julka interview 2

Julka: How would you define how communism worked in practice, for you?

Babcia Jola: Well, you know, by the time I was born we didn’t have that defined communism anymore. Because this kind of communism, it describes an ideology that took shape in the Soviet Union, or Russia, some time ago and then it came to us, but by the mid 50s it was over, there was the so-called thaw and I guess you could call that socialism? Yes, probably socialism, so everybody got an equal amount, you know, salaries were equal, they didn’t differ much between a physical worker and a doctor, a teacher. Everybody was equal but they couldn’t buy anything, so this small amount of money didn’t bother anyone, because you couldn’t go and spend a lot of money, go shopping for nice things, because you didn’t even know there were nice things to buy. We just lived in this, I’m not sure what to call it. Dead end? Surrounded by wire, not barbed, or maybe almost barbed. They called us the funniest barrack in the socialist camp, Poland I mean. Yes, people used comedy or laughter to escape. On the other hand, you look at it differently when you’re young, because from the perspective of my old age I see that it was really bad. But when you’re young when you’re twenty then what’s there is more than enough. Because I think we were, us women, we were socialized, the same way we are now, maybe it’s even worse now, socialized to play our role. Of course you had to go to work because one salary was not enough to support a family, so back then women still went to work without some uproar from the gentlemen’s side, because it was necessary. So children ran around with keys dangling from their necks. They went to school themselves, the school was always close by. They just walked around with the keys around their necks until mum came home from work and cooked dinner. And you know. And when I think about it now in retrospect, I think that we were shaped, women in PPR, shaped from the clay of Catholicism and socialism. It was, it was so similar. One was a religion and the other one was a religion. The woman has her role to play, she has to birth children, raise them, without any male help, none. And mothers raised their sons like little kings, like princes. And I think that now they raise boys the same, they step into the same role.
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I think that this conglomerate of Polish Catholicism, that is not Christian at all, caused it. We’re different and that will not change for generations, it’s very similar right now. You, young women, are being socialised to play your roles, you are supposed to stay home, birth children, not talk. The master will tell you what is good for you. And, you know, women in the west can’t really understand that…they probably also had that back in the day, but I think that this superior role of the church caused what is happening right now. We will continue to differ for years if that institution is not dismantled. I’m not saying to get rid of it altogether, people have a need for faith, but they can believe of their own accord. They can go to church of their own accord, the church should not come into every aspect of a woman’s life. That’s what I think.

Julka: I was just wondering if you already saw those mechanisms and this socialization of women when you were, I don’t know, about my age, or do you look at it this way in retrospect?

Babcia Jola: Well, you know, ever since I was a kid I had grievances about the fact that I was treated different at home than my younger brother. That was evident from…I think every single one had that, girl, but did she reflect on it? I mean, did she have grievances? Seems that she didn’t. Everything was the way it was because it should be, because that was the right way, because you had to, I mean, we didn’t feel worse by any measure, but we felt that everybody around us was treating us like we were worse, that sex I mean. And at school, because at school, for example, a girl couldn’t be good at maths or physics, or there was that mind-set that, well you’re here but you don’t really have to put in that much effort because you’re not made to play this role. And that’s how it went, and later when one becomes an adult, reads different things, if one grows up at all, I mean mentally, then one looks at it in retrospect, that in fact it was, it was worse. I’m just saying, nobody thought about it at the time because those were the roles we had to play and so we did.

Julka: Do you think PPR lead to generational trauma?
Babcia Jola: I’m not sure. Generational trauma, I don’t know what to call it, you know, because apart from Poland a similar thing happened to a lot of Slavic nations, or even something identical and do they have trauma because of it? I think that trauma here, between Bug and the Oder, is here. PPR caused, or rather deepened it, but that generational trauma comes from the partitions, II Rzeczpospolita. It all repeats itself and PPR added to that. […] PPR is in us, what else is there to say.
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It is, it is in us and we pass it down raising our children, our grandchildren, that we’re entitled to something. Because that’s how we were shaped, that we’re entitled to everything. We’re entitled to free healthcare. Sure, it would be nice if it was actually free, well but then we’d have to pay insane taxes that we almost have an aversion to. And that is also from PPR. That you shouldn’t pay, you should avoid. People can’t connect effects and causes and vice versa, causes and effects.

Julka: Do you see characteristics of a post-colonial country in Poland?

Babcia Jola: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. I don’t know how, you know, mentality is the hardest to change, it takes years of work, generations. And here, you see, not much has changed since the partitions, these minds are warped. I don’t know, I don’t know how to fix it, because, you know, everybody together with that ruling group that divides us, they’re wondering, writing on Twitter or somewhere, how did it come to this, that we let the partitions happen in Poland? How come? They didn’t want to divide any other country but us, why? And looking at these, you know, actions, warped minds, you can see why now. We are not able to govern ourselves.
Julka: Yes, that mentality of a victim.
Babcia Jola: Mentality, yes, the mentality of that serf that has to have a master, if he has choice he’s unhappy, because, you know, he doesn’t know how to decide for himself and when somebody tells you what’s what, you have to do this and this, it’s easy. It’s a lot more simple to live like that.