Communism Past and Present

Dzień dobry! It's Nell, and I'm actually back in the United States now! First, apologies for the delayed blog post, but traveling back to the States made it difficult to put anything up. Now, I'd like to start off with the fact that I'll be pulling out some comparisons within this post. I'll be looking at how the USSR did many things to try and smother cultures in Eastern Europe (with a focus on Poland due to my knowledge of it) just as China today is attempting to destroy many of its own interior cultures as well as the Tibetan culture.

Let's start with Communism. In Communism, everyone is supposed to be the same. Everyone works. Everyone gets the same amount of rations and supplies. Only enough for what they need, not want. In Poland, this resulted with people receiving ration cards. Every individual had their own ration card with information of how much they could get of certain items. This uniformity does not only affect the materialistic side of life, but also the cultural side. If everyone is supposed to be the same, that means that religion should be the same. It's easier to get rid of religion altogether, as then people will not be able to develop their own beliefs. That means that everyone should speak the same language. That means traditions should be erased. All for the sake of being the same.

In many of the Eastern Bloc countries, this resulted with the enforcement of schools being taught in Russian, and Russian only. Immediately after World War II, in Poland, for example, it was punishable if a teacher used any Polish books or if the students spoke in Polish. Many of the men who fought through World War II were being persecuted as "helping the Germans," when in fact they were just fighting for a free Poland. Essentially, any one that might be a threat to the Communist regime was targeted and thrown into jail.

Those are just a few examples, and unfortunately, one of my better examples has slipped my mind. Therefore, I'll make this short and go to today. Today, Tibet is not on the globe as its independent country; instead, it is within China's borders. However, if you were to look at a map just a little earlier from the century, you would see that Tibet was indeed its own country. If you spend time in a Tibetan community, you can see the obvious differences between Tibetan and Chinese culture. While China claims Tibet is a part of China, many Tibetans disagree with this. Due to necessity in order to survive, Tibetans within Tibet may not learn Tibetan in schools, and sometimes only use it in home-life. Instead they focus on Chinese, due to the need to use it for jobs, for life. This is not necessarily forced by the government, but when it becomes difficult to survive without learning a language, it is indirectly enforced. This leads to the destruction of one branch of the culture. Instead, many Tibetan communities outside of Tibet have a stronger cultural sense of their heritage.

China wants Tibet to acknowledge it as a part of China, while the Dalai Lama, the political leader of Tibet, still desires Tibet to be free. The USSR also had many countries under its hold which were considered a part of the USSR as opposed to their independent nations, but aside from this, it had other countries under military control and at some points demanded that people could not leave those nations. Example, citizens in Poland had difficultly leaving the nation even to travel. Today, Tibetans attempting to escape are shot at the border to prevent their escape. Such occurrences have happened in history before, and therefore, as they happen today, they should make us think through the history's previous results.