A penetrating look behind the Iron Curtain

One of the few rays of hope that have shown through the horrific events in Ukraine has been the selfless sacrifices made by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of people in the countries bordering that besieged land. In Poznan, Poland, hundreds of cars lined up to deliver food, clothing and other essentials to collection centers. Individual Poles are driving across their country to offer a lift to Ukrainian refugees stuck in camps just over the border; others are opening their homes to the displaced. Poland, of course, is not the only nation where people have generously supported Ukrainians, but their commitment has gone far beyond what might be expected. One explanation might be found in the region’s not-so-distant history of rule by the Soviet Union.

It has been just three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of one of the most dehumanizing forms of government the modern world has known. The Soviet method of governance, known as Marxism-Leninism, promised its citizens a predictable if boring life in return for their acquiescence, if not support. The threat of imprisonment, or loss of work and the accompanying benefits, made it possible to enforce an atomization of the population in which even good friends feared sharing their inner thoughts. The result was a highly regimented, monochromatic society that was easy to categorize, oversimplify and, eventually, forget.

The reality of the Soviet bloc was far more complex and difficult to penetrate. The official version was cartoonlike propaganda: posters, films, songs, mass meetings and military parades, accompanied by heartwarming scenes of the proletariat devoting themselves to their work for the state and living lives of limited but relative comfort.

The officials in charge of handling the few prying journalists admitted from the West were very good at arranging visits to the Potemkin villages they had created and equally adept at thwarting any efforts to peer behind the facade of the Workers’ Paradise. This was particularly true for photojournalists — and even more so for videographers. But the best of the visual journalists applied their talent for observation and their patience to see past that outer layer of enforced conformity.

You could read volumes and not gain as much insight about what it was like to live through those times as you will from exploring these photographs by Arthur Grace from his new book, “Communism(s): A Cold War Album.” These images capture the damage that Russian occupation did to these countries and to the mental and spiritual well-being of the tens of millions who suffered under that horrific misrule.

The passage of time has clouded our collective memories of that era. If people today think about what life was like in the Soviet bloc, they imagine the political repression and the economic deprivation, the uprisings and the inevitable crackdowns. But those images leave us with an incomplete history.

There was little illusion that these regimes were democratically elected, but most wrapped themselves in a concocted national identity and did their best to deliver economic benefits and much-desired social stability. The leaders offered the public an implicit social contract: We will provide jobs, food, housing, education, medical care and a modicum of entertainment. You will stay silent.

Although there were violent uprisings — East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1970 — for most citizens, for most of the time, that compact was grudgingly accepted. Life wasn’t great, but it could be almost comfortable and, as long as you were apolitical, relatively stress-free. The proof is that there are to this day people in the former Soviet bloc who long for the good old bad days when everyone had a job and a home and free medical care.

The political dissidents who opposed this system were remarkably brave and talented. They played an essential role in keeping the embers of independent life, belief and thought alive. But they were almost all outliers — intellectuals, clerics, poorly educated firebrands — who made little connection with the general public.

That all changed in 1980, when an unknown, uneducated electrician clambered over the iron gates of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, to rally the workers there who were demanding the formation of a union without official oversight. That was the beginning of Lech Walesa’s rise to lead the Solidarity movement — Solidarnosc, in Polish — which spread rapidly that fall and became a parallel center of power to the official Communist Party organs.

By the winter of 1981, Solidarity was demanding both stable prices and higher wages, a circle that was impossible to square. The situation had become untenable: Factories across the country were on perpetual strike. Farmers were refusing to sell produce for an increasingly worthless currency. Supply shortages were outstripping the government’s ability to ration essential foodstuffs. Citizens were reduced to selling their belongings at impromptu flea markets that popped up all over the country.

On the night of Dec. 13, 1981, Polish general Wojciech Jaruzelski, who had taken power that October, imposed martial law. All domestic and international telephone and telegraph lines were cut. Walesa and thousands of other Solidarity officials and allies were arrested. A strict 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew was imposed, and military units set up checkpoints at major intersections. The military took over supervision of significant economic institutions, and the junta imposed a six-day workweek and price increases that resulted in a 20 percent drop in real wages.

And yet, Poles coped. Alcoholism initially surged, but most people found ways to survive and to keep their dignity. Journalists who refused to bow to the army found other work. One of Poland’s best-known TV hosts became a taxi driver. A remarkable underground press published not only diatribes against the regime but also educational tracts on economics and politics. Because these were forbidden, the public soaked them up, and over time Poles became one of Europe’s best-informed citizenries.

Inspired by the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who had been elected in 1978, the Catholic Church became a center of national resistance. On Good Friday in 1982, Polish churches turned their traditional displays of Christ’s tomb into political statements by, for example, drawing outlines of dead bodies to represent protesters killed during a protest at a coal mine.

On the 13th of each month, demonstrations marking the imposition of martial law exploded across the country. The junta deployed tear gas, water cannons and paramilitary police with long white truncheons (or “blondes”) to suppress demonstrators in running skirmishes. And Poles carried out small acts of defiance, like ostentatiously taking a stroll every night at the precise time when the government broadcast the official evening news program.

Over time, Poles began to understand that, as the Czech dissident and eventual president Vaclav Havel wrote, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” That understanding not only enabled Poles to survive the deprivation and depression of the 1980s, it also prepared them to lead the Soviet bloc out of communist repression in 1989.

Poland’s transition from an impoverished police state to one of Europe’s most vibrant economies and democracies is often cast as some miraculous intervention by John Paul II and/or Ronald Reagan. In reality, it was a result of hard work and great courage by political leaders and ordinary Poles.

Tragically, their accomplishments are in danger of possibly fatal backsliding toward a 21st-century version of soft authoritarianism. Part of the reason for the degradation of Poland’s democracy is the amnesia many Poles have developed about just how dehumanizing their country was before 1989. Perhaps selflessly providing desperately needed aid and comfort to their Ukrainian neighbors will awaken Poles from that willful forgetfulness, and help them confront the realities of the past by actively remembering them.