The EU elites, both national and Brussels-based, have only one answer to all doubts: more integration!
An article by Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz, published originally on Sovereignty.pl. To read the full version on Sovereignty.pl, please click here.
Anyone who lived through the reign of the system that called itself “real socialism” in Poland has their own memories of those times. For me personally, they will always be symbolized by “Plan Vistula.” Few today remember this program, announced with great pomp in 1978, towards the end of Edward Gierek’s rule. Although it was already becoming obvious that his attempt at social and economic modernization of the Soviet system had failed, Gierek and the whole communist party could not accept this fact. “Let’s make the Vistula River a symbol of the flourishing of socialist Poland, a trail to the future!” This was the slogan put out by the Party, and the entire power apparatus and its propaganda picked it up eagerly.
Why is it that out of the numerous misguided investments of that period and the manifestations of gigantomania that served to mask the system’s disintegration, the one that sticks in my memory most deeply is the announcement of the regulation of Poland’s largest river and the creation of a vast system of canals and locks, analogous to those in France and Germany, to enable the mass transport of goods by water? For a simple reason: my father happened to work on the Vistula, in the inland waterways administration. He had accepted that semi-clerical position when he started a family, to end his nomadic life wandering from one construction site to another. However, although he also had a degree in administrative law, he remained first and foremost a hydraulic engineer. So he was well acquainted with the issues that were the subject of the triumphant announcements on the evening TV news, and shared his knowledge with us with a mixture of amusement and resignation.
For example, it would be announced on television that, as part of the implementation of the national plan to regulate the Vistula River, the construction of a hydroelectric dam in such and such locality had just begun, and they would show speeches, ribbon-cutting, and tippers or concrete mixers circling behind the backs of officials. My dad would then laugh, because he knew the place, and he would say: in order to seriously start construction there, for a start you need to move so many tens of thousands of cubic meters of earth, pour so much concrete, and there is only a narrow dirt road there, with the nearest railroad tens of kilometres away!
