i remember a pic of an arse-faced woman showing the monthly ration provided to her by the state in poland, as if saying "look at this misery". probably the pic was shot in the early 80s. when i first saw that the first thing that came to my mind is that, in northeastern brazil (my home region), around the same time, about 1.5 million people died of starvation and malnutrition during the drought of 1977-83, and many would literally give an arm or a leg for that ration.

Well... I'm not a fan of communism so in my opinion of course will differ. Nevertheless I think it was net negative especially because of personal freedoms (or lack there of), censorship, police brutality etc., but I totally agree that it was far better than Nazi occupation. Of course it was. It was peace time finally after all. History isn't black and white so there were some good things from PRL (polish acronym for People's Republic of Poland). Free education, healthcare and mass construction of public housing were some of the good ones that to this day make our lives in Poland better (the prefabricated housing especially in my opinion) but I think it could have been done without all the atrocities inflicted by the puppet government if only Poland was independent after the war and not under the de facto Soviet occupation.