Do you live in Poland? I live in Prague, and here, I'm surprised at how little people care about the foreign investment aspect of the privatization process. Even though almost everyone complains that it is corrupt, people here are mostly pro-west. The economy is strong here, and people don't see a big problem. Sure, we were among the richest countries in Europe pre WWII, but that was a long time ago, and people are now used to being relatively poor. But outside of Prague, especially on the Moravian side of the country I think opinions are very different, and many people actively say that "communism was better" and that the west has robbed the country. It is true, that heavy industry, like the car maker škoda auto (Now owned by VW), and the slevarny (metal making firms that are owned by the west), and the coal mines(owned by the Swiss) are all outside of Prague... Do Pols realise the extent that they were robbed?
I just realised that my post comes across as pro-totalitarian communism. But that wasn't my point at all. My point wasn't that I think that things were "better during communism" my point was simply to try to present the opinions of those who do understand that the pro-western privitization process was unfair.
I just think that a more moderate, slower, and fairer privitization process would have been better for the citizens of the country, and not that we should have stayed totalitarian/communist.
More Poles realise this now, but they are often frowned upon by the mainstream media (surprise, surprise - they are mostly German-owned) and called regressive, nationalistic, etc. But the trends are rather positive, we now have a government that seems to support Polish industry, and peoples' attitudes have changed. For example, there's a very popular mobile app called Pola, which tells you how much a product is "Polish" (it computes a score based on where the owners are located, whether the company does R&D in Poland, and so on) based on barcodes. It's actually pretty trendy now, and it's not uncommon to see people scanning stuff with it in supermarkets. More about it here: https://growthengine.withgoogle.com/intl/en-eu/voices#card-s...
Interesting fact - some people responsible for the sell out to the west have been recently given prominent positions in Ukraine's government structures.
On the other hand, I remember that there were lot of Czech companies that were privatized into Czech hands and most of them do not exist anymore, because they went bankrupt a long time ago.
At the time (during the 90s), most of those companies that had foreign investors/management grew and survived and those that didn't were often tunneled-out by a corrupt management and were closed down. There were definitely some pretty big cases in 90s. Also there was a big public discussion about this at the time, and many politicians were against the foreign investments in general.
So I simply don't think that it's so clear-cut issue and that it's not like most of Czech people are completely unaware of the problem.
timthelion|9 years ago
timthelion|9 years ago
I just think that a more moderate, slower, and fairer privitization process would have been better for the citizens of the country, and not that we should have stayed totalitarian/communist.
hiacynt|9 years ago
Interesting fact - some people responsible for the sell out to the west have been recently given prominent positions in Ukraine's government structures.
tjelen|9 years ago
At the time (during the 90s), most of those companies that had foreign investors/management grew and survived and those that didn't were often tunneled-out by a corrupt management and were closed down. There were definitely some pretty big cases in 90s. Also there was a big public discussion about this at the time, and many politicians were against the foreign investments in general.
So I simply don't think that it's so clear-cut issue and that it's not like most of Czech people are completely unaware of the problem.
unknown|9 years ago
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