[HayBale]

Not that I want to be Debbie downer but as always in case of Polish (which I am also are) overexaggerated and having that strange believe that if not the communists Poland would be a global superpower.

Its enough to go the wiki (both about the computer and the inventor) to see that the situation was not that clear. The performance was greatly overstated, it depended on the import of the component from the west etc.

Moreover the guy was cooperating with the Polish version of the FBI so it's not like it was a story of lonely genius vs the governament....

[keiferski]

I don’t think anyone believes Poland would be a global superpower. But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much any other European state, including Germany, Russia, and France.

It’s not a stretch to think that Poland would be on equal terms with Spain or Italy had these things not occurred. But of course then you have to dig into the history of colonialism, of which Poland was a colonized state and not a colonizing one, and places like the UK, France, or Germany don’t like considering the fact that abundant resources from colonies might have played a role in their industrialization.

[qwytw]

> But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much

To be fair the country become entirely dysfunctional (mainly due to internal reasons) long before it was dismembered. By the 1700s while technically retaining most of its territory it basically became just a "playground" for Russia, Swedish and German armies to fight each other in... and the country's elite had very little interest or desire to prevent that (or rather it was a very low priority for them and their weren't willing to sacrifice their economic and political status for it).

> Italy

I'm not sure Italy had many advantages in that regard. It was already dismembered to begin with and for several hundreds of years it was just a prize for major European powers to fight over (in many ways it was in even worse position than Poland). On the other hand even at its peak Poland was extremely economically and socially underdeveloped compared to most of Italy which seems like a much bigger reason.

> Germany > resources from colonies might have played a role in their industrialization.

I'm not sure that's true in this case. Yes Germans were doing a lot of "colonizing" in Eastern Europe but I'm not sure German states in Germany "proper" necessarily benefited that much from it. And to be fair historically Poland only has itself to "blame" for being outmatched by a minor state like Prussia which began as a Polish vassal but somehow managed to turn itself into a global(ish) superpower over a few centuries.

[keiferski]

I’m not super interested in arguing about the finer details. The point remains that Poland was colonized, destroyed, and occupied from roughly the late 19th century until the 1990s, and so anyone blaming the lack of development there on occupying forces is in a large sense correct. The fact that Poland today, unoccupied, is rapidly approaching the development level of leading EU countries further emphasizes the point.

[qwytw]

> rapidly approaching the development level of leading EU countries further emphasizes the point.

Well same applies to pretty much all of Central/Eastern Europe, and my point is that events prior to the 1900s didn't necessarily have a huge impact on the current situation (look at Finland). It's not like the Russian Empire in the 1800s was particularly more oppressive towards the overwhelming majority of the population or mismanaged the country to higher degree than the Polish nobility that preceded them (of course only in relative terms).

Napoleon winning/not losing as bad might have changed significantly everything but Poland's problems in the 1600s and the 1700s were primarily caused by internal issues.

Being independent alone is often not enough (e.g Portugal/Spain were left completely behind the rest of Western Europe economically and even socially until the mid to late 20th century).

[keiferski]

It's not like the Russian Empire in the 1800s was particularly more oppressive towards the overwhelming majority of the population or mismanaged the country to higher degree than the Polish nobility that preceded them

The Russian Empire literally tried to eradicate the Polish language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification#Lithuania_and_Po...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Polish_sentiment#Before_t...

You're also not mentioning the fact that the mismangement of the 19th century was in large part due to foreign actors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto#Zenith

You don't seem to know much of what you're talking about, so like I said, I'm not interested in having this conversation.

[qwytw]

> You're also not mentioning the fact that the mismanagement of the 19th century was in large part due to foreign actors.

Well, yes.. Since Poland/Lithuania wasn't an independent state anymore and Poland lost most of its autonomy after the uprising in 1830 and 63 I would agree it was not only in large part but almost entirely due to foreign actors.

> The Russian Empire literally tried to eradicate the Polish language.

As I said, in relative terms. The Russian Empire was of course highly oppressive and put in a lot of effort suppressing the local Polish landholders/nobility because they were the biggest political threat. Peasants (i.e. the overwhelming majority of the population) were one of the main beneficiaries of this, getting to buyout their land at a significant discount if not outright for free.

By the 1900s in Congress Poland over 60% of land was owned by peasants and small landholders, I find it hard to believe that would have happened without foreign intervention so it's not like it was entirely black and white.

> You don't seem to know much of what you're talking about

Not sure about that, you do seem to lack nuance to a rather severe degree, though

[elzbardico]

Yes. I love my Polish friends, but some of them have this strange mania of exageration and rewriting history as if Poland would be glorious empire if not from the subhuman soviets(russians actually), or because the envy of the evil germans.

[6d6b73]

I believe there is a simple reason for that - if you're sandwiched between two genocidal maniacs and every decade of not being subjugated by at least one of them is a success, you take pride in every small accomplishment. If you add to that the fact that even these small accomplishments are often not only not recognized but often usurped by others as their own - it can make you little too protective of your history.

[chrisco255]

I can believe it. Communism destroyed multiple countries. Look at the difference between North Korea and South Korea. Only capitalist reforms to communist countries improved things for places like China, which was every bit as worse off as Poland before they opened up trade and market based reforms in the 70s.

[mzs]

Think more CIA than FBI. He reported back to SB what he learned about foreign technology, and that was in the '60s before the events around the K-202.

[legitster]

> strange believe that if not the communists Poland would be a global superpower

I think it's fair to consider Poland the birthplace of the modern computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography)

Maybe not a global superpower, but it is very easy to me to imagine a Poland not destroyed by Nazi then communist rule being an innovation center of the world.

[BalinKing]

According to that link, The Martians were Hungarian :-P

[legitster]

Oops. Updated to be less wrong.

[HayBale]

Prewar Poland was a military dictatorship(mild but was) in the permanent state of crisis, on a brink of a civil war with all of its minorities. And it is a wild take to blame communists for the nazi atrocities.

But communist solved most of the problems that prewar Poland would have problem of solving. Yeah Polish tech was amazing especially if you consider the resources

[ein0p]

Communists also happen to be the sole reason why Polish people still exist, because a certain Austrian painter was going to eradicate them all after he was done with the Jews.

[omega3]

With friends like this… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish...

[ein0p]

And I’m not arguing with that, Stalin also did massive purges of his own officers, leaving the red army severely deficient right before the war, but as horrible as this is, this is not total genocide, which is what awaited Poland had the USSR not won the war.

[6d6b73]

German genocide of other nations consisted of exterminating weak people and forced labor for the strong. They integrated people with "Aryan features" into their society and we're slowly getting rid of the rest.

Soviets exterminated scientist, priests, doctors and officers - the very people who could fight back. They integrated poor and weak. Their idea was to melt the remaining people into one nation. This is a form of ethnic cleansing.

Both Nazi and Soviets had the same goal - to take over the world by killing the people they didn't like and integrating people they needed. They just had difference of opinion in show to achieve their goals. Fortunately they didn't succeed, unfortunately it still resulted in millions killed by both sides.

[6d6b73]

Communists partitioned Poland in 1939 together with Germans. War would take a different direction if they didn't join Nazis. They were not really the good guys.

[ein0p]

Actually no, the war would take the exact same direction because Hitler did not consider Slavs to be human. It would have just got to the USSR a couple of years before it was even remotely ready for the war, and, ironically, would probably cause it to lose the war, which, let me remind you, would lead to full eradication of Poles and Poland. To accuse the USSR of “joining Nazis” would require you to be completely unaware of the historical context, and forget that Poland itself “joined Nazis” in a non-aggression pact in 1934 (5 years before Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), and occupied parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. By that logic a lot of other countries in Europe (including Britain) “joined Nazis” by signing agreements with them and partitioning other states such as Czechoslovakia.

[6d6b73]

The war would take a different direction because it would take slightly longer for Germans to conquer the rest of Poland. That few weeks could help France and Germany to decide to actually join the war and attack Germany instead of just sitting there for months waiting for Germans to attack. The non-agression pact between Poland and Nazi Germany was signed to normalize relations between the country, and not to partition another country. Ribbentrop-Molotov act on the other hand had a secret protocol where they decided to divide Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into their spheres of influence. Yes, Poland did take part of Czechoslovakia after 1938, but it was a tiny sliver of land with polish ethnic majority. It was a bad move but nothing that can be compared to Soviet invasion in 1939.

[linearrust]

> I think it's fair to consider Poland the birthplace of the modern computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography)

"The first machine was built by the Poles and was a hand operated multiple enigma machine."

There were polish contributors to the general idea of computation. But computation is not the same thing as modern computer. No serious person can view the bomba as a 'modern computer'. It took the discovery of the transistor to give birth to the modern computer.

> but it is very easy to me to imagine a Poland not destroyed by Nazi then communist rule being an innovation center of the world.

Poland doesn't that the population, resources, etc for that. Whatever great innovators poland would have possibly had in your alternate universe would have been siphoned off by germany, russia, britain, france, US, etc. There is a reason why so many renowned poles pre-ww2 made their contributions outside of poland.

[pinewurst]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202

[piombisallow]

Communism certainly didn't help.

[chrisco255]

I mean, every modern computer and phone depends on foreign components from other countries. We still attribute the invention and success of a product to the top level designer (like Apple), even though most of the components come from Asia.