Historical perspectives and propaganda

I work in the IT industry, and it often surprises people when I mention that my academic background is as an historian. Looking back on my school career, when I came to choose options for A-levels I had a fairly open choice between “arts” and science subjects, and I just went with my strongest interest – history. That extended on to university, where I studied Modern History.

When I was visiting my in-laws in Poland recently, they unearthed a couple of fascinating booklets – fascinating to me, anyway, since one of the the countries I specialised in during my academic studies was Russia and the Russian Revolution, covering the early 19th century through until Stalin’s death in 1953.

 

Click the image to go to a Flickr set containing images of each page, or download a PDF

Click the image to go to a Flickr set containing images of each page, or download a PDF

 

The book on the left (published in the same year I was born!) presents a version of Lenin’s life, in the voice of a father talking to his child. It’s a highly and unsurprisingly romanticised account, talking about his struggle to free the poor, and how very hard he worked… ending with a note about how sad everyone was when he died, but how his ideas are remembered – “work and life are organised according to the new system”. The booklet on the right, published a year later, contains a number of stories. I’ve not had all of them translated to me, but one story involves Lenin getting a Christmas tree for all the poor children!

This portrayal of Lenin as the hero of the poor working classes, friend to children everywhere, is classic stuff – I’d read about the way in which his image was manipulated in order to romanticise and legitimise the Communist system, particularly under Stalin and his successors, but here I had two booklets which were being used as recently as 30 years ago to teach my wife and her siblings (although not all of them remember it so vividly, given that the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Poland is now celebrating 20 years of democracy). The back pages of each booklet contain the publishing information noting that they were printed in “ZSSR”. The Communist themes, symbols and colours are prevalent. Of course, it also elevates Lenin to an almost religious position of reverence, ironic given the Marxist opposition to religion, but convenient for Stalin’s purposes in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. I felt very strongly that it was worth preserving them, so I engaged in a little digital archaeology / restoration with the aid of a scanner and Apple’s Pages 09.

Talking to my wife, she remembers these books being read to her as a child… she told me that she remembers her mother not seeming exactly sure about them or keen to tell the stories, but looking back she can see that it was because it was not the done thing to speak out against the materials – if her child had gone to school making comments against comrade Lenin it would have been a problem!

I do have to wonder just how many of the portraits of Lenin can ever have been legitimate. I particularly like the images of Lenin the worker and Lenin the family man. Absolutely fascinating.

It’s absolutely true that my own initial views of Poland were based on the grey news footage of Solidarity strikes in the 1980s, and when I first went to the country in 2002 I was astonished to find how “modern” and vibrant a place it is – of course, I can now see that I was just seeing the place through the filter of 15-year-old news coverage of a period of unrest and hardship, in a particular region of a large country. What I know now about the way people lived is based on memories which are fast slipping away. I can talk in very broken Polish to my wife’s grandmother who lived through the war and remembers it; to her parents about the hard times they lived through; and get the occasional remark about my wife’s childhood. Materials like these books make it much more real. I hope you’ll find them as interesting to think about as I did, even if you don’t understand every word written inside.

A photo interlude

A sojourn in Poland

Since Twitpic is refusing submissions from Tweetie or Twitpic at the moment… I’m falling back on the (new! improved! now with comment moderation!) WordPress app for the iPhone instead.

I think it is 15 months since I was last in Poland. Major observations are the expansion of Tesco and lots of new roundabouts. It’s still very cold in the mountains on the border and more snow is forecast. Oh, and our new niece is just over a week old and really, really tiny!

Social networking with schoolfriends in Poland

One of the sites making waves in Poland at the moment is Nasza Klasa, or Our Class. When we were there at Christmas, the whole family was getting very excited about it – reconnecting with old friends and giggling at old pictures. A lot of fun.

It’s interesting that this social network is even needed. Lots of local / native language sites and networks do exist, not only in Poland, particularly in the Far East for instance… this is one area where sites like Facebook sometimes fail. Poland in particular has its own instant messaging network (Gadu-Gadu, on which I have an account but never seem to be able to login using Adium) and other reinventions of the otherwise English-speaking wheel. Although some of my family are on Facebook, they are also enjoying using the Polish alternatives.

Nasza Klasa is suffering growing pains having gained several million users in a very short space of time… it’s particularly evident in the performance of the service, unfortunately. The site reminds me a lot of Friends Reunited, which I suppose was one of the earlier social networks. The idea is the same – reconnecting schoolfriends – and even the colours and layout are not dissimilar to the original Friends Reunited design. Looking at Friends Reunited now (part of the ITV empire, for some reason), it does look horribly dated. We complain about Facebook’s walled garden, but FR has absolutely no APIs or feeds, you have to visit the site to do anything, and you have to pay to be able to contact your friends. Thank goodness the web moved on.

Autumn in Poland and England

A couple of shots from this past weekend, using the compact camera.

Wisła-Malinka, Poland

Epping Forest, England

Technorati tags: England, photography, photos, poland, autumn, epping forest, fall

More Poland photos

One thing that I slightly regret is that I don’t have a particular favourite subject or style, so I shoot everything from portraits to landscapes to macro to abstract, and the sets do not always end up looking coherent. Anyway, I’ve uploaded more shots from last week’s trip, and I’ve also created a Children and Babies set and shuffled the Featured Sets collection around a bit. Always interested in comments…

Where have I been?

Have I been a bit quiet? That’s because I’ve been here:

And enjoying sights like these:

And also spending time with our nephew:

More photos on Flickr, as usual.

Last week I did about 1000km of driving in Poland – the first time I’d driven on the “wrong” side of the road, too. Bit of an unfortunate start to the break, since I managed to leave Ola’s passport at home. Still, it all came together in the end.

Whilst away I also (finally!) read most of The Long Tail, and all of a really great, fun and highly readable book called the The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, which I thoroughly recommend.

I also explored a bunch of interesting new music on the iPod via the Song by Toad podcast, which is worth a listen. Episode 8 is stuffed with new music which I love (Emmy the Great, Monkey Swallows the Universe), Episode 5 has some other cool stuff (Alex Cornish, Thunderegg), and Episode 6 is just hilarious.

Back to it. Service to be resumed shortly.

Technorati Tags: books, holiday, photography, photos, poland, polska, music, reading, travel, vacation

Icicle by the stream

Icicle by the stream

Originally uploaded by andyp uk.

I had a great walk this morning with Ola’s dog Roy. We went up the mountain to look for some interesting photo opportunities. The snow we had earlier in the week has mostly melted due to a warmer couple of days. This morning it was about -1C so there is still a lot of ice about, and snow in the places where the sun has had less of a chance to melt it.

I spotted this long icicle where the stream was running over some rocks. The rock at the top of the picture was mostly covered in ice. The whiteness at the bottom of the shot is the running water (this was taken at 1/25 sec exposure). I was balanced on a rock in the middle of the stream, crouched down, with a long lens – and Roy was sitting patiently behind me, on his lead.

Had a great holiday, as usual.

Check out the other shots. More to come, but the satellite broadband connection is not the fastest way of uploading…

Another anniversary

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski declaring a state of emergency /martial law in Poland , and cracking down on Solidarity. There’s a reflective mood here. Last night there was a big concert for peace, and it has been all over the TV. I’ve had some interesting conversations with my in-laws about the changes at the time – the roadblocks, the curfew, the army presence. Hard to even understand. Poland is a good place to be now, but I can’t imagine what it must have been like.

Do yourself a favour and have a read via the Wikipedia links above. It’s worth knowing a bit about the history and background of today’s political situation.

Update: the BBC has a story about today’s reflection, and a historical viewpoint.

Technorati tags: Poland, history, Polska, anniversary

Water wheel

Water wheel

Originally uploaded by andyp uk.

We had a little snow yesterday – none (so far) today, and what is out there is melting. I took this shot alongside the house. The water wheel is not actually in the water at the moment, but I thought this made a nice composition.

Holiday reading

At Ola’s urging, I only brought a single book with me on holiday (apparently I usually bring a small library, and as a result my bags are too heavy). The book is I Know You Got Soul by Jeremy Clarkson. I read it from cover to cover on Sunday afternoon.

I’ve blogged about my enjoyment of Clarkson’s humour before. I attempted to translate it into Polish for my in-laws, but I’m not sure that I succeeded. Nevertheless, I did hear that he is one of the most popular English authors in Poland at the moment. The book is a paean to various machines – mostly real vehicles, but also including the Millennium Falcon and the AK47 – that Clarkson considers to be the greatest ever built. The delivery is classic stuff – plenty of ironic comments. It’s just a shame that I whipped through it so quickly…

Yesterday afternoon we found some English-language books in Empik, so I now have Freakonomics and Monstrous Regiment to keep me going. I also found a Polish version of I Know You Got Soul (which translates as Wiem, że masz duszę) which I’ve given to my in-laws.

It’s snowing outside.

Technorati tags: reading, humour, humor, Jeremy Clarkson, books, I Know You Got Soul, Freakonomics, Monstrous Regiment

Moonlight

Moonlight

Originally uploaded by andyp uk.

In Poland. It just started snowing higher up the mountain today, but we’ve still got no snow at ground level. This was a bit of an experiment, taken from the bedroom window late last night, looking into the forest opposite.

More to come during the course of the week, I hope.