [https://archive.org/details/TheBattleOfChileTheInsurrectionOfTheBourgeoisie] Mirror of part two. [https://archive.org/details/TheBattleOfChileTheCoupDEtat] Mirror of part three. [https://archive.org/details/TheBattleOfChilePopularPower])