I slid open the wooden drawer of the university library’s card catalog to thumb through weathered index cards bearing authors’ names, titles of their works, and call numbers. I searched for a particular mid-alphabet author. Somewhere between Okolski, Szymon and Orzeszkowa, Eliza, I found what I was looking for:  Orwell, George (1903-1950), 1984. This listing contained a subtle warning: Access requires permission from faculty. 

It was 1984. I was studying on exchange in Communist Poland at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University. Soviet-style repression—limiting freedom of movement, freedom of expression, freedom to gather, and freedom to read books censored by the government—like Orwell’s—defined the confining parameters under which Poles lived. 

To seek permission from a professor to read a censored book could bring one under suspicion and, potentially, risk a highly-coveted place at the university. 

I arrived in Poland a few months before, a wet-behind-the-ears, novice traveler. At nineteen, I’d flown only twice before. I purchased a Boston to Brussels plane ticket and another ticket for a thirty-hour train to Warsaw. The last leg of the trip would be a three-hour express train from Warsaw to Krakow. I was young, excited and looking forward to the 60-hour, 4092-mile journey.

I purchased an enormous travel trunk. Ten months of clothing, shampoo, soap and deodorant were stuffed inside as I prepared for fall, winter and spring in a country where consumer goods were in short supply. I stupidly packed (heavy) books. My Mom commandeered part of my trunk, adding clothing, coffee, chocolate and Polish ham for me to bring to family. The irony of the last item: Polish ham was sent out for export to bring in cold, hard cash from the West. Ham was rarely available in Polish stores.

My carry-on luggage included sealed envelopes bearing names of family members containing hard-earned cash gifts from my parents. Amid shortages and rationing, the Communist government established special stores called Pewex that sold medicines, coffee, chocolate, calculators and appliances—items not readily available in shops. What was the hitch? You could only buy these items with foreign hard currencies like U.S. Dollars, West German Deutsche Marks, French Francs and British Pounds. What was the problem? Private ownership of hard currencies was forbidden by the government. This spawned an elaborate Czarny Rynek – Black Market of currency exchanges. I remembered my Aunt Jancia hid carefully folded dollars in a nondescript coffee can in her kitchen.

Landing in Brussels, I retrieved my enormous trunk from the conveyor belt. One of its four wheels went missing somewhere between Boston and Brussels. I spent the day DRAGGING my laden luggage around Brussels. Bumping along the cobbled Grand-Place square provided lots of “eye candy” for my sleep-deprived eyes. I remember ornate guild houses, the soaring Cathedral of St. Gudula, and Manneken Pis, the famed water fountain with a sculpture of a little boy peeing. 

I dragged my trunk and myself to Brussels’ Central Station for the thirty-hour train to Warsaw. I slept haphazardly, keeping half an eye on my trunk in the corridor – it was too large to fit in the compartment. 

Somehow, I landed at my Krakow dorm – Dom Studencki “Piast” at 47 Piastowska Street in Krakow. Directed to my room, I walked through the dimly lit corridor on the second floor and noticed two things: cloth baby diapers drying on an improvised clothesline in the hallway and the aroma of simmering soup.

I entered a new world, a Communist world. I learned. I listened. I observed.

My classroom lessons were complemented by learning to covertly trade dollars on the Black Market while mastering the art of securing a spot in long lines for rationed pieces of kielbasa and scratchy, gray and speckled toilet paper. I passed large images of Lenin and red-lettered banners around the city extolling the virtues of socialism and the ills of capitalism. I quietly gathered illegal, pro-Solidarity newsletters dispersed by the underground. A vicious political regime imprisoned dissenters. Soon after I arrived, secret police kidnapped and murdered Jerzy Popieluszko, an outspoken, pro-democracy Roman Catholic Priest.

Communist dogma espoused creation of a classless society. This was a lie. Soviet-imposed communism in Poland at the end of WWII created special privileges for those who agreed to a Faustian bargain, signing on to membership to the Communist Party. (Note: Poland had the lowest Communist Party membership within the Eastern Block.) These privileges included express lanes to securing job promotions, a telephone, a flat, or a humble Polski Fiat. Young married couples waited years for apartments and were forced to lived on the other side of the wall of their parents in their childhood bedrooms in drab Socialist Realist housing estates.

Orwell had Big Brother. Poles had “Uncle” – their reference to the Soviet Union and its interference in their lives. Poles were not fools. They learned navigate this unjust political and economic system via a vast subterranean world where people bartered for needed items in their kitchens, in dorm rooms, and via the trunks of their cars…if they had a car.  Words like załatwić and kombinować — references to “arranging for” hard-to-find items — entered the Polish lexicon. Poets, playwrights, artists, musicians and filmmakers plied their crafts, promoting pro-democracy ideas, engaging metaphor and symbolism, to push past censors.  

I decided to not request special permission to read Orwell’s book. I’d already read it in the U.S.  Forty years later, I am back in Krakow. It is 2024, not 1984. I recently stepped inside the Księgarnia pod Globusem bookstore on Długa Street and spotted Orwell’s book, in Polish. Who could have imagined?

Today, Poland is a parliamentary democracy with a growing economy. Poles voted out the right-wing Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) ruling party in 2023, handing victory to the centrist Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform). Poland is experiencing slow but steady cultural shifts that are more aligned with western Europe. 

Poland opened its borders to millions of Ukrainians seeking refuge from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Today, Ukrainian is commonly heard on the streets and in shops. Poland’s response reflects compassion for human suffering in spite of complicated Polish-Ukrainian history. I suspect another factor is at play. Polish collective memory is marked by a deep, visceral trauma and awareness of Russian and, later, Soviet occupations, deportations, subjugations, displacements and murder of its people at the hands of its neighbor to the East. 

As in 1984, I am here to learn, listen and observe, clear-eyed and with an awareness of the history of this beautiful, resilient, and complicated place that I love. I wonder what George would think.

What’s up next in the Present TIme Blog? I’ll offer a look at Poland’s response to Europe’s migrant crisis as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk takes a page from Finland’s controversial playbook for managing the Russo-Finnish Border. Stay tuned.

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