All's lost, but not forever

All's lost, but not forever. Poland is not lost forever.

Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

Post-Soviet Poland embraced free enterprise while the EU did its best to destroy it. Poland already had survived murder attempts by the Nazis and the USSR. Now its economy and its education system are outstripping the EU and Great Britain.

Grass was an unregenerate old communist, but I will never forget the shock of reading The Tin Drum in the mid-1970s and encountering the idea that the USSR would end, and that its former slave states would triumph somehow. I had been brought up on the hopelessness of 1984. Grass himself seemed to think that the only real problem in his beloved Poland had been the Nazis, while East Germany under the Soviets was on the right path. He was skeptical of German reunification, not only in the Dennis Miller sense:

"I view this in much the same way I view a possible Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis reconciliation: I never really enjoyed their work, and I'm not sure I need to see any of their new stuff."

--but because he hated to see capitalism gobble up the virtuously administered communist assets of East Germany. As a college student, however, I wasn't aware of his inane economic views, and noticed only the horror of Nazi subjugation, which I knew, even if he didn't, had been followed quickly by Soviet subjugation.

Even now, as we seem determined to try the communist totalitarian experiment yet again, I think of Poland, not lost forever.