Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff?
Speaker 2: Your podcast that's always about successful movements. I don't know
Speaker 2: what you're talking about. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
Speaker 2: this week, not only am I going to talk about
Speaker 2: successful movement, but I'm also going to talk to Courtney Cossack. Hi,
Speaker 2: how are you hi?
Speaker 3: Hello? I'm a successful movement.
Speaker 2: I don't have any counter evidence to that.
Speaker 3: No, trying to start a cult over here?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, well people want to start with the cult?
Speaker 2: Could they start with private Parts unknown your podcast?
Speaker 3: Yes, that would be a great place to start. Okay.
Speaker 2: Also part of Courtney's cult, I mean. Also on this
Speaker 2: podcast is Sophie. Hi, Sophie, how are you hi?
Speaker 1: I volunteer.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't really know what's involved yet,
Speaker 2: but I'm like, eh, I try.
Speaker 3: I trust court.
Speaker 2: I don't got anything better going on, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Like I just feel like it'll be a good
Speaker 1: time and I'll be fed.
Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, I'm a great leader. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Everyone should say hi to our audio engineer, Rory.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 2: Rory, Hi, Riight, Rory. Our theme musical was written forced
Speaker 2: by unwoman, and believe it or not, I'm going to
Speaker 2: cover people who won. That's not something I get to
Speaker 2: do every week.
Speaker 3: Dun dun du dun du du du du du dun du.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: So we've covered art revolutionaries before on this show, and
Speaker 2: we'll keep doing so because I like art revolutionaries.
Speaker 4: I like that.
Speaker 2: I like started off doing this research and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh cool, I found even more cool, like weird anarchist
Speaker 2: cerealists who oh wow, they like win and I'm really
Speaker 2: excited about them. I'm gonna like go out on a limb.
Speaker 2: Usually I try and hold the like reveal about what
Speaker 2: it's about. I'm just gonna guess that neither of you
Speaker 2: have heard of this, But I don't know. Are either
Speaker 2: of you familiar with the Orange Alternative movement in Poland
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties. No, nope, did either of you
Speaker 2: know that hippie anarchists, surrealist artists where I really major
Speaker 2: part in bringing down communist authoritarian governments. Interesting, Yeah, And
Speaker 2: they didn't do it because they're like pro capitalists. They
Speaker 2: are absolutely leftists. They just didn't like communist dictatorship and
Speaker 2: lived in Poland the Orange Alternative Movement. So we've covered
Speaker 2: comparable things and things that have inspired this movement. Before
Speaker 2: we covered the cabouter movement in the Netherlands, which was
Speaker 2: the anarchist pranksters who changed city life in the Netherlands
Speaker 2: and the nineteen seventies, we covered the San Francisco Diggers
Speaker 2: of the sixties, also anarchists who brought us whole wheat,
Speaker 2: tied ie and about half of what's cool with hippies.
Speaker 2: I'm not calling whole wheat or tied eye what's cool
Speaker 2: about hippies, but I'm just including that as like two
Speaker 2: of their big impacts. And we've covered the Surrealists and
Speaker 2: the Dadaists who brought art into the war against fascism.
Speaker 2: We covered the Dill Pickle Club that integrated nightlife in
Speaker 2: Chicago in the nineteen tens, and today we're going to
Speaker 2: cover a movement that was just as influential but is
Speaker 2: basically not talked about in the English language. We're going
Speaker 2: to talk about the Orange alternative movement of Poland, which
Speaker 2: used what they called socialist surrealism or maybe sometimes Soviet surrealism.
Speaker 2: I feel like I've seen it translated both ways, or
Speaker 2: maybe it's Soviet surrealism and I wrote it wrong in
Speaker 2: my script to challenge the authority of totalitarian communism. Along
Speaker 2: the way, they're going to make a laughing stock out
Speaker 2: of the authorities time and time again. They're also going
Speaker 2: to dress up as gnomes. Sometimes it gets translated as dwarves,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it gets translated as elves. But when I
Speaker 2: picture like a short mythical creature from Europe with a
Speaker 2: big pointy red hat, like, I go with gnome. What's
Speaker 2: the word that you use for that?
Speaker 3: I like gnomes. It's got a nice visual. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Problem is I play so much dandy that gnome, elf
Speaker 2: and dwarf are very distinct categories in my head. But
Speaker 2: if you get into folklore, they are not distinct categories.
Speaker 2: So they're gonna dress up as non they're going to
Speaker 2: sing funny songs, and they're also going to do a
Speaker 2: thing I really like, which is, for the first time
Speaker 2: since the nineteen twenties, they are going to raise the
Speaker 2: black flag of anarchism in a communist nation. And this
Speaker 2: story is hard to tell, not emotionally, although I got
Speaker 2: really invested, like way more than I expected while doing this.
Speaker 2: But because there's only one book in English about this movement.
Speaker 2: It is called Lives of the Orange Men by major
Speaker 2: Waldemir Fiedrich. He's also the main character of the book
Speaker 2: and a surrealist. So he's a surrealist. He's the author
Speaker 2: of a Soviet surrealist manifesto. The whole book is written
Speaker 2: as a series of like over the top glowing like
Speaker 2: hay geographies of you know these the way that like
Speaker 2: when Soviets write about Stalin or Lenin, you know, that's
Speaker 2: the way he wrote about himself and all of his friends.
Speaker 2: So it's hard to know so exactly everything that's true
Speaker 2: in this story, and I, like, you know, compared it
Speaker 2: to as many academic papers and other sources as I
Speaker 2: could find.
Speaker 4: Right, Okay, So when you say anarchist, like is the
Speaker 4: ultimate end total chaos? Or is the ultimate end something else?
Speaker 2: Oh, this is a really good question. So in this case,
Speaker 2: it's a reference to a political movement that was around
Speaker 2: since the eighteen sixties. It's basically socialism without an authoritarian
Speaker 2: without a state, without so it's a horizontally organized system
Speaker 2: of like distributing everything instead of a top down system.
Speaker 2: And so it basically like anarchism gets such a bad
Speaker 2: rap throughout the whole twentieth century that it now becomes
Speaker 2: almost a word that's very hard to explain to people.
Speaker 2: So he's an anti authoritarian socialist.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, and has it ever worked?
Speaker 2: I would say yes. Other people would argue otherwise. It
Speaker 2: has worked like explicitly as an anarchist society in three
Speaker 2: major times and places for several years with millions of people.
Speaker 2: It worked in revolutionary Spain in Catalonia during the Spanish
Speaker 2: Civil War from nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 2: It worked in Ukraine, and actually we were talking beforehand
Speaker 2: about the Cossacks, because that's just the thing I apparently
Speaker 2: talk about with my guests before we start recording. And
Speaker 2: a Cossack named Makno led a revolutionary movement in Ukraine
Speaker 2: that was anarchistic, very intentionally specifically meant to be an
Speaker 2: anarchist society for a couple of years, but unfortunately the
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks came and killed them all. And in Spain they
Speaker 2: a very similar thing happened were Stalin and the Fascists
Speaker 2: essentially like combined forces, not actually but practically, they both
Speaker 2: attacked the anarchist society and destroyed it. And then there's
Speaker 2: another one that I know less about, in the Korean
Speaker 2: People's Association of Manchuria that last also several years and
Speaker 2: included a couple million people, and it was destroyed by
Speaker 2: a combination of Mao's forces and Japanese imperial forces. So
Speaker 2: the main reason that we don't know one way or
Speaker 2: another about whether this like sort of anarchist communism has
Speaker 2: worked historically or could work historically is that authoritarian left
Speaker 2: and the authoritarian right have every single time both attacked it.
Speaker 4: Right away, Okay, that was really helpful. I have to
Speaker 4: say thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, this is unfortunately one of
Speaker 2: my favorite things to talk about. And there's stuff now
Speaker 2: that's like happening right now that is not anarchist in name,
Speaker 2: but is very heavily inspired by anarchists that is working
Speaker 2: in for example, northeastern Syria. They practice democratic con federalism,
Speaker 2: which is inspired by anarchism, and it's a horizontal stateless
Speaker 2: anti capitalist society. So anarchists really like it, right because
Speaker 2: we don't care as much about names. We want people
Speaker 2: to take care of each other and to be organized
Speaker 2: with each other, but not in a way where like
Speaker 2: people are running around making everyone do it or they
Speaker 2: get shot. Yes, so yes, yeah, now that's a very
Speaker 2: important question. Thanks for asking that upfront and overall, Right,
Speaker 2: this story is not about anarchism. This is a story
Speaker 2: about anarchist tactics being used in the struggle against a
Speaker 2: communist dictatorship in coalition with this huge broad movement called Solidarity.
Speaker 2: And I just didn't know about the anarchist surrealist element
Speaker 2: of it. So I got really excited when I found
Speaker 2: out about it.
Speaker 4: It seems almost like the thing that you're describing taking down,
Speaker 4: except the dictator parts.
Speaker 3: That's the problematic part.
Speaker 4: Right, they like the anarchists, like the communism, but they
Speaker 4: don't like the dictator part.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Overall, yeah, they like the They like what communism
Speaker 2: could have been, right, but not what communism ever was
Speaker 2: under Bolshevism basically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so yeah, this book was written by someone
Speaker 2: who's a surrealist and not always telling exactly the truth.
Speaker 2: He has a lot of conversations with secret police throughout
Speaker 2: this book that I'm like, I don't think this conversation happened,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. It was just him and a
Speaker 2: secret policeman talking.
Speaker 3: So who knows a secret policeman named Mushrooms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. He smokes a lot of weed in this story.
Speaker 2: And so this story I'm going to tell more than
Speaker 2: I was expecting, is going to be surrealist in how
Speaker 2: I tell it, because there's myth woven into here. But
Speaker 2: it is a fascinating story. It is one hundred percent
Speaker 2: cool people did cool stuff, and I have no reservations
Speaker 2: about it at all. The Orange Alternative was cool as hell,
Speaker 2: and I think we can learn a lot from them.
Speaker 2: And it takes place in Poland, which famously nothing bad
Speaker 2: has ever happened in Poland except for all the bad
Speaker 2: stuff that happened, like when Hitler and Stalin made a
Speaker 2: secret pact called the Malodav Ribbon trop packed and invaded
Speaker 2: jointly at the start of World War Two. That was
Speaker 2: really bad. But after the war, Stalin basically grabbed Poland,
Speaker 2: ignoring the existing Polish government in exile in London, and
Speaker 2: the USSR was like, Oh, don't worry, we'll let everyone
Speaker 2: have free and independent elections, but they didn't do that.
Speaker 2: Poland became part of the Communist Block as one of
Speaker 2: the Soviet satellite states, kind of roughly the same as
Speaker 2: like Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, all those places. That aren't
Speaker 2: technically the USSR right, but they're in the USSR's power.
Speaker 2: And folks in Poland never really liked the fact that
Speaker 2: they lived under a communist dictatorship, and they kept fighting
Speaker 2: from both the right and the left against their government,
Speaker 2: and the government would ping pong back and forth between
Speaker 2: like more like every now and then they'd be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we can kind of liberal up a little bit and
Speaker 2: be a little bit more free as a society, and
Speaker 2: then they would be like, no, wait, never mind, hardline
Speaker 2: communist And they would just go back and forth about
Speaker 2: that constantly, and they didn't have free and fair elections
Speaker 2: until nineteen eighty nine. But that's Poland. And now we're
Speaker 2: going to meet our hero, who is named Major Waldimir
Speaker 2: Theodrich or Waldeck to his friends. In case you ever
Speaker 2: needed to know what Waldeck is short for, it's short
Speaker 2: for Waldemre. He was born on April eighth, nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 2: about a month after Joseph Stalin did the best thing
Speaker 2: that he ever did, which was die my people to
Speaker 2: figure if you've listened to my show enough, you know
Speaker 2: that I'm not a big fan, not a big Stalin girl.
Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, no, it secrets out. Waldeck was born
Speaker 2: in Poland. If you ever have been to Poland, I
Speaker 2: haven't been to Poland. I have a bunch of friends
Speaker 2: from Poland, but I've never been there.
Speaker 3: No, I would like to go.
Speaker 4: I've never been anywhere in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 2: I've only been to Bulgaria. In Eastern Europe, I liked it,
Speaker 2: but I haven't been to Poland. There was more in
Speaker 2: a city called torn And. As a little kid, he
Speaker 2: was weird, but in a good way. I feel like
Speaker 2: we're gonna have to like start defending the word weird again.
Speaker 2: I'm totally fine with using it against the right wing
Speaker 2: when they're acting really weird. But obviously there's both good
Speaker 2: weird and bad weird.
Speaker 3: Agreed, Yes, I'm weird and they are very weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. I'm saying this is a weird person,
Speaker 2: but then those before weird. Waldeck figured he'd wind up
Speaker 2: a priest, but not like a boring existing god, but
Speaker 2: to a new one he'd make up as when he's
Speaker 2: a little kid. By the time he's in high school,
Speaker 2: he founded a secret society called the Union of Bacchus
Speaker 2: and has helped its members get fake doctor's notes to
Speaker 2: get out of class, and they held secret movie screenings
Speaker 2: of foreign films in the basement. And since they're in
Speaker 2: a like Soviet block country, right and getting a foreign
Speaker 2: film is a big deal. He went off to a
Speaker 2: technical college that was run in a military fashion, and
Speaker 2: so everyone had to wear uniforms of green berets. No
Speaker 2: one was allowed to have a beard, and he couldn't
Speaker 2: have long hair. So we wanted to rebel, so he
Speaker 2: shaved his head completely and he was like, oh, it
Speaker 2: is totally gonna spread everyone to shave their heads. He
Speaker 2: was the only one who did it. It did not
Speaker 2: start a movement, and everyone just started calling him baldy.
Speaker 2: Then he went off to university. If you ask me
Speaker 2: the difference between technical college and university in Poland in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, I do not know the answer. But he
Speaker 2: went off to university and he grew his hair and
Speaker 2: his beard long, and he became a theater kid, which
Speaker 2: is another common trope on this show.
Speaker 3: That's hilarious, Like a welder and a theater kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, I think the technical college, I don't
Speaker 2: even know whether it was like technical college to like,
Speaker 2: I don't even know what they trained him in. I'm
Speaker 2: like annoyed at a lot about what I have available
Speaker 2: to me about this story.
Speaker 3: Singing and dancing for sure, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he absolutely is learning those. And when he's off
Speaker 2: in theater kids' school while he's in university and is
Speaker 2: a theater kid at the school, everyone is really paranoid,
Speaker 2: right because they live in a communist country, and so
Speaker 2: there are these things called rubber ears, which is slang
Speaker 2: for secret informants, and they're like, every class has a
Speaker 2: rubber ear in it. One of your students is an informant.
Speaker 2: It's going to turn you into the party if you
Speaker 2: say and do the wrong things right, And Waldeck like
Speaker 2: never stops being paranoid about this, which is fair because
Speaker 2: it's also true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would be so paranoid, Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, But he becomes kind of like obsessed with
Speaker 2: the rubber ears. He like gets really excited when he
Speaker 2: meets one. You know, he's like, I found a rubber ear.
Speaker 2: And he's like always trying to figure out who's a
Speaker 2: cop or not, which really fucks with his personal life.
Speaker 2: He is a wild anti state rebel. Soon enough, he
Speaker 2: runs a student radio show and he makes fun of
Speaker 2: communist propaganda on the show. The problem is the state
Speaker 2: paid for the radio station, and so not only did
Speaker 2: they shut down his show, they shut down the entire
Speaker 2: radio station. About this time, he wrote a cliche that
Speaker 2: when I first read this as a footnote and I
Speaker 2: like post as social media, being like, check about this thing,
Speaker 2: everyone I know who's like from a Soviet bloc country
Speaker 2: was like, oh yeah, yeah, no, we grew up knowing this.
Speaker 2: This is not a like a wal deckism. This is
Speaker 2: just a thing you grow up knowing, which is quote,
Speaker 2: Communism must always be understood as mathematically inverse to capitalism.
Speaker 2: In capitalism, a man is exploited by another man, and
Speaker 2: in communism it's the other way around. Wait what okay,
Speaker 2: so the same thing? No, no, no, it's okay. So
Speaker 2: in capitalism man is exploited by man, but in communism
Speaker 2: it's the other way around. Man is exploited by a man.
Speaker 3: Same, they're both bad. Okay.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is the argument that is being made, and
Speaker 2: I like it too, right because like I feel like
Speaker 2: a lot of people have forgotten, the modern left is
Speaker 2: sort of forgotten what the Soviet block eras were like
Speaker 2: for people, Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the super bad parts of communism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all the authoritarianism is not so good. And everyone
Speaker 2: who grew up in it, like or everyone I've ever
Speaker 2: met it grew up in it, sure isn't happy about it.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't mean that they were all like, and
Speaker 2: therefore we love capitalism. They might be like, therefore we
Speaker 2: love blue jeans and you know, soda and choice and
Speaker 2: music and things like that. Right, And somewhere along this way,
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly when Waldeck starts identifying explicitly as
Speaker 2: an anarchist. In this long tradition of you know, anti
Speaker 2: state leftism, he spent more time scrawling anti government graffiti
Speaker 2: and bathrooms than he did studying. So soon enough they're
Speaker 2: going to kick him out school because he sucks at school.
Speaker 2: So he transfers to go to a different school, and
Speaker 2: he moves to a city called vrote Swaff, which I
Speaker 2: have always, for my entire life believed was pronounced roe
Speaker 2: Claw because it looks like roe Claw. But it's a
Speaker 2: rote Swaff. So if I get it wrong elsewhere throughout
Speaker 2: the script, I am sorry, my Polish friends. But for many,
Speaker 2: many years I have read about this city and had
Speaker 2: an assumption about how to pronounce it, because most Polish
Speaker 2: things are pronounced like they look anyway whatever. In Froutz Swaff,
Speaker 2: he found his people because these theater kids they go
Speaker 2: hard and not just like politically like he cares about that,
Speaker 2: but they go hard as like weirdo artists. They are
Speaker 2: not afraid of being controversial and critical. And when you
Speaker 2: would come into class, they would black out the windows
Speaker 2: and take your watch away, so you have no sense
Speaker 2: of time, so you're truly with the moment. Either of
Speaker 2: you do theater. I never did theater, but I yes, sadly.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm recovered, not well. What was your Sophie, Sorry,
Speaker 2: I didn't here well okay.
Speaker 4: I thought you were saying I did not recover well,
Speaker 4: and I was like, that's also true.
Speaker 2: I couldn't do theater because my siblings did theater and
Speaker 2: I had to be different from them, like aggressively.
Speaker 1: You know, I do feel some joy that my older
Speaker 1: brother had to sit through all my bad theater camps
Speaker 1: as a kid. We had to go see the final
Speaker 1: play at the end of camp. I do feel joy
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: And so now that he's this particular kind of theater kid,
Speaker 2: he's you know, he's growing his hair longer and longer
Speaker 2: his beard, and he's growing weed that was smuggled in
Speaker 2: as seeds from behind the Iron Curtain. And so all
Speaker 2: the like hippies are growing weed in their in their houses,
Speaker 2: and there's this tension that keeps happening where you kind
Speaker 2: of you sort of kind of need to pick whether
Speaker 2: you're a political radical or going to grow weed.
Speaker 3: You know, why can't you be both?
Speaker 2: Because they like raiding your house when you're a radical.
Speaker 2: Oh and then if you find weed, you're in like
Speaker 2: extra trouble. This didn't stop a lot of people, but
Speaker 2: it caused a lot of tension because they would go
Speaker 2: to these like weed smoking parties and then everyone be like, no,
Speaker 2: we can't get too political because we can't get the
Speaker 2: secret police on us because we want to keep doing drugs.
Speaker 3: I love the tension, I know, I know.
Speaker 2: And when the hippies first showed up in Poland, you know,
Speaker 2: this is a little bit late, right, this is the
Speaker 2: late seventies intead of late sixties. And at first the
Speaker 2: communist authorities are really happy about this new thing. Because
Speaker 2: the American hippies are anti capitalists. They're like, ah, they'll
Speaker 2: be good communists, right, But the Polish hippies were against
Speaker 2: the communist regime. So eventually the communist authorities were like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to demonize the hippies, just like the West does.
Speaker 2: But another thing that the West does really well is
Speaker 2: interrupt podcasts to talk about products and services like these ones.
Speaker 3: Yay, and we're back.
Speaker 2: So when I say they were oppressed by cops, Poland
Speaker 2: didn't have cops because cops is capitalist, bourgeoise stuff, right.
Speaker 2: They had the people's militia. It's the same thing. It
Speaker 2: is literally the same thing. They have cops. They just
Speaker 2: don't call them cops because that has a bad kind
Speaker 2: of They just call it a militia.
Speaker 3: I think a militia has a worse connotation for.
Speaker 2: In the usity. Yeah, like they're going neck and neck here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is functionally identical to cops. Veteran of the pod
Speaker 2: Mikhail Bakunin put it back in eighteen seventy three, when
Speaker 2: the people are being beaten by a stick, they are
Speaker 2: not much happier if it is called the people's stick.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that quote. I was really excited to
Speaker 2: get to that. I actually in my head I thought
Speaker 2: I remember that as an oral wal quote, it wasn't.
Speaker 2: And so starting about thee I think nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: life is getting really hard in Poland. The economy is
Speaker 2: starting to crash a little bit. The cost of basic
Speaker 2: living is going up and up. Communism doesn't actually really
Speaker 2: distribute lots of stuff for free, and so communism is
Speaker 2: increasingly unpopular. People are unhappy about the people's stick. Sugar
Speaker 2: is being rationed, the cost of meat is going up,
Speaker 2: and to quote Waldeck, a student who'd been distributing handbill
Speaker 2: in Crackow died there in extremely suspicious circumstances. The secret
Speaker 2: police were held responsible for his death, and a revolt
Speaker 2: broke out at the university. Oh shit, and this is like,
Speaker 2: you don't have protest movements in communist bloc countries. You know,
Speaker 2: this is a huge deal.
Speaker 3: Did they dress it up like a theater flash mob?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: That's basically what I'm going to talk about for the
Speaker 2: next two hours is that doesn't happen yet, but once
Speaker 2: the artists get involved, that is absolutely what's going to happen. Okay,
Speaker 2: can't wait. If flash mobs could bring down a government,
Speaker 2: that's what this story is about. So I'm glad you
Speaker 2: called it, and so this revolt breaks out, and it's
Speaker 2: here that we have to talk about the main group.
Speaker 2: When people talk about I know, it's a big thing.
Speaker 2: You go to a party and people are like, oh,
Speaker 2: let's talk about the social movement that brought down the
Speaker 2: Polish Communist government in nineteen eighty nine. It's like a
Speaker 2: thing that comes up a lot, right, And usually when
Speaker 2: people talk about Polish opposition to Communism, they talk about
Speaker 2: a trade union called Solidarity, and this is the first
Speaker 2: independent trade union in the Soviet Bloc, or rather as
Speaker 2: the first legally recognized trade union. All the others were
Speaker 2: entirely illegal, where Solidarity was only mostly illegal, And the
Speaker 2: fact that it managed to be mostly legal instead of
Speaker 2: totally illegal was because it had ten million members by
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3: Damn, Can I ask what's illegal about it?
Speaker 2: You're just not allowed to have a trade union that
Speaker 2: within the communists countries, the state controls trade unions, gotcha.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they are in charge of just everything, so
Speaker 4: you can't like have these separate groups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, pretty much, especially since they perceived themselves as
Speaker 2: a leftist government. They are like, no, we're your trade union, right,
Speaker 2: you know, we are everything. But in Poland, by nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one, after only a year of its existence, solidarity
Speaker 2: is running around with a third of the adult population
Speaker 2: of the country. So they have to be reckoned with
Speaker 2: and it's hard to completely illegalize something that a third
Speaker 2: of the people are trying to do. And what's really
Speaker 2: confusing about this time wise is that I can look
Speaker 2: and know exactly when solidarity started. It started in August
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty because a woman named Anna Volantinowitz was fired
Speaker 2: from a shipyard for being part of an illegal trade union,
Speaker 2: right because she was unionizing, and so she was fired,
Speaker 2: and then the rest of her crew went on strike, right,
Speaker 2: and then they managed to form this other union and
Speaker 2: it blew up and became this big thing. But now
Speaker 2: I get really annoyingly confused because now in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: a year before that, there's something called the Solidarity student
Speaker 2: committees that are forming and the author is like, and
Speaker 2: they're part of solidarity, but they can't be solidator whatever.
Speaker 2: It's just history books don't always make sense, okay, or
Speaker 2: they're not always entirely accurate. The students all over the
Speaker 2: country because a student has died form solidarity student committees
Speaker 2: at universities to try and do something about the fact
Speaker 2: that a student has been killed for passing out handbills.
Speaker 2: They start setting up groups. This is a big deal.
Speaker 2: I keep saying this, but it's just it's such a
Speaker 2: big deal. This happening stuff that we really take for
Speaker 2: granted in the US. Obviously, like in the US, student
Speaker 2: movements also get attacked by police, right, but we have
Speaker 2: to like pretend that they did something illegal first, right,
Speaker 2: you know, like beyond the lawn. Never mind if I
Speaker 2: said this a year ago, I've had entirely different ways
Speaker 2: of talking about this. And in Rhodeswaft at the cathedral,
Speaker 2: a handful of students showed up to protest, and the
Speaker 2: protest organizers are like terrified. They're like, this is to
Speaker 2: be so low key and non confrontational, you guys, it's
Speaker 2: still the first protest the city is seen in decades,
Speaker 2: so they're like, we really got to play this simple.
Speaker 2: But the people who were there, including Waldeck, broke from
Speaker 2: the organizer's wishes and they went wild. And by that
Speaker 2: I mean they marched to a big landmark statue and
Speaker 2: someone read out one of the handbills to the crowd ooh,
Speaker 2: and this blew everyone's minds. Soon enough, the opposition movement
Speaker 2: at this university was huge. About half of the faculty.
Speaker 2: We're in on these like secret meetings, which also meant
Speaker 2: that the secret police are in on it. They're infiltrating,
Speaker 2: they're arresting people, they're raiding people's dorms and houses and
Speaker 2: things like that. Right, and there's this supposedly revolutionary group
Speaker 2: in Routswaff that sets up an organization to be like,
Speaker 2: we're going to take this further, We're going to have
Speaker 2: a revolution. And in order to be super serious, they
Speaker 2: need to do something that seems very obvious. They forbid
Speaker 2: women from coming to this secret revolutionary organization because, after all,
Speaker 2: the men will be distracted if there's women there.
Speaker 4: Yes, and they'll get their periods everywhere and all kinds
Speaker 4: of stuff.
Speaker 3: It's dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just too emotional. It just won't work, you know.
Speaker 2: So Waldeck is actually part of forming this, but he
Speaker 2: like isn't the leader of it, and he writes about
Speaker 2: it kind of right away, being like fuck, what the
Speaker 2: hell is this shit? Like, you know, but when I
Speaker 2: first read it, I was like, God, damn it is
Speaker 2: this gonna be it? Because there's this thing that happens
Speaker 2: a lot on the show where I'll read about a
Speaker 2: man and then he like sucks, he's a misogynist. Like
Speaker 2: I get halfway through the book and then he's a misogynist.
Speaker 2: I'm like, fuck him, it's too late. I can't change
Speaker 2: my topic. Waldeck is not a misogynist. He's not down
Speaker 2: with kicking the women out. He's actually very actively feminist
Speaker 2: and soon enough is going to be cross dressing it, protests.
Speaker 3: Oh, we love it, okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so yeah, he's not going to last long
Speaker 2: in this traditional misogynist revolutionary structure.
Speaker 3: Was he pissed about these what are the ears called.
Speaker 2: The rubber ears?
Speaker 3: The rubber ears? Was he pissed about them arresting folks?
Speaker 2: I get that impression, But the way he writes about
Speaker 2: it all, he writes it as if he's like playing
Speaker 2: a chess game against the state. So he's like the
Speaker 2: brilliant strategist General so and so came and you know,
Speaker 2: did all these things, And I have to respect how
Speaker 2: effective that was. You know, he's a he's still alive.
Speaker 2: If you're listening to this Waldeck, I'm sure, I got
Speaker 2: lots of stuff wrong, but it's half your fault because
Speaker 2: your book is very confusing.
Speaker 3: What the fuck am I doing here? Why don't you
Speaker 3: get Waldack himself?
Speaker 2: No, I don't know no as to how the show works.
Speaker 2: I like learning things and then explaining them instead of
Speaker 2: you know. Also, because like he and I would have
Speaker 2: a very different conversation, it's much better to have what
Speaker 2: we call in the business the podcast idiot. Okay, I'll
Speaker 2: be the idiot, the person who doesn't know the thing,
Speaker 2: which would have been me a week ago. It's not
Speaker 2: that I actually knew this stuff.
Speaker 1: We call them podcast dummies.
Speaker 2: Oh dummies.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 2: So another thing about living in well, actually lots of
Speaker 2: countries do this. The US doesn't do it, but lots
Speaker 2: of countries do. Poland had mandatory military service at the time,
Speaker 2: and so he's called up for mandatory military service. And
Speaker 2: I want to shout out there's a tactic that is
Speaker 2: tried and true that Waldeck did before some of my friends,
Speaker 2: but I learned about it first. Of my friends. I
Speaker 2: have a few friends who've grown up in societies with
Speaker 2: man tory military service. Like some Finnish friends just were like, no,
Speaker 2: we could do public service instead of joining the military.
Speaker 2: It's fine. My Israeli friends grew up in an evil
Speaker 2: empire of oppression and were like, how do we get
Speaker 2: out of joining the IDF? And they actually all managed
Speaker 2: to get out of joining the IDF. Most of them
Speaker 2: did so by just leaving the fucking country and going
Speaker 2: to Europe.
Speaker 3: Brilliant.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One friend, like a lot of resisters, just went
Speaker 2: to jail. He just went in and said no, I
Speaker 2: will not serve in the IDF, and they put him
Speaker 2: in jail. And then I have a friend named Yoni,
Speaker 2: and Yoni pulled an Alice's Restaurant. You ever heard this
Speaker 2: song Alice's Restaurant? Mm hmm, Okay, there's this old song
Speaker 2: about someone evading the draft by acting crazy. My friend
Speaker 2: Yoni went into the recruiter's office, head held high, and said,
Speaker 2: I want a gun. Give me a gun. I want
Speaker 2: to kill people. I don't know who I'm gonna kill.
Speaker 2: It might be you, it might be me. Just give
Speaker 2: me a gun. I want to kill people.
Speaker 3: Okay, pull crazy, love it.
Speaker 2: And they were like, no, we don't want you. You
Speaker 2: can't join.
Speaker 3: You're too excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's funny is what happens in the song Alice's
Speaker 2: Restaurant as he goes in and he's like, I want
Speaker 2: to kill I want blood in my teeth, and the
Speaker 2: recruiters like, great, you're exactly who we want. But you know, anyway,
Speaker 2: so it works for Yoni. Waldeck does this too. He
Speaker 2: is mostly known as Major Valdemir Fiedrich. Why is he
Speaker 2: known as major because when he was called in for
Speaker 2: mandatory service and now I hear there's three different versions
Speaker 2: of this. Either he marched in in a major's uniform
Speaker 2: and he insisted that he was already a major and
Speaker 2: they were like, all right, you're crazy, to get the
Speaker 2: fuck out of here. Or he just wore a suit
Speaker 2: vest with a bunch of metals pinned on it. Or
Speaker 2: and this is the thing that I think actually happened,
Speaker 2: he went to a psychiatrist and acted crazy in order
Speaker 2: to get a note from the psychiatrist to say that
Speaker 2: he didn't have to do his mandatory military service.
Speaker 3: Did he know about bone spurs? Just do bone spurs?
Speaker 2: I know, I know, right, There's so much he could
Speaker 2: have learned. It is so funny how it's like like overall,
Speaker 2: like I'm not mad at people trying, like like not
Speaker 2: serving in Vietnam is like good, right, you know, right,
Speaker 2: but it's really annoying when people claim to be like
Speaker 2: super patriotic and send other people after their deaths and
Speaker 2: then didn't have the courage to actually do it themselves.
Speaker 3: My grandpa did.
Speaker 4: He was Mennonite, so he got whatever that release was
Speaker 4: where he just like had to go work at hospital
Speaker 4: or whatever during World War two.
Speaker 2: Yeah whatever, No, it makes sense. Yeah, And it's so different, right,
Speaker 2: like war to war, you know, because like I mean,
Speaker 2: it makes sense for mena nits and another past fists
Speaker 2: to go to hospital services so to faing World War two, right,
Speaker 2: you know, but like I.
Speaker 3: Would be like I will fuck your shit up. I
Speaker 3: will be like yelling during battle. You don't want me,
Speaker 3: you do not want me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough. So he goes to the doctor and
Speaker 2: he passes the doctor notes being like we can't talk freely.
Speaker 2: I've been bugged, And then he passes more notes that
Speaker 2: are like and then the doctor puts the note in
Speaker 2: his journal, you know, and he's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you have to eat the note. He passes another note,
Speaker 2: but it's like, no, you have to eat the note.
Speaker 2: What are you doing, and it's possible, and I think
Speaker 2: implied that this particular psychiatrist pretty much dedicated his life
Speaker 2: to helping people evade mandatory military service and then put
Speaker 2: them in touch with each other to organize revolution. All right,
Speaker 2: I'm not certain, but if so, thanks doctor for bringing
Speaker 2: down a communist regime.
Speaker 3: That's a special you know, discipline of medicine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally quack but good. However it goes down, he
Speaker 2: doesn't serve in the military, and he becomes forever after
Speaker 2: known as the Major. He would go everywhere with his
Speaker 2: long hair and his long beard, which is funny cause
Speaker 2: like long hair and long beard by like today's standards,
Speaker 2: they're not particular like chin length hair and like a
Speaker 2: beard that's not like a He doesn't have a wizard beard,
Speaker 2: you know. But he does have a big black long
Speaker 2: military coat with shiny silver buttons that he wears everywhere.
Speaker 2: And while Deck and his friends they set up an
Speaker 2: alternative to the boring no women revolutionary structure, and it
Speaker 2: seems to have been either called the army or the regiment.
Speaker 2: Eventually it's going to be called the Orange Alternative, but
Speaker 2: for now they're like they all take on the name,
Speaker 2: like Lieutenant so and so and all of this stuff, right,
Speaker 2: and women joined and were called amazons. Yes, they called
Speaker 2: all of their various actions. Whenever they go to an action,
Speaker 2: they'd be called maneuvers, like all we're going out on
Speaker 2: maneuvers tonight. It'd be like graffiti or whatever, you know.
Speaker 2: And at one point they went on a maneuver to
Speaker 2: a big hippie camp to distribute revolutionary handbills and they
Speaker 2: did it without anyone getting arrested. So they were like
Speaker 2: celebrated their successful maneuvers with no casualties. And they held
Speaker 2: elections every week because I think they either had an
Speaker 2: over enthusiasm for democracy or they wanted to make it
Speaker 2: clear that their governing structure is sort of an absurdity
Speaker 2: and they are anti authoritarian. Everyone is a leader.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, I would be exhausted by all the elections.
Speaker 2: I know, but they're having fun with it. I think
Speaker 2: it's all a game to them. Okay, they start all
Speaker 2: the hippies and revolutionaries, they start taking shit kind of seriously,
Speaker 2: even though they do it all with like a laugh.
Speaker 2: Right to quote the major back then, during a discussion
Speaker 2: about social issues, the meaning of life or the quality
Speaker 2: of various highs. People would start constructing a crew, often spontaneously.
Speaker 2: A crew was a group that would wander the country,
Speaker 2: often during vacation, sleeping wherever, finding new experiences and getting
Speaker 2: high together. And then so these like vagabond crews start
Speaker 2: also organizing revolution. So I really like it because that's
Speaker 2: my own background, So I think it's really cool. He
Speaker 2: starts traveling around the major he's avoiding train fares, he
Speaker 2: joins whatever trouble he can get into. He travels with
Speaker 2: people with names like the tramp Amazing and a dog
Speaker 2: named Dog. There's so many dogs in a story and
Speaker 2: none of them get hurt, Sophie.
Speaker 1: That makes me happy. Yeah, they've a lot of bummer
Speaker 1: dog stuff on Robert Show lately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then even once on my show and I
Speaker 2: didn't mean to. Yeah. Major strikes break out in the
Speaker 2: city of Gadansk, and these are the first prolonged protests
Speaker 2: anywhere in the communist world. People are like throwing molotovs
Speaker 2: and shit, and as best as I can tell, this
Speaker 2: is organized by a group called the Young Poland Movement.
Speaker 2: I don't know much about. Students and vagabonds converged on
Speaker 2: the city, gathering in hostels off to like then go
Speaker 2: together and go see the strike and to try and
Speaker 2: help out. And so the Major and his friends and
Speaker 2: presumably Dog made it back to Roodeswaf and they started
Speaker 2: the New Culture movement, the RNK. They just name new
Speaker 2: things constantly whatever. Honestly, the name isn't going to be
Speaker 2: super important to the rest of it. If you're like me,
Speaker 2: and acronyms and initials just go in one ear and
Speaker 2: out the other. Don't worry about this one. You can
Speaker 2: just remember dwarves, elves, gnomes and the Orange alternative and
Speaker 2: you'll be good. They put on debates, They published a
Speaker 2: single issue of a gazette called a They Smoked Weed,
Speaker 2: and they talked about how life could be. And their
Speaker 2: heroes were first and foremost friend of the Pod Peter Kropotkin,
Speaker 2: who's one of the main anarchist communist theorists from Russia
Speaker 2: from one hundred years earlier, and future friend of the
Speaker 2: Pod Bob Marley. That's their thing, dead old Russian guy
Speaker 2: and Bob Marley love it. The Major described Kropotkin as
Speaker 2: quote a zoologist, a royal prince, and a figurehead of
Speaker 2: classical anarchism with a splendid beard. He was an excellent
Speaker 2: role model.
Speaker 3: I appreciate all the weed smoking. I would be in
Speaker 3: it just for the weed smoking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how a lot of them got into it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But that weed smoking, those hippies and shit was enough
Speaker 2: that Russia shows up with tanks trying to quell the
Speaker 2: rebellious hippies. Which it's fun to remember that Poland is
Speaker 2: not Russia, it is not the ussr right, and Russia's like, no,
Speaker 2: we don't care, can't let a communism fall here, and
Speaker 2: so tanks they come in. If you ever hear anyone
Speaker 2: on the Internet called a tanky, it's because of this.
Speaker 2: It is not because of it happening in Poland, but
Speaker 2: it happening in Hungary in nineteen fifty six, when Russia
Speaker 2: is like, let's send tanks to quell anyone who dislikes
Speaker 2: the USSR. So Major gets out of the country for
Speaker 2: a minute. He goes to Czechoslovakia, he talks with folks
Speaker 2: there about what's going on in Poland, and then he
Speaker 2: goes home and he writes the Manifesto of Socialist Surrealism,
Speaker 2: and then he falls in love and it turns out
Speaker 2: she's into this, so it's not creepy, but he starts
Speaker 2: graffeeding his CRUSH's name in the halls all over campus,
Speaker 2: like in Hearts, you know, okay, and his CRUSH's name
Speaker 2: is Yogi Booboooo. At least that's how he wrote it
Speaker 2: down in his book. And she's not creeped out, but
Speaker 2: she's actually more radical than him. He asks her out,
Speaker 2: He's like, starts by just grafeiting her name, which kids,
Speaker 2: if you're listening down, start with that. Start with asking
Speaker 2: out yes, consent, yeah. But he asks her out and
Speaker 2: she's like, yeah, i'd love to meet up. Let's go
Speaker 2: on a day tomorrow. And he's like hell yeah. And
Speaker 2: then she calls later that night and is like, I
Speaker 2: can't go on a day tomorrow. There's a student strike.
Speaker 2: I have to go to the student strike. And he's like,
Speaker 2: don't you want to just go on a date with
Speaker 2: me instead of going to the protest, And she's like no,
Speaker 2: and so he's like, hey, babe, I'm gonna come to
Speaker 2: the protest. And that's how Yogi Booboo destroyed the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: I mean, many, many people are involved in all of this,
Speaker 2: but I just love all the little weird threads where
Speaker 2: if Yogi Booboo hadn't, I don't know whatever.
Speaker 4: Anyway, I was going to ask you if when they
Speaker 4: let the girls in, if they all start a fucking
Speaker 4: But it sounds like, yeah, maybe a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it's also pretty queer, and we're going to
Speaker 2: talk a little bit more about that later. But yeah, no,
Speaker 2: they're all like, there's a lot of reference to like.
Speaker 2: And then I went and hung out with my girlfriends
Speaker 2: and you're like, Okay, I don't know entirely what's happening here,
Speaker 2: but I hope everyone's having fun, you know. And so
Speaker 2: the New Culture movement joins the strike and they formally
Speaker 2: endorse it because they're like, well, it's a good piece
Speaker 2: of art, right, we'll go to the protest as art
Speaker 2: and they're a weirdo art radical clubs. So of course
Speaker 2: they have to print a newspaper first. So they get
Speaker 2: their shit together to finish something they've been working on
Speaker 2: for about six months called the Orange Alternative, and they
Speaker 2: go out and they print it. I have a couple
Speaker 2: different ideas about where they get this interest in the
Speaker 2: word orange as part of the name of their movement, right,
Speaker 2: But what I also am interested in is advertisers interrupting
Speaker 2: the middle of my sentence. That's great and we're back.
Speaker 2: So they finished the orange alternative, And in one way
Speaker 2: they're inspired by this protest movement from the earlier seventies
Speaker 2: called the Cabalter movement in Amsterdam, right, and they used
Speaker 2: orange a lot. And if so, that's because it's Dutch.
Speaker 2: But the other argument I've heard is that the orange
Speaker 2: alternative is presenting a third way because the two things
Speaker 2: that are being presented as you either have the red
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks or you have the yellow Vatican, like the Catholic Church, right,
Speaker 2: And they're like, what about something different, And so it's like,
Speaker 2: not anti religious and not anti well, it's anti communist,
Speaker 2: but it's against the Catholic Church and it's against the
Speaker 2: Bolshevik Communist Party. But it's like a lot of religious
Speaker 2: people are in it and a lot of socialists are
Speaker 2: in it, as best as I can tell.
Speaker 4: I wonder if the word orange like nothing rhymes with
Speaker 4: it in Polish either, because that would also make sense
Speaker 4: if they were like, you don't like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we want everything to be unique. I'm hoping. I
Speaker 2: think orange is one of the ugliest words in the
Speaker 2: English language. I hate saying the orange alternative over and
Speaker 2: over again. It just it's not poetic to me. So
Speaker 2: I'm hoping it's poetic and polish, whether or not at
Speaker 2: rhymes with anything. And yeah, So because a hippie anarchist
Speaker 2: boy wanted to impress his crush by going to the strike,
Speaker 2: she was going to. The Orange alternative is born. Waldeck
Speaker 2: showed up at the strike. He set up a tent
Speaker 2: and he painted love and anarchy on it. Counter protesters
Speaker 2: showed up basically like right wing communist youth groups, like
Speaker 2: kind of the equivalent of like right because if your
Speaker 2: society is the communist society, the like right wing thugs
Speaker 2: who defend the government are basically the same kind of
Speaker 2: person that they would be in our society. And they
Speaker 2: start tearing down the posters this like, you know, the
Speaker 2: counter protesters, and so the surrealists some of them are like,
Speaker 2: all right, let's go throw chairs at them and fight
Speaker 2: them and shit, right, and other ones are like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: we gotta do this. We got to just confuse the
Speaker 2: shit out of them. So they go to the window,
Speaker 2: they open the window and they all start singing the
Speaker 2: Internationale at the top of their lungs, which is like
Speaker 2: basically the second national anthem of communist Poland. Right. It's
Speaker 2: this like communist bombastic song about the ray communism, you know,
Speaker 2: and the right wing group is like, wait, that's our song,
Speaker 2: and they just get confused and leave beautiful yeah, and
Speaker 2: word goes around the rest of the school. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: the orange alternative newspaper is cool as hell, and they
Speaker 2: successfully defended their building against counter protesters. The organizers of
Speaker 2: the strike were the like stuffy no girls allowed and
Speaker 2: no fun club, and so they're pissed because they're starting
Speaker 2: to lose the masses because people are like, wait, the
Speaker 2: hippies let us girls in and are also fun and
Speaker 2: they have weed, you know. And the official strike committee
Speaker 2: put out a statement that the new culture movement was
Speaker 2: banned and their newspaper was banned. But the whole protest
Speaker 2: movement is about how we don't like the communist government
Speaker 2: because it's a censorship government, right, and so everyone's like,
Speaker 2: we're not going to censor shit, what the fuck are
Speaker 2: you talking about? Yeah, And so basically the stuffy no
Speaker 2: girls allowed club people were like, oh, you're just the
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks all over again. Fuck you, and for some weird reason,
Speaker 2: women in particular were drawn to the movement that let
Speaker 2: them in instead of the movement that didn't let them in.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, I know, you think that they would just
Speaker 2: be extra excited to try and get into patriarchy instead
Speaker 2: of organizing as feminists. Yeah, the whole communist movement is
Speaker 2: freaked out by the student strike in Poland. Even the
Speaker 2: resistance to communism is a little bit worried about it.
Speaker 2: They were like, oh, the conditions aren't right for a
Speaker 2: big strike, right, we have to build up to that.
Speaker 2: You can't just go out and have a revolution. You
Speaker 2: have to wait till the material conditions are perfect or whatever.
Speaker 2: And so they're like not in control. So they're upset.
Speaker 2: The strike committee, the No Girls Club took orders top
Speaker 2: down from solidarity, that larger movement. I was talking about
Speaker 2: the students themselves. They're organized bottom up, and so the
Speaker 2: student's form and this is meant as a joke. The
Speaker 2: Council of People's Commissioners of the Orange Revolution, and they
Speaker 2: made alliances with other striking groups in order to avoid
Speaker 2: having the strike dismantled from the top down. Eleven universities
Speaker 2: across the country agreed to keep going despite pressure from
Speaker 2: the opposition authorities who wanted to get everyone to give up.
Speaker 2: They wanted the strike to cancel. Poland went into martial
Speaker 2: law over this. The army occupied the cities and the
Speaker 2: strikes were broken by force. And it was probably important
Speaker 2: strategically that, rather than just giving up, the strike went
Speaker 2: until the government was forced to destroy it because forcing
Speaker 2: the state into martial law, while it sucks, because then
Speaker 2: you get martial law for a while, helped the movement grow.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of people on your side. Yeah, what
Speaker 3: kind of violence were they breaking it up with?
Speaker 2: I am under the impression, but it again, I am
Speaker 2: not entirely confident about this person I'm reading. I'm under
Speaker 2: the impression that the Polish govern was repressive, but not
Speaker 2: quite like murder, torture repressive. Okay, I am under the impression.
Speaker 2: It will look similar to how you would expect something
Speaker 2: like this to be brought, like similar to how things
Speaker 2: were broken up actually at the student movement this year
Speaker 2: in the United States, where there's violence, there's plenty of
Speaker 2: hitting and arrests that make no sense and stuff, but
Speaker 2: it's not like machine gunning the crowd. Yeah, okay, good, Yeah,
Speaker 2: my best impression of it and what the government did
Speaker 2: once they declared martial law. The major he's like sick,
Speaker 2: He's like home with a cold, and he goes out
Speaker 2: into the streets one day and he sees these posters
Speaker 2: that have put up that were like, we have arrested
Speaker 2: all of the ring leaders of the strike. Don't worry,
Speaker 2: your streets are safe, and they would like list all
Speaker 2: of the names of all the people who've been arrested.
Speaker 2: And the Major's like, wait, that's my name, though, why
Speaker 2: is my name on the list of people who've been detained?
Speaker 2: Like that very much, and I don't feel like I
Speaker 2: have been detained. And then one of his friends was
Speaker 2: arrested soon after one of his friends who was also
Speaker 2: on the list but hadn't yet been arrested, and so
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm going to go into hiding now. This
Speaker 2: is not the right time to be hanging out of
Speaker 2: my house. Yeah, And so it goes to warsaw and
Speaker 2: people in Poland didn't take martial law. Lying down students
Speaker 2: in dorms. They lit candles in the windows and like
Speaker 2: banged pots and pans, and this freaked out that these
Speaker 2: cops are really easy to piss off. After a couple
Speaker 2: of days of it, they like laid siege to the dorm,
Speaker 2: I think, and then evicted everyone from the dorm, and Solidarity,
Speaker 2: true to its name, got together and figured out how
Speaker 2: to get everyone housed. The local priest organized his congregation
Speaker 2: to put all the students up in parishioners' houses. Because, yeah,
Speaker 2: the anti communist movement under Solidarity was incredibly politically diverse,
Speaker 2: from Polish nationalists, anti Fulitarian leftists to the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2: And then May Day nineteen eighty one, it was a
Speaker 2: big to do. In Warsaw. May Day is the International
Speaker 2: workers holiday and in communist countries it's the big state holiday.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get really better about it because, like it
Speaker 2: was started because some anarchists were killed for being anarchists
Speaker 2: in Chicago in eighteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: I thought May Day was like this fun spring. I'm
Speaker 3: an idiot.
Speaker 2: No, Noviously, you're also not wrong, right, So, like bell
Speaker 2: Tane is like an old pagan tradition and it's like
Speaker 2: a common thing I think across a lot of cultures.
Speaker 2: And I think it's not a coincidence that there were
Speaker 2: these like big protest marches in Chicago in eighteen eighties
Speaker 2: on May Day, called for Mayday, called for May First,
Speaker 2: and then the state broke them up with incredible violence
Speaker 2: and a lot of people were killed and like they
Speaker 2: were machine gunning crowds and things like that, or I
Speaker 2: guess hand gunning crowds. And seven anarchists were put on
Speaker 2: trial for the crime of being anarchists because they were
Speaker 2: part of the labor movement fighting for the eight hour
Speaker 2: work day at the time, and five of them were
Speaker 2: killed by the state. And ever since they became the
Speaker 2: Haymarket Martyrs, and May First has been celebrated as the
Speaker 2: workers Holiday.
Speaker 3: Oh fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it got really heavily recuperated by the communist governments, right,
Speaker 2: and so it's the big Communist Day. And so in
Speaker 2: Warsaw nineteen eighty one, there's the official communist march and
Speaker 2: then there's the unofficial march, which is an anti government march,
Speaker 2: and street fighting breaks out. There's a huge riot. Red
Speaker 2: flags are being burned in the streets. People fought, the
Speaker 2: cops laid into the night, and the major went home
Speaker 2: to Vroutswaft to tell everyone what he'd seen about what
Speaker 2: was possible and by June thirteenth, that city too broke
Speaker 2: into rebellion. But if you want to hear about that rebellion,
Speaker 2: and even more importantly, about when everyone starts dressing up
Speaker 2: as dwarves and gnomes and elves and things, yes, wait
Speaker 2: to Wednesday. Well you don't have to wait. You only
Speaker 2: have to wait like five minutes. But everyone else has
Speaker 2: to wait till Wednesday. It's the cruel fate of not
Speaker 2: being the guest.
Speaker 3: Sorry, suckers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if people don't want to wait, is there
Speaker 2: any other podcasts that they could listen to in the
Speaker 2: meantime to tide them over?
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe Private Parts Unknown You guys, I
Speaker 4: released an encore edition of My Tokyo Happy Ending Massage recently,
Speaker 4: so probably want to check that out. I'm also considering
Speaker 4: maybe this is a really I'm a forty and I'm
Speaker 4: thinking maybe now I'll have a kid, so I'm like
Speaker 4: trying to figure that out on my podcast.
Speaker 1: So cool.
Speaker 3: So if you want to listen to like an incredibly
Speaker 3: Confused old Woman, you can tune in for that.
Speaker 2: People get enough Confused Old Woman of my podcast, Maybe
Speaker 2: there's another that this room for more Confused Old Women
Speaker 2: podcast yeah.
Speaker 3: Margaret, I have to tell you so.
Speaker 4: I have been working on a manuscript, memoir, manuscript, and
Speaker 4: I quoted you in my manuscript based on my last appearance.
Speaker 3: On the podcast.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. People should also check out the last time
Speaker 2: Courtney was on the podcast. We've talked about the history
Speaker 2: of sex work in the West.
Speaker 4: Yeah, fascinating in your quotes about stolen valor brilliant. Anyway,
Speaker 4: I wanted to tell you that I have no idea
Speaker 4: what the quote was, but hopefully someday it gets published
Speaker 4: and people can read it.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Sophie. Do we have any new podcasts here
Speaker 2: on cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: We do. We have our newest podcast called Weird Little Guys.
Speaker 1: It's hosted by journalist Molly Conger. It's a weekly podcast.
Speaker 2: It's about gnomes.
Speaker 1: It's about gnomes.
Speaker 2: It's about the.
Speaker 1: The worst guys that you've never heard of that are
Speaker 1: ruining our daily lives as we know it. And it's
Speaker 1: it's a good time and Molly hosts it and Molly's
Speaker 1: the best.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Well, that's it for us this week and
Speaker 2: we will be back.
Speaker 4: Not this week.
Speaker 2: That's it for us today, but I released twice a
Speaker 2: week so you can come back on Wednesday and hear
Speaker 2: about how a bunch of people wearing red and then
Speaker 2: orange hats brought down I keep being like they didn't
Speaker 2: single handedly do it, but they were a huge part
Speaker 2: of it, and it was really cool, and you are
Speaker 2: going to actually really enjoy it, and I'll talk to
Speaker 2: you soon May.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.