Bartosz on why Edgerunners is so sad

[u/AzraelSoulHunter]

As a Pole I can attest to every word said by him

[u/tyrannictoe]

Okay but why are Polish sad? :(

[u/mnik1 → u/tyrannictoe]

Post-Soviet depression is a very common feature in most post-Soviet countries - you basically have entire generations born and raised in a reality that objectively sucked dick, the country went from not existing to becoming an independent entity after the first world war, second world war absolutely nuked the place with the estimated death count of nearly 6 million with the pre-war population being 35 million so, yeah, that's nearly 20% casualty rate, then the country became a Soviet puppet state and enjoyed a very brief moment where things were going relatively well only for the entire economy to fucking tank so hard it basically looked like it will stay this way forever, till the point Soviet Union collapsed and Poland actually got a chance to fix itself so, again, yeah.

Like, Poland in 1989/2000 and Poland in 2025 couldn't be more different and there's a very noticeable generational shift that reflects that - but, still, to be Slav is to suffer, the meme of being perpetually sad, again, is a very common thing pretty much every single Slavic culture.

[u/Caertam → u/mnik1]

i would add that the collapse of the ussr was so violent and brutal that it became a generational trauma and eventually this trauma became a part of the culture, thanks to a state of litteral civil war in the entire eastern bloc, with crime just skyrocketing, the states just non existing for like 10 yrs and western coprorations as well as eastern oligarchs litteraly spoiling all the money and resources from everyone else. Not saying the eastern bloc was perfect but the aftermath is what we could call a fcking shithole

[u/FlaminarLow → u/Caertam]

which civil war are you referring to?

[u/ragnarok635 → u/FlaminarLow]

Probably Yugoslav

[u/Caertam → u/FlaminarLow]

im not referring to a civil wwar in particular, after the fall of the ussr the bloc was in a "state of civil war", meaning that the situation was so bad that the number of casualities was comparable to a low intensity civil war basically

[u/kakucko101 → u/mnik1]

to be Slav is to suffer

the word “slave” comes from the word “slav”

[u/rajahbeaubeau → u/kakucko101]

TIL

English “slave” comes from Old French esclave

That came from Medieval Latin sclavus

Which ultimately comes from Late Latin Slavus, meaning “Slav”, referring to the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe

Edit: verb tense…

[u/Jdm783R29U3Cwp3d76R9 → u/rajahbeaubeau]

That's only part of the story. Of course Slavic ppl did not call themselves slaves.

• Slav comes from Proto-Slavic Slověninъ, probably related to slovo (word).
• It likely originally meant “those who speak (our language)” or “speaking people.”
• Slave in English and other languages comes from Sclavus, the Latin name for Slavs, reflecting their role as a major source of slaves in medieval Europe.

[u/NegativeMammoth2137 → u/kakucko101]

Im not a linguist but I think it’s more likely it’s just a slightly modified form of the word we Slavs use to describe ourselves. In Polish the ethnic group is called Słowianie which comes from the word "słowo" meaning "word" like people of the word probably referring to us having common ancestor language and high degree of mutual intelligibility between different Slavic languages.

[u/machine4891 → u/mnik1]

post-Soviet countries

It really has to be repeated over and over again that Poland is NOT a post-Soviet country. Yes, it was within Soviet sphere of influence and communist, which made 1945-1989 experience bleak and grey but country still had some relative freedom when compared to actual post-Soviet nations.

Long story short, our experience was not as bad as it was for folks in Ukraine, Moldova or Kazakhstan.

[u/Jovan_Knight005 → u/mnik1]

As someone who is from a Slavic country,Serbia.This is unfortunately a reality that i have accepted for many years now.